"The business manager was doing fine back in his office while they were out on the line, hungry. And, so they started to see a lot of that and there was, that maybe the leadership had its own cause. More so than the miners, you know, it was like a power struggle"
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You can hear the class tension creaking inside the plainspoken syntax. Grimes isn’t polishing a thesis; he’s replaying the moment a workforce realizes the fight isn’t only against “management” as an abstract force, but against a split reality: the business manager “fine back in his office” while the miners are “out on the line, hungry.” That contrast does the rhetorical heavy lifting. “Fine” is doing quiet damage here, a small word that implies comfort, insulation, even moral negligence. Hunger isn’t just physical; it’s leverage, a condition that makes solidarity expensive.
The quote’s real target is a second betrayal: leadership. Grimes sketches the dawning suspicion that the people meant to represent the miners may be pursuing “its own cause.” He doesn’t accuse outright; he circles it with hedges (“maybe,” “more so,” “you know”), the language of someone describing a community arriving at an unsettling conclusion in real time. Those verbal shrug marks aren’t weakness. They capture how power actually gets discussed among workers: cautiously, socially, with an awareness that naming the problem can fracture the group.
Calling it “a power struggle” reframes the strike from a clean moral narrative (workers vs. bosses) into a messier political one (workers vs. bosses vs. ambitious intermediaries). The intent is demystification. Grimes shows how movements don’t just confront external exploitation; they’re also haunted by internal hierarchy, the perennial risk that leadership becomes a separate class with separate incentives.
The quote’s real target is a second betrayal: leadership. Grimes sketches the dawning suspicion that the people meant to represent the miners may be pursuing “its own cause.” He doesn’t accuse outright; he circles it with hedges (“maybe,” “more so,” “you know”), the language of someone describing a community arriving at an unsettling conclusion in real time. Those verbal shrug marks aren’t weakness. They capture how power actually gets discussed among workers: cautiously, socially, with an awareness that naming the problem can fracture the group.
Calling it “a power struggle” reframes the strike from a clean moral narrative (workers vs. bosses) into a messier political one (workers vs. bosses vs. ambitious intermediaries). The intent is demystification. Grimes shows how movements don’t just confront external exploitation; they’re also haunted by internal hierarchy, the perennial risk that leadership becomes a separate class with separate incentives.
Quote Details
| Topic | Leadership |
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