The received view of Zambia's mineworkers is of a reactionary body unable and unwilling to shape progressive politics in post-colonial Zambia. Miles Larmer seeks to use a whole range of little-used sources to dispel this myth. Extensive interviews with mineworkers and their wives reveals a working-class consciousness and a whole host of social and economic expectations that shaped their attitude towards political change. Mineworkers in Zambia gives this misunderstood group a place in the movement for political reform which culminated in the transition to multiparty democracy in 1991,...