Like Scargill, Mrs Thatcher struck a remarkably aggressive, uncompromising tone right from the start. In the former the Swansea, Dulais and Neath Valleys flowed south and west to the coast at Swansea and Neath. [21], On 6 March 1984, the NCB announced that the agreement reached after the 1974 strike was obsolete, and that to reduce government subsidies, 20 collieries would close with a loss of 20,000 jobs. "[18]:129131 Scargill disliked Len Murray and blamed the TUC for the failure of the 1926 General Strike. MacGregor said that these mines weren't making any money. His comments followed a question in the Commons from Labour MP Lisa Nandy, who said the miners and their families deserved an apology for the mine closures. A wider context needs to be adopted in which the mining villages provide the foci but across which the connections are often much wider. When the owners refused to negotiate with the union, miners appealed to President Roosevelt to . From these interviews I shall be selecting about fifty for extensive use in the book. [89] Two miners from Wakefield were convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and four others were acquitted of riot and assault. The proximate cause of the 1984-85 miners' strike, the longest mass strike in British history, was a round of colliery closures announced by the National Coal Board (NCB, now British Coal) in March 1984 as part of the restructuring of the British coal mining industry. ", "Sir Peter Gregson, civil servant obituary: Whitehall mandarin who helped lay the groundwork for Mrs Thatcher's defeat of Arthur Scargill,". ", Allen, V. L. "The year-long miners' strike, March 1984 March 1985: a memoir. There are signs, however, that this was gendered too, with daughters of miners doing better than their brothers. It may serve to persuade the committee to take one action or another, or to refrain from action, but it has no great force or significance. https://www.youtube.com/embed/8n8BeD6fkwc?controls=0. After the NUM's National Executive Conference rejected the scheme, NUM leader Joe Gormley arranged a national ballot. [33]:366 In October 1984, the NUM executive voted to cooperate with the court to recover the funds, despite opposition from Scargill, who stated in court that he was only apologising for his contempt of court because the executive voted for him to do so. [19]:305 At Betteshanger Colliery, posters were put up with photographs and names of the thirty strikebreakers. It was compared to the return to work led by George Spencer in Nottinghamshire during the 1926 coal strike, but Nottinghamshire had gone on strike alongside other regions in 1972 and 1974. [19]:46 The High Court ruled that the NUM had breached its constitution by calling a strike without holding a ballot. The outcome was the Miner's Campaign Tapes. JAMES McCARTHY remembers the 1984 Miners Strike that . [33]:358 When asked in a Gallup poll in July 1984 whether their sympathies lay mainly with the employers or the miners, 40% said employers; 33% were for the miners; 19% were for neither and 8% did not know. Samuel Ajayi Crowther, Black Victorians and the Future of Africa, Why was British India Partitioned in 1947? [18]:6 Kinnock later said that it was "the greatest regret of [his] whole life" that he did not call for a national ballot at an earlier stage. [19]:77 In contrast, a sit-in down the pit was held by supporters of a ballot at Hem Heath in Staffordshire. [20]:3637 The abandonment of strike plans when most of their demands had not been met led to conspiracy theories on the motives of NACODS leaders. But in Nottinghamshire, the majority of. The film was turned into a musical, Billy Elliot the Musical with music by Elton John and book and lyrics by Lee Hall, who wrote the film's screenplay.[134]. The National Recording Centre (NRC), founded by the Association of Chief Police Officers for England and Wales (ACPO) in 1972 helped the government prepare for the organisation of police units travelling to areas of protests and in figuring out how to deal with flying pickets (strikers who travelled to different areas to protest). Socialist groups saw the mainstream media as deliberately misrepresenting the miners' strike, with Mick Duncan of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty saying of The Sun's reporting of the strike: "The day-to-day reporting involved more subtle attacks, or a biased selection of facts and a lack of alternative points of view. Coal stocks would last only six weeks, after which Britain would shut down and people would demand concessions. [19]:61 At the request of Nottinghamshire Police, Scargill appeared and called for calm in the wake of the tragedy. Margaret Thatcher and the British Coal Miners' Strike. Children challenging educational inequality in England, 1944-1970. That violence strengthened the stature of the Coal Board and the Thatcher government. Opposition to the strike was led by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who wanted to reduce the power of the trade unions. "[18]:171 He ruled that the Yorkshire area could not refer to the strike as "official", although he did not condemn the strike as "illegal" as he did in the case of the national strike and the North Derbyshire strike. Free learning resources from arts, cultural and heritage organisations. Some commentators worried that she was using the police as a paramilitary wing of the state. The strike was held by the National Mineworkers Union under Arthur Scargill and it was organized against the National Coal Board, an agency of the British government which was led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Following the Coal Miners. This years marks the 30th Anniversary of the end of the Great Miners Strike of 1984-45 in Britain. [18]:229 The Yorkshire area's reliance on mass picketing led to a neglect of fundraising, and many Yorkshire strikers were living in poverty by the winter of 1984. [37] Cases from 1984 where lodges voted separately (as in South Wales and Scotland) are not shown. "Self-category constructions in political rhetoric; an analysis of Thatcher's and Kinnock's speeches concerning the British miners' strike (19845).". Files later made public showed that the government had an informant inside the Trades Union Congress (TUC), passing information about negotiations. By the early 1980s the collieries were losing money. The strike was orchestrated partly in retaliation for the strikes of 1972 and '74, and it was provoked strategically over several years. But it was more than that: to the communities involved, from Scotland and South Wales to Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, it often felt like an undeclared civil war, pitting village against village, family against family even brother against brother. The film refers to the strike and some of the dialogue contrasts the resistance in 1984 with the resignation with which most miners responded to the pit closures of the early 1990s. Many of the richest coal fields had been worked out and the number of miners had been decreasing over the previous few decades. [18]:98 After the strike, Mick McGahey, one of the most prominent voices against a national ballot, said that he accepted "some responsibility" for alienating the Nottinghamshire miners through aggressive picketing. Striking miners picking coal on a spoil heap Elsecar, South Yorkshire, 1984. [19]:161162 Their union, the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS) with 17,000 members in 1984, was less willing to take industrial action. Tens of thousands of miners went on strike following an announcement by Coal Board Chairman Ian McGregor that 20 uneconomic pits would have to close, putting 20,000 miners out of work. Learn. Other less well known, but bloody, battles between pickets and police took place, for example, in Maltby, South Yorkshire. But instead of calling a national strike, Scargill encouraged the regions to follow suit individually. [101] He argues that Nottinghamshire miners reacted in the same way in 1984 as they did to the unofficial strikes in 1969 and 1970, both of which saw blockading of Nottinghamshire pits by striking miners from South Yorkshire and both of which were regarded as unconstitutional under NUM rules. [19]:3233 As the strike began in 1984 with unofficial action in Yorkshire, there was pressure from strikers to make it official, and NUM executives who insisted on a ballot were attacked by pickets at an executive meeting in Sheffield in April. [18]:144 Picketing failed to have the widespread impact of earlier stoppages that led to blackouts and power cuts in the 1970s and electricity companies maintained supplies throughout the winter, the time of biggest demand. Robert Taylor depicts Scargill as an 'industrial Napoleon' who called a strike 'at the wrong time' on the 'wrong issue', and adopted strategies and tactics that were 'impossibilist', with 'an inflexible list of extravagant non-negotiable demands' that amounted to 'reckless adventurism' that was 'a dangerous, self-defeating delusion'. [48]:133, In Leicestershire, the area's NUM made no payments to the few who went on strike, on the grounds that the area had voted against industrial action. [38] Some pits continued working without significant disruption. The year-long strike that followed changed the political, economic and social history of Wales forever. The miners' strike of 1984-85 was a seminal moment in the Thatcher era. Deeper Problem Towns were built round mines Main source of employment for the town If the Mine closes then the whole town is affected, every business is affected. [18]:101 Many families in South Yorkshire complained that the police were abusive and damaged property needlessly whilst pursuing pickets. The video looks at the UK coal miners strike which took place between 1984-85. [137][138][139], Kay Sutcliffe, the wife of a striking miner at Aylesham, wrote the poem "Coal not Dole", which became popular with the Women Against Pit Closures groups across the country and was later made into a song by Norma Waterson. [18]:251252, As the courts seized the NUM's assets, it began to look abroad for money, and found supplies in the Soviet bloc and, it was mistakenly thought, also from Libya. [18]:276 The Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) was eventually de facto recognised when the NCB included it in wage negotiations. Many communities in Northern England, Scotland and Wales would lose their primary source of employment. [22]:96 David John Douglass, a branch delegate at Hatfield Colliery dismissed the suggestions as the Doncaster pits also had large numbers of displaced and Polish miners, yet it was amongst the most militant areas of the NUM. [19]:105, Violence in Nottinghamshire was directed towards strikers and supporters of the NUM national line. The NUM names its memorial lectures after the pickets. Often the first child was conceived out of wedlock, making marriage necessary; to abandon the pregnant girlfriend was not an option in mining communities. Are essential cookies that ensure that the website functions properly and that your preferences (e.g. [46] Meanwhile, the Thatcher government had prepared against a repeat of the effective 1974 industrial action by stockpiling coal, converting some power stations to burn heavy fuel oil, and recruiting fleets of road hauliers to transport coal in case sympathetic railwaymen went on strike to support the miners. [19]:214 There was criticism of picket-line violence from lodges at striking pits, such as the resolution by the Grimethorpe and Kellingley lodges in Yorkshire that condemned throwing bricks. Other miners' strikes in the 1970s had caused the public a lot of trouble, as there had been power cuts, but this time the government had prepared well. Not long into the strike the slogan was invented, close a pit, kill a community. The strike officially ended on 3 March 1985. Many historians have provided interpretations and explanations of the defeat, largely centring on Scargill's decisions. Miners wives, in even greater numbers, returned to education and became teachers, social workers or probation officers. National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers, NUM links with Libya and the Soviet Union, Analysis of the situation in Nottinghamshire. [74][75], Writing in the Industrial Relations Journal immediately after the strike in 1985, Professor Brian Towers of the University of Nottingham commented on the way the media had portrayed strikers, stating that there had been "the obsessive reporting of the 'violence' of generally relatively unarmed men and some women who, in the end, offered no serious challenge to the truncheons, shields and horses of a well-organised, optimally deployed police force. The strike was the miners main weapon, and immediately provoked confrontation with employers, who were also ready to use the lockout to break miners resistance. [18]:2526 Localised strikes occurred at Kinneil Colliery in Scotland and Lewis Merthyr Colliery in Wales. The satirical Comic Strip Presents episode "The Strike" (1988) depicts an idealistic Welsh screenwriter's growing dismay as his hard-hitting and grittily realistic script about the strike is mutilated by a Hollywood producer into an all-action thriller. On 12 March 1984, Arthur Scargill, president of the NUM, declared that the strikes in the various coal fields were to be a national strike and called for strike action from NUM members in all coal fields. [3] ", Peter, Gibbon. Although not official policy, employment of non-unionised labour would have led to a mass walkout of mineworkers. As young Billy studies ballet, despite the objections of his dad and the derision of his community, the mining town in which he lives experiences relentless hardship and despair. On 15 March 1984,[93][94] he was hit in the chest by a half-brick thrown by a youth who opposed the strike when he confronted him for vandalising his car, but the post-mortem ruled that this had not caused his death and it was more likely to have been caused by being pressed against the pit gates earlier in the day. Commitment to the COAL NOT DOLE cause Miners had to live on charity for large periods of time. David Peace's novel GB84 is set during the strike. I am not prepared to accept policies elected by a minority of the British electorate. When the union refused to pay, an order was made to sequester the union's assets, but they had been transferred abroad. Test. Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow, is providing expertise on the Scottish dimension of the project. Listen: Dominic Sandbrook explores the pivotal early years of Margaret Thatchers premiership in Britain, 197982. [31] After the election, Scargill called for extra-parliamentary action against the Conservative government in a speech to the NUM conference in Perth on 4 July 1983: "A fight back against this Government's policies will inevitably take place outside rather than inside Parliament. [18]:12 The only nationally coordinated actions in the 19841985 strike were the mass pickets at Orgreave. The much-reduced coal industry was privatised in December 1994, ultimately becoming UK Coal. The Miners Strike of 1984-1985 was an attempt by miners to stop the National Coal Board (NCB) and the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher shutting down collieries (mines). The violence was costing the NUM public support in the country as a whole, as a Gallup poll showed 79% disapproval of NUM methods. In other cases, particularly in the Midlands, the mining village scarcely existed. The storyline of Radio K.A.O.S., a 1987 album by Roger Waters, makes several references to the strike and its repercussions. [19]:69 When pickets from Kent were stopped at the Dartford Tunnel and preventing from travelling to the Midlands, the Kent NUM applied for an injunction against use of this power. This is the final chance while we still have the strength to save our industry". On 16 July 1984, Thatcher convened a ministerial meeting to consider declaring a state of emergency, with the option to use 4,500 military drivers and 1,650 tipper trucks to keep coal supplies available. A greater number of miners came out on strike in Scotland, Yorkshire (where the strike had started following the closure of Cortonwood Colliery), North East England and South Wales. Arthur Scargill of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was leading the strike against the National Coal Board, Government agency. [18]:169 Mr Justice Nicholls ruled that the 1981 ballot result was "too remote in time [with] too much change in the branch membership of the Area since then for that ballot to be capable of justifying a call to strike action two and a half years later. why British coal miners went on strike and what they achieved. [18]:130 Part way through the strike, Norman Willis took over from Murray as general secretary of the TUC. [107]:384 The EETPU was supportive of the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers and met with its leaders before the TUC had extended formal recognition. The tragedy of the Miners Strike was that picketing did less to unite the strikers than to divide them. [2], After the 1980 steel strike, many hauliers blacklisted drivers who refused to cross picket lines to prevent them obtaining work, and so more drivers crossed picket lines in 19841985 than in previous disputes. Many found Scargill inspiring; many others found him frankly scary. [132], The setting for the 1986 anime film Castle in the Sky was inspired by the Welsh strikes. [19]:161162 Thus solidarity with striking NUM members could be shown by claims of violence preventing the crossing of picket lines even without a NACODS union vote for strike action. ", Reicher, Stephen, and Nicolas Hopkins. The Miners` Strike 198485 (Yate & District Labour History Group), Kelliher, Diarmaid. "If there was to be a strike," Moore writes, the government decided "it should begin in the spring and be over pit closures . [127], There is a prevailing view that Arthur Scargill, the NUM National President, called the strike. Three times Scargill pushed his members to vote for a national strike; three times they voted no. [1][2] The number of person-days of work lost to the strike was over 26 million, making it the largest since the 1926 general strike. So right from the start, the dispute was marked by intense bitterness and violent confrontations between striking and working miners. ", This page was last edited on 24 October 2022, at 12:51. It was an important step in what economist Joseph Schumpeter called 'creative destruction', the process whereby it is necessary to destroy one economic structure from within, to facilitate the introduction of a new one. The mining industry was effectively a closed shop. They were . [60][48]:71 NUM leaders in Lancashire argued that, as 41% had voted in favour of a strike, all its members should strike "in order to maintain unity". But in Nottinghamshire, the majority of. The intention at the outset of the project, was to focus on a fixed number of mining villages, one for each coalfield. Scargill said, "I never cross a picket line," and turned the procession away. [18]:157158 On 25 May, a writ issued in the High Court by Colin Clark from Pye Hill Colliery, sponsored by Hart, was successful in forbidding the Nottinghamshire area from instructing that the strike was official and to be obeyed. It was a major victory for Thatcher and the Conservative Party, with the Thatcher government able to consolidate their economic programme. [18]:264, In NUM elections in summer 1984, members in Nottinghamshire voted out most of the leaders who had supported the strike, so that 27 of 31 newly elected were opposed to the strike. The 198485 miners' strike and technological change JONATHAN WINTERTON* The proximate cause of the 1984-85 miners' strike, the longest mass strike in British history, was a round of colliery closures announced by the National Coal Board (NCB, now British Coal) in March 1984 as part of the restructuring of the British coal mining industry. [146], Chris Cutler, Tim Hodgkinson and Lindsay Cooper from Henry Cow, along with Robert Wyatt and poet Adrian Mitchell recorded The Last Nightingale in October 1984 to raise money for the strikers and their families.[147]. [15], By 1984, the richest seams of coal had been increasingly worked out and the remaining coal was more and more expensive to reach. Flying pickets like military detachments were organised to force out miners at other pits. Neil Kinnock supported the call for a national ballot in April 1984. Money and food are scarce. [48]:227 The action was nicknamed the "star chamber court" by working miners (in reference to the Star Chamber in English history). Livingstone, Ken (2011). Millions of people protested against pit closures during the industrial dispute with Margaret Thatcher's government, and the review is expected to recommend that miners who were . These countries were highly unpopular with the British public. [100] Other explanations include the perception that Nottinghamshire pits were safe from the threat of closure, as they had large reserves, and the area-level incentive scheme introduced by Tony Benn caused them to be amongst the best-paid in Britain. [18]:140142 The Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union, actively opposed the strike; Ian MacGregor's autobiography detailed how its leaders supplied the government with information that allowed the strike to be defeated. When asked the same question during 510 December 1984, 51% had most sympathy for the employers; 26% for the miners; 18% for neither and 5% did not know. In March 1984, the coal miners went on strike again. [56] Kent NUM leader Jack Collins said after the decision to go back without any agreement of amnesty for the sacked men, "The people who have decided to go back to work and leave men on the sidelines are traitors to the trade-union movement. But as national unemployment mounted, it was obvious more closures would provoke an intense reaction. His character has been blacklisted due to striking a police officer and has served a six-month prison sentence for the offence. Calls for a further strike in 1986 were ignored and from 174 collieries in 1983, only six remained in 2009. Between March 1984 and March 1985, more than half the country's 187,000 miners left work in what was the biggest industrial dispute in post-war Britain. The government's policy, the Ridley Plan, was to reduce Britain's reliance on coal claiming it could be imported from Australia, the United States and Colombia more cheaply than it could be produced in Britain. The area was strongly supportive of the UK miners' strike of 1984-1985. Gascoyne, a forceful 59-year-old ex-faceworker who swears a lot, was the branch secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers throughout the strike of 1984-85 and until the pit closed. On the day after the Orgreave picket of 18 June, which saw five thousand pickets clash violently with police, she remarked: I must tell you that what we have got is an attempt to substitute the rule of the mob for the rule of law, and it must not succeed. [48]:164, Scargill said in December 1984 that those who returned to work after taking the NCB's incentives for strikebreaking should be treated as "lost lambs" rather than traitors. There were rumours that the new Coal Board chairman, Ian MacGregor, wanted to close an additional 70. [20]:3637, MacGregor later admitted that if NACODS had gone ahead with a strike, a compromise would probably have been forced on the NCB. A selection of the photographs together with the interviews were published in book form 'No Redemption' (Flambard Press). His tough reputation raised expectations that coal jobs would be cut on a similar scale and confrontations between MacGregor and Scargill seemed inevitable. However, violence against working miners was reported from the beginning. [101][21], As the Nottinghamshire collieries had attracted displaced miners from Scotland and the north-east in the 1960s, it has been argued that they were reluctant to strike to stop pit closures when there had been no action to save their home pits from closure. The biggest rail strike in 30 years is causing severe disruption to passengers this week, with the walkout of at least 40,000 members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) union. Although there was clearly violence on both sides, miners leaders often complained that the press exaggerated strikers violence while ignoring the abuses of the police. Never to cross a picket line was a question of honour. Police Incident report from Northumbria, 1984. [48]:71, The Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher enforced a law that required unions to ballot members on strike action. [19]:164 In areas where the strike was observed, most NACODS members did not cross picket lines and, under an agreement from the 1972 strike, stayed off work on full pay. The British Miners' Strike of 1984-85 was a result of that intention. Instead, he started the strike by allowing each region to call its own strikes, imitating Gormley's strategy over wage reforms; it was argued that 'safe' regions should not be allowed to ballot other regions out of jobs. In 1939, the mine was second only to nearby Rossington Colliery in using diesel powered flameproof locomotives for the movement of men, materials and coal underground. As in most of Europe, the industry was heavily subsidised. [67], During the strike 11,291 people were arrested and 8,392 were charged with breach of the peace or obstructing the highway. In 2005, BBC One broadcast the one-off drama Faith, written by William Ivory. Some miners began returning to work from September, with many more returning by January as union pay ran out and some found it hard to pay for basic necessities. Meanwhile the newspapers played up every skirmish for all it was worth. Police try to stop picketing miners at Cortonwood Colliery South Yorkshire, 1985. This . [112] The last deep colliery in the UK, Kellingley Colliery, known locally as "The Big K" closed for the last time on 18 December 2015, bringing an end to centuries of deep coal mining. [9] Poverty increased in former coal mining areas, and in 1994 Grimethorpe in South Yorkshire was the poorest settlement in the country. They were all members of the union, which took care of their pay and pension and organised compensation in the event of injury or industrial sickness. Despite the miners efforts, the government succeeded and in the end most of Britains coal mines were closed. The strike saw the resurgence of traditional folk songs about coal mining. The figures below are given in Richards (1996). The female body through the ages - do necks have a history? When interrupted, Kinnock accused the hecklers of "living like parasites off the struggle of the miners." [48]:8182, The 'Battle of Orgreave' took place on 18 June 1984 at the Orgreave Coking Plant near Rotherham, which striking miners were attempting to blockade. But this time was different. "[79] This was long after an investigation by Seumas Milne described the allegations as wholly without substance and a "classic smear campaign". "Leadership in the Miners Union Scargill, Arthur Rise to Power. On 19 April 1984 a Special National Delegate Conference was held where there was a vote on whether to hold a national ballot or not. The government denied the claim and MacGregor wrote to every NUM member claiming Scargill was deceiving them and there were no plans to close any more pits than had already been announced. His policy divided the NUM membership, undermined his position with the leaders of the trade union movement, hurt the union's reputation in British public opinion, and led to violence along the picket line. Towers, Brian. Billy Elliot the Musical plays out amid the turmoil of one of the darkest times in modern British history - the 1984 coal miners' strike. [140], The verse novel Hope Now by A. L. Richards, published 2013 by Landfox Press, is set in the South Wales Valleys and is based on events during the strike.
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