On a Saturday morning in September, my husband and I jump in our truck and drive to Castlewood, Virginia, in southwest Virginia’s Russell County, for the annual United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) cookout hosted by UMWA District 17. Southwest Virginia is the most Republican part of the state, and Russell County is deep in this net of macho identity politics, Christian culture, social media political engineering and the disparate ways political parties divest and invest in rural districts....| Barn Raiser
Dave Temple, who died on 13 September aged 81, was a lifelong militant in the labour movement. He worked as an electrician at Murton colliery, county Durham, and played a leading part in the mineworkers’ union for several decades. We worked closely together for much of that time, and Dave’s family asked me to write […]| People and Nature