𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Since being elected to Parliament six years ago, Lee Anderson has become one of the most recognisable former miners in Britain.

Hailing from the pit town of Sutton-in-Ashfield, the Reform UK MP began his working life digging up coal.

However, it was not a career that lasted. Almost as soon as Anderson started, the Nottinghamshire mines faced closure.

As striking miners tried to prevent the pits’ demise, the East Midlands became a flashpoint in a national industrial dispute.

Nottinghamshire workers broke from the rest of the National Union of Miners [NUM] in choosing to work, a decision that created a division locally between the minority who supported the strike and the majority who didn’t.

Anderson was well aware of this split as his father was amongst the few strikers.

There was an unpleasant reminder of the divide in 2004 when a village on the outskirts of Sutton-in-Ashfield was rocked by a brutal murder in which the killer and victim had been on opposing sides of the strike.

Former miner Keith Frogson, 62, a lifelong supporter of the NUM and the strike, was murdered by Robert Boyer, 42, who kept working.

Boyer used a crossbow to kill Frogson and then disappeared into the nearby Sherwood Forest. He was only caught after a £1.5 million police manhunt lasting weeks.

A mere 11 days after that awful murder, Terry Rodgers, 55, shot his 23-year-old daughter Chanel Taylor four times mere miles from the first slaying.

If any of that sounds familiar, it’s because the dark chapter inspired the first series of hit BBC drama Sherwood, which starred David Morrissey, Robert Glenister and Lesley Manville.

Speaking to the Express during the filming of an exclusive documentary about his life and journey into politics Anderson revealed his memories of the murders and offered an opinion on the TV adaptation.

Discussing the portrayal of festering division between strikers and those who worked in the drama Anderson told the Express: “The divisions aren’t like they say it is. There are some divided families still but it’s nothing like watching that programme Sherwood.

“I mean, it’s a great series, but it’s not how it happened.

“It was thoroughly entertaining [though] and I get a mention in it [one of the characters says] ‘we’ve got a Conservative MP here’ which is me.”

Anderson added that he had links to both of the real-life cases.

“The girl that got killed, shot by her own father was in the village [where I grew up and] I know the family of the chap who was killed with the crossbow,” he said.

Not that the Ashfield MP was a fan of people continuously dredging up the miners’ strike and the Nottinghamshire split.

“The only people who bring it up is you lot [journalists],” he told the Express. “S**t stirrers.”

Another local lad, playwright James Graham, wrote Sherwood, and he went to the same school as Anderson.

However, it’s fair to say the author is not Anderson’s biggest fan. During an interview with Beth Rigby on Sky News Graham said he wasn’t sure all the people in Ashfield would be so keen on someone who might be seen as a “show off” who had a habit of “stirring things up”.