Miners strike 1984

'Dole wallers'. It used to be shameful for able bodied people to people to living off the state, it's a badge of honour now.
ClassicDom said:
Documentary on BBC2 at 9 (or on the iPlayer now) similar to the one they did about the Troubles where they just let people involved actually talk.

It’s an interesting watch.
Click to expand...
Some great footage, makes you wonder how they got it.
 
Last edited:


CPLforever said:
What you are suggesting, and not necessarily a bad thing mind, is that one of the biggest, bloodiest, working class wars against a government who were trying to subjugate any form of collective workers solidarity , that changed the face, morals and attitudes of countless people in the UK was nothing more than a wildcat strike.

Fair enough....but even if the Government tried, through the courts to rule the strike illegal it wouldn't have worked. Cos wildcat strikes weren't illegal in them days. Remember these were different times.

NUM rules were set by members of the National Union of Mineworkers and if they wanted to go to conference and vote on a motion that said contrary to Rule 43 if she starts announcing pit closures we will walk out a ballot is not necessary. Then they were quite within their rights to do it.
Click to expand...
But they weren't changeable in the way you suggest. Rule 44 required that any alteration to the Rules required a two-thirds majority at Conference, and then only after that had been put on the agenda in time for the Areas to discuss and vote upon the proposal.* None of those requirements were met.

The government and the courts weren't the only ones who thought Scargill's actions were not lawful. A significant proportion of the NUM's members thought so. It was members who brought the cases I have cited, not the government.

Kinnock wanted a ballot and is said to have said that his only regret was not calling for a ballot earlier than he did.

There was very little support from other unions, and some of that was down to the absence of a ballot.

The reality is, Scargill and his cronies put the miners on the block for ego and ideology. The cost went far beyond the damage to the coal industry. It irretrievably weakened the whole union movement, turned the public against unions, and allowed Thatcher et al to trample over workers' rights for the next 12 years.

A government plant could not have done a better job at dismantling union influence than Arthur Scargill did in the 1980s.

* this is again set out in Nicholls' judgment. I have still not been able to find a public copy.
 
Daffy said:
Just thinking about how tough that must have been for the families involved , nearly a year without pay
I’m sure there will be a few on here that were affected by it financially . Must have torn families apart
Click to expand...
I was delivering pop around Dawdon at the time.
Amazing families
 
I remember the coppers knocking on our door at 2am because me Dar had let his mate use his car to drive to a picket line. They were threatening to lift him unless he named them. He didn't grass but I waa a kid at the time, so who knows what grief they gave him.
 
Was surprisingly in favour of the miners I thought, even though it's come 40 years too late and for all of the good it will do now. . Those involved spoke movingly, bar the scabs and the ex coppers. Whole thing was a setup by Thatcher and unfortunately, Scargill and the NUM fell for it. And we are still paying the price 40 years later.
 
bowers2 said:
As you seem to to know. How come the coal is in certain places in the north east but not in the likes of Cumbria or North Yorkshire?
Always seemed strange tunnelling into the seas when you could go in land?

I got an a in geography o level so really should know 😂
Click to expand...
You’d be better off with geology than geography mate. The coal fields weren’t equally distributed across the country. Where they are is down to conditions millions of years ago. Have a bit of a read up about Strata Smith and his map that changed the world. In Southern England around the downs area the strata is the same as the Champagne region of France. That’s why some of the vineyards in Surrey, Sussex and Kent can produce some excellent sparkling wines. It was down to work done by the likes of Smith that people knew where to sink mines.
 
spitfire said:
You’d be better off with geology than geography mate. The coal fields weren’t equally distributed across the country. Where they are is down to conditions millions of years ago. Have a bit of a read up about Strata Smith and his map that changed the world. In Southern England around the downs area the strata is the same as the Champagne region of France. That’s why some of the vineyards in Surrey, Sussex and Kent can produce some excellent sparkling wines. It was down to work done by the likes of Smith that people knew where to sink mines.
Click to expand...
I remember when I was younger, (but not dead young but don't laugh) being surprised to hear there was coalfields in Kent. I thought they were all up north or in Wales. I thought people down south would be too posh to want pits near them. Like I say. I was young.
 
If any of you are interested and still use Facebook, there are some excellent groups on there to follow. Bruce Wilson who was on that program tonight puts lots of good stuff up about the strike.

Well worth keeping up with this lot too

Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign

otjc.org.uk otjc.org.uk
CPLforever said:
I remember when I was younger, (but not dead young but don't laugh) being surprised to hear there was coalfields in Kent. I thought they were all up north or in Wales. I thought people down south would be too posh to want pits near them. Like I say. I was young.
Click to expand...
Militant and solid were the Kent miners
 
Last edited:
CPLforever said:
I remember when I was younger, (but not dead young but don't laugh) being surprised to hear there was coalfields in Kent. I thought they were all up north or in Wales. I thought people down south would be too posh to want pits near them. Like I say. I was young.
Click to expand...
There was loads of pits in Scotland. Ayrshire, central belt and Lothians and Fife. Also shale mines which oil and parrafin was extracted from the shale. Those huge orange hills just outside Edinburgh, is the waste from the shale oil industry.
 
spitfire said:
If any of you are interested and still use Facebook, there are some excellent groups on there to follow. Bruce Wilson who was on that program tonight puts lots of good stuff up about the strike.

Well worth keeping up with this lot too

Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign

otjc.org.uk otjc.org.uk

Militant and solid were the Kent miners
Click to expand...
Kent was rock solid.

To be fair to other regions though, Kent's economy, public transport and proximity to London gave striking miners and their wives opportunities to earn that just weren't available to those striking at Durham or Yorkshire village pits.

That's not to disrespect the solidarity of the Kent miners, which was first rate. It's just maybe to acknowledge that some others might have had tougher choices to make at times.
 
spitfire said:
very probably. There was loads of kit left to rot all over the place. The surface stockyards were full of equipment in the years leading up to the strike which was left to rust away. It was like they were hoying all sorts of gear at the mines. In hindsight no doubt part of Thatchers plan to make them unprofitable.
Click to expand...
It worked in making the steel, ship n coal industries unprofitable. Everyone I know who were employed in them say unsuitable equipment was being thrown at them to unbalance the books.
 
CPLforever said:
I remember when I was younger, (but not dead young but don't laugh) being surprised to hear there was coalfields in Kent. I thought they were all up north or in Wales. I thought people down south would be too posh to want pits near them. Like I say. I was young.
Click to expand...

Spent a few years when I was a kid living just over three miles away from Snowdown pit in Aylesham, and not much further from Betteshanger.

Think a lot of people didn't know the pits existed, or didn't want to know either way. Rolling green countryside, hop fields and oast houses and apple orchards, and then all of a sudden a pit village. Tough insular places, because there wasn't the wider mining (or industrial) community outside this small patch, and because a lot of the miners families had migrated south to work the pits in the early twentieth-century, and so people in these little villages spoke in a different accent to everyone around them.

Maybe because of that they were very militant - some of the first miners out on strike in 84, and not a single miner in Aylesham broke the strike. The pits closed in 1987, and as @stapler says there were more economic opportunities in Kent (work on the Channel Tunnel began not long after the pits closed) but a lot of miners found themselves blacklisted.

Don't think they got much support from within the countryside around them, which is true blue Tory, but they were pretty good at getting support from London, which helped the villages keep going during the strike.
 
Mackem DJ said:
Cant believe the red wall voted this absolute scum. And as for places like Consett, Blyth, Sedgefield etc. i’m ashamed to be associated with them.
Click to expand...

I don't think talk of shame helps - if you lie to people hard enough for long enough, they'll swallow it - "oven-ready deal" etc

the last GE was all about Brexit. In the same way the truth around the miners' strike is coming out now, I assume the truth about Brexit will surface in time (i.e. once everyone culpable is dead or retired) but the damage to places like Consett, Blyth, Sedgefield etc will be done by then (again)
 

Back
Top