Here's a short updated history of this iconic but bitter strike that came to define the decade, It was the most prolonged and significant in post-war history and destined to change the face of industrial relations in Britain beyond recognition. A story of hardship and hope, division and defiance, perseverance and pride.
The appointment of Ian MacGrego as head of the National Coal Board on 28 March 1983, is seen as the moment at which the strike became inevitable? Given his record at British Leyland (appointed by a Labour government) and later at the British Steel Corporation, it was quite clear that he was appointed by the Prime Minister as Chairman of the National Coal Board with a mandate to butcher the mining industry.
His appointment was greeted with particular disdain by the National Union of Mineworkers, especially by its president Arthur Scargill. Scargill was concerned at MacGregor's uncompromising business methods,branding MacGregor "the American butcher of British industry."
Despite increasing hardships the miners fought on with determination and bravery. During the course of the strike over 6,000 were arrested, with over 20,000 miners being injured in acts of state violence.
Throughout the strike I would witness, how the right wing media was used to vilify and undermine. The media being used to lie, and used as a political weapon to crush the miners resiliance, the media also enabling to misrepresent, and divide the movement,being used to churn out a Niagara of lies against the miners..The propoganda part of Thatchers assault, was being pushed out everyday, at her so called ' enemy within.'
Throughout the country, groups emerged, either as individuals or part of miners support groups, raising money and awareness, standing in solidarity. Disparate groups found common ground, from the Unemployed, the Peace Movement, students, other Trade Unions, all standing firmly behind the miners in their great struggle.
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Welsh Women’s Support Group
Sadly eventually some miners started drifting back there will broken, what with the increasing hardships they faced, but it should be noted that 63% of the miners stayed out to the bitter end. despite the strikers being pitted against the full force of the ruling class, while still amassing huge sipport and solidarity across the country, they were betrayed ulrimately by the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party’s refusal to mobilise support, especially their spineless leader Welsh 'windbag' and class traitor Neil Kinnock, who refused to attend picket lines or events supporting the miners, in effect helping Thatchers dirty war of attrition.
After a year on strike and some of the most bitter class war in UK history on 3rd March 1985, an NUM delegate conference narrowly voted to end the strike after facing the harsh reality that workers were going hungry without wages or depleted reserves of union pay. It ended without any peace deal over pit closures and Thatcher’s government not making a single concession.The final vote was 98 to 91 to return to work. A turning point for the working class in Britain, this iconic strike came to define the decade.
Test Department and the South Wales Miners Striking Choir - Comrades in Arms
On March 6, 1984, the National Coal Board announced its plan to cut the nation’s coal output by 4 million tons, in an effort to stem a $340 million annual loss, and of the imminent closure of Cortonwood colliery, Yorkshire, and Polmaise colliery, Scotland, together with 20 other planned pit closures and the loss of 20,000 jobs .
At the time, Britain had 170 working collieries, commonly known as pits, which employed more than 190,000 people. Scargill and the NUM estimated the board’s plan would mean the closure of 20 pits and the loss of some 20,000 jobs.
This led to a swift response from the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).national president, Arthur Scargill who said the plan would lead to 80,000 job losses. Scargill's prediction proved to be correct
The same day the plan was announced, Scargill used this as an opportunity to call a nationwide strike against the planned pit closures.
Yorkshire and Scottish miners came out on strike, swiftly followed by Durham and Kent. On March 8, , Arthur Scargill, announced that the strikes were official under Rule 41 of the union’s constitution and called on the other NUM Area coalfields to support the action.
Controversially, he never held a national vote within the NUM, and not all miners were on board with the walkout. In some parts of the country, miners kept working, causing tensions with picketing workers who branded them as “scabs.”
Support in Wales was initially confused with the Executive Committee (EC) of the South Wales National Union of Mineworkers (SWNUM) recommending strike action during their conference of March 9, and local NUM lodges in South Wales voting 18 to 13 to stay in while respecting any picket lines, by 12th March, half of Britain’s 187,000 miners had downed tools becoming one of the most inspiring but bitter class struggles in British history.
Using Scargill’s militant picketing tactics, the striking miners managed to shut down many pits across Britain. But unlike in the 1970s, Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – riding high from her victory in the Falklands – had secretly and cynically prepared for battle by stockpiling two years’ worth of coal before announcing the closures. And she was hellbent on defeating “the enemy within” by any means necessary, even if it meant turning the full force of the state against its own people.
For the first time in a postwar national strike, British police were openly used as a political weapon.Paramilitary riot police placed mining communities under total siege. A scab workforce was organised to break the strike, and billions were spent to keep the power stations running without coal. The full weight of the courts was used to sequestrate the funds of the miners' union and break its resolve. Civil liberties were forgotten as miners were beaten and arrested even when standing still. Agent provocateurs and spies were deployed. State benefits were withheld in order to starve the miners back to work. What had begun as an industrial dispute degenerated into a clash of ideologies and civil class war.
For twelve months, the miners and their families held out against unprecedented onslaughts and unimaginable hardships in order to save jobs and preserve communities.The South Wales miners alone would prove to be obdurate, solid and immovable throughout the long year of hardship and deprivation. Their heroism, determination and courage alongside striking miners across the UK astonished the world, and would charge and inspire the political consciousness of hundreds of thousands of people, as it did for me, aged 16 and a half at the start of the strike as they demonstrated their unconquerable will to fight.
The striking miners faced off against police forces backed by Thatcher’s government, in clashes that often turned violent. The stakes were high on both sides: Scargill compared the strike to Britain’s fight against Nazi Germany, while Thatcher viewed it as an opportunity to crush militant labor unions for good. Documents declassified in 2014 revealed that Thatcher considered calling out the military to transport food and coal, and even declaring a state of emergency in order to strengthen her government’s position.
For twelve months, the miners and their families held out against unprecedented onslaughts and unimaginable hardships in order to save jobs and preserve communities.The South Wales miners alone would prove to be obdurate, solid and immovable throughout the long year of hardship and deprivation. Their heroism, determination and courage alongside striking miners across the UK astonished the world, and would charge and inspire the political consciousness of hundreds of thousands of people, as it did for me, aged 16 and a half at the start of the strike as they demonstrated their unconquerable will to fight.
The striking miners faced off against police forces backed by Thatcher’s government, in clashes that often turned violent. The stakes were high on both sides: Scargill compared the strike to Britain’s fight against Nazi Germany, while Thatcher viewed it as an opportunity to crush militant labor unions for good. Documents declassified in 2014 revealed that Thatcher considered calling out the military to transport food and coal, and even declaring a state of emergency in order to strengthen her government’s position.
Miners on picket lines were brutalised and attacked by baton-wielding police in full riot gear. For me at the time this was to be a year of great awakenings, seeing their fight, I started to see connections with other peoples struggles. The plight of the poor and unemployed, Nicuragua and Apartheid South Africa, people being daily attacked by Margaret Thatchers rabid Government. I decided to take sides with with those who decided to take on the right wing policies of Thatchers government.
The rights and wrongs of whether the miners should have had a national ballot has been widely discussed, but like many others at the time I believed that once the miners were out, it was our duty to support and work for them. Within weeks of the strike starting 80% of miners supported the strike, standing against what they saw as the unjustifiable attacks on their right to existence and resistance.
The rights and wrongs of whether the miners should have had a national ballot has been widely discussed, but like many others at the time I believed that once the miners were out, it was our duty to support and work for them. Within weeks of the strike starting 80% of miners supported the strike, standing against what they saw as the unjustifiable attacks on their right to existence and resistance.
Some of the worst violence occurred in South Yorkshire, including a standoff at the British Steel coking plant in Orgreave on June 18, 1984 involving 10,000 miners and 5,000 police officers
At Orgreave it became apparent, of the true intentions of Thatchers government, with the full collusion of the police ,it was noticed that they had no intention of finding reconciliation or settlement to this industrial dispute. The sole intention was an ideological one, to mortally wound the National Union of Mineworkers, to defeat it with military force and with naked violence ,by any means necessary.
As the miners attempted to blockade the Orgreave coking plant. The police showed the lengths they would go to break the strike with violent attacks, mass arrests and deliberate but fortunately unsuccessful attempts to fabricate evidence and frame miners. The insult was added to by the BBC reversing footage of miners defending themselves from police attacks to try and make out that the police were attacked first.
It was one of the most brutal attacks by the state on its own citizens of the last 20th Century.It saw the police going berserk under state orders, repeatedly attacking individuals wherever they sought refuge, as they fled into a nearby Wheatfield and into the community of Orgreave, where the police carried on their pursuit through the streets. A scene of ugliness, fear and menace, as all concepts of Law and order that the constabulary were supposed to withhold abandoned all its basic principles.
At the end the day in what became known as the “Battle of Orgreave.” over 100 people were arrested, for no crime whatever, with many more being injured along with the Miners leader Arthur Scargill.
At Orgreave it became apparent, of the true intentions of Thatchers government, with the full collusion of the police ,it was noticed that they had no intention of finding reconciliation or settlement to this industrial dispute. The sole intention was an ideological one, to mortally wound the National Union of Mineworkers, to defeat it with military force and with naked violence ,by any means necessary.
As the miners attempted to blockade the Orgreave coking plant. The police showed the lengths they would go to break the strike with violent attacks, mass arrests and deliberate but fortunately unsuccessful attempts to fabricate evidence and frame miners. The insult was added to by the BBC reversing footage of miners defending themselves from police attacks to try and make out that the police were attacked first.
It was one of the most brutal attacks by the state on its own citizens of the last 20th Century.It saw the police going berserk under state orders, repeatedly attacking individuals wherever they sought refuge, as they fled into a nearby Wheatfield and into the community of Orgreave, where the police carried on their pursuit through the streets. A scene of ugliness, fear and menace, as all concepts of Law and order that the constabulary were supposed to withhold abandoned all its basic principles.
At the end the day in what became known as the “Battle of Orgreave.” over 100 people were arrested, for no crime whatever, with many more being injured along with the Miners leader Arthur Scargill.
Following Orgreave, the police conducted a deliberate and co-ordinated attempt to frame arrested miners for one of the most serious events on the statute book - the offence of Riot. No police officer has ever been prosecuted or even disciplined for their role in the terrible events that occurred.Campaigners have long been calling for a public inquiry into the horrendous events that occurred on 18 June 1984, simply asking for an apology to the victims who suffered in this bloody confrontation. A report in 2015 by the police watchdog, the IOPC, said there was “evidence of excessive violence by police officers, a false narrative from police exaggerating violence by miners, perjury by officers giving evidence to prosecute the arrested men, and an apparent cover-up of that perjury by senior officers”.
Despite increasing hardships the miners fought on with determination and bravery. During the course of the strike over 6,000 were arrested, with over 20,000 miners being injured in acts of state violence.
Throughout the strike I would witness, how the right wing media was used to vilify and undermine. The media being used to lie, and used as a political weapon to crush the miners resiliance, the media also enabling to misrepresent, and divide the movement,being used to churn out a Niagara of lies against the miners..The propoganda part of Thatchers assault, was being pushed out everyday, at her so called ' enemy within.'
Psychological pressure was utilised with the police encouraged to wave wads of cash at pickets, designed to undermine and demoralise, the use of scabs increased, bussing them through picket lines in a determined effort to break the will of the striking miners. NUM headquarters harboured a spy. Phone tapping of leaders of the dispute was routine.Anti-union laws were also used against the NUM, which was effectively hounded out of legal existence and its funds sequestered by the capitalist courts.
Throughout the country, groups emerged, either as individuals or part of miners support groups, raising money and awareness, standing in solidarity. Disparate groups found common ground, from the Unemployed, the Peace Movement, students, other Trade Unions, all standing firmly behind the miners in their great struggle.
One of the most commented upon aspects of the strike was the involvement of women, who grouped together to set up ‘Women Against Pit Closures.’ The women from the mining communities in particular acted as bulmarks of strength, organising welfare and support which was vital in sustaining the strike, setting up food kitchens to feed hungry miners and their families, to going on national rallies in London or fundraising as far away as Canada. At the heart of their actions was a sense of solidarity with their menfolk, and a real sense of the mining community.
Women’s activism drew on traditions of protest in the coal fields going back to 1926. Strengthening one another’s morale, supporting isolated women, fundraising and campaigning, women fed and clothed entire communities. Women’s action groups acquired expertise on all strike-related matters from DHSS claims to mortgage repayments and international solidarity. They also provided the strike with many of its most respected and sought-after public speakers.
Had there been no support from women the strike would have collapsed very quickly. As Elaine Robe from Hatfield Main Women’s Support Group wrote: “We attended and organised pickets, rallies and raised money. We didn’t want to be an appendage to the NUM.”
For many women the strike was liberating, uplifting, and enriching, meeting and talking to people or travelling without their husbands. Others reported how their mental health improved. Many vowed to carry on being politically active after the strike was over.
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The strike saw a radically new development; a network of some 300 miners’ support groups. These extended the length and breadth of the country, from Aberdeen to Belfast and from Ipswich to the Isle of Wight, in response to the NUM’s call for fundraising on behalf of the beleaguered mining communities.
The miners’ supporters included the young, the poor, student and inner city radicals, peace activists, and the unemployed, for whom trade unionism had hitherto had little meaning, as well as ethnic minorities in inner city areas such as London, Birmingham and Bradford. Liverpool raised a million pounds with Catholic and Protestant churches fundraising side by side.
Many of these groups were run by members of the Labour Party, the Communist Party, and non-aligned trade unionists. The strongest were large, efficient, and formidably well-organised; others were small, informal, and extemporary in nature; many were set up by constituency Labour parties or local trades councils.
Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) also played a vital role organising links with pits and gave help as they recognised the state’s oppression. By the end of the strike, 11 LGSM groups had emerged with the London group alone raising £22,500 by 1985 (equivalent to £73,000 in 2021) in support. Their story is told in the 2014 film Pride.and consequently the NUM led the pride demonstration in London in 1985.
After the end of the miners' strike in March 1985, several LGSM pride members joined the newly-formed Lesbians and Gays Support the Printworkers, established on a similar model to LGSM - to raise funds for striking printworkers in dispute with Rupert Murdoch.
Members of CND were also very active. Virtually every TUC-affiliated trade union had members fundraising, with women trade unionists often working directly with women in the coal fields. NUPE’s successful Fill a Bag and Feed a Family campaign was supported by Belfast’s lowest paid workers: school cooks, council employees and cleaners. It was these prodigious fundraising efforts that extended the duration of the strike and stood between the miners, penury and capitulation for so long.
The chant of the miners’ support groups was: “The miners united will never be defeated”. It was an energising time, new friends were made, the camerardie that emerged was simply amazing.Many saw this struggle as a tipping point between social democracy, civil liberties and the welfare state and of the one hand, and on the other, neoliberalism, authoritarianism and austerity.
Culture and music are important in any political struggle, Songs and words are another way to win minds, put over political ideas and boost morale in any struggle and that was certainly true when Maggie Thatcher declared war on the Coal Industry and the Miner’s.Many artists, writers, musicians, were also heavily involved in the process of solidarity, passionately supporring the strike .Some, such as Billy Bragg, Chumbawamba,, The Men they cou;dn't hang wrote songs about the strike, while many many others, including the Redskins and Crass, participated in benefit concerts to raise money.
Throughout 1984 there were regular musical events, fundraisers and rallies in support of strikers and their families. Soup kitchens and food parcels funded from supporters enabled mining families to feed their children and themselves while they were without pay.
Billy Bragg - Which Side Are You On?
The raising of funds was so necessary as have to remember that sStriking miners and their families were not eligible for security benefits and their dependants were prohibited from receiving ‘urgent needs payments’ under the Social Security Act of 1980, although £15 was nonetheless deducted from benefits to cover ‘notional strike pay’.
The NUM did not make strike payments although they did issue a small allowance to active pickets. Family income had been depleted by the previous year’s overtime ban. Poverty therefore became endemic once household savings had ran out with some strikers and their families finding themselves perilously near to destitution.
Sadly eventually some miners started drifting back there will broken, what with the increasing hardships they faced, but it should be noted that 63% of the miners stayed out to the bitter end. despite the strikers being pitted against the full force of the ruling class, while still amassing huge sipport and solidarity across the country, they were betrayed ulrimately by the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party’s refusal to mobilise support, especially their spineless leader Welsh 'windbag' and class traitor Neil Kinnock, who refused to attend picket lines or events supporting the miners, in effect helping Thatchers dirty war of attrition.
In fairness the Party rank and file were with the miners. Labour Party activists, premises and equipment were involved in the miners' strike to a degree probably not seen in any dispute since the 1920s. The National Executive Committee backed the miners and called for a levy to support them. Conference condemned police violence and defied Kinnock's request to condemn pickets' violence.
But what most people saw, courtesy of TV, was the public weaseling of Kinnock, Roy Hattersley and others. We should not underestimate the role played by these acrions in dampening the spirits of the labour movement. The notorious strike-breaking Union of Democratic Miners also appeared on the scene. They recruited working miners using the absence of a national miners ballot, particularly in Nottinghamshire as an argument.
Their leaders, including at least one Labour councillor, encouraged miners to scab and thus undermine the strike. The socialist MP Denis Skinner recounted that they even burned down the pickets’ kitchen at the Clipstone pit in his constituency. One of their leaders was later jailed for stealing £150,000 from a charity for elderly miners.
When the strike was over members of the scab UDM settled in for the long period of prosperity and security promised to them by a grateful establishment. Their UDM leader Roy Lynk was awarded an OBE for ‘services to trade unionism’ but after paving the way for mass pit closures and privatisation, he and Nottinghamshire’s former strike-breakers. to their fury, bu with irony were betrayed too Nottinghamshire’s pits were closed in contrast to the promises lavished upon them during the strike.
After a year on strike and some of the most bitter class war in UK history on 3rd March 1985, an NUM delegate conference narrowly voted to end the strike after facing the harsh reality that workers were going hungry without wages or depleted reserves of union pay. It ended without any peace deal over pit closures and Thatcher’s government not making a single concession.The final vote was 98 to 91 to return to work. A turning point for the working class in Britain, this iconic strike came to define the decade.
The argument is still repeated that the miners lost because their action was reckless, the state was too strong and no national ballot was called. Tactically a strike ballot of miners could have been held, even after the strikes had begun, as it would have undermined scabbing, reduced coal production, and the Tories and right of the Labour movement would not be able to accuse Scargill and the NUM leadership of being undemocratic. The union could have organised meetings with Nottinghamshire miners away from management to persuade them that action was needed to defend their jobs.
Many though however, understand that the key reason for the defeat was the betrayal and spineless role of the TUC, the trade union bureaucracy, and the leader of the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock and the full forces of the state against them.
The miners would march back to work together, broken hearted but their heads held high in defiance.
Thatcher though was graceless in victory. “There is no such thing as society,” she infamously declared. Her neo-liberal blueprint would result not only in the selling off and selling out of the coal industry, but also the decimation of Britain’s manufacturing industry, the subjugation of all trade unions, and the doubling of unemployment and inflation.
Though the heroic struggle ended in defeat, the proud and dignified nature of the return to work, like the Maerdy miners of South Wales who marched back to work behind colliery bands and banners who thus robbed Thatcher of the "total" victory she and her class sought. Nevertheless, the Tory government subsequently closed over 100 pits and more than 100,000 were made redundant. The pit closure programme was carried through remorselessly. It tore the guts out of the industry and out of the mining communities. The mining industry was decimated. Subsequently, most of Britain's collieries closed and by the time the industry was privatised in 1994 there were just 15 collieries left and by the time Thatcher died in 2013, only three remained. .
Though the heroic struggle ended in defeat, the proud and dignified nature of the return to work, like the Maerdy miners of South Wales who marched back to work behind colliery bands and banners who thus robbed Thatcher of the "total" victory she and her class sought. Nevertheless, the Tory government subsequently closed over 100 pits and more than 100,000 were made redundant. The pit closure programme was carried through remorselessly. It tore the guts out of the industry and out of the mining communities. The mining industry was decimated. Subsequently, most of Britain's collieries closed and by the time the industry was privatised in 1994 there were just 15 collieries left and by the time Thatcher died in 2013, only three remained. .
It would lead to lasting unemployment and poverty, the shattering of organised labour, the hollowing-out of mining and other working-class communities, and a steady increase in social inequality in British society, with lingering scars in former mining areas, just as the workers had warned with their slogan "Close a pit, kill a community".
The strike may have been defeated but years later I remember the courage and sacrifice made during this bitter struggle and the spirit of revolt they unleashed, and those who remained defiant to the end, and acknowledge the miners who were arrested and locked up on trumped up charges.The communities that never fully recovered from the financial blow of the strike. Those who fought for the survival of a humane society here in Wales and across Britain, and a vile government who used the powers of the state in almost all its entirety to defeat the miners and to teach the whole working class a lesson.
Miners and their families will remember those miners and their strike supporters who will have passed away since, and in particular those who were killed either by reckless lorry drivers at picket lines at the time or from the “death by malice” of someone hurling a brick at a striking miner, as was the case with the two individuals mentioned a bit earlier David Jones outside Thorseby Colliery in the Nottingham coalfield and Joe Green who was killed on the picket line.
The strike may have been defeated but years later I remember the courage and sacrifice made during this bitter struggle and the spirit of revolt they unleashed, and those who remained defiant to the end, and acknowledge the miners who were arrested and locked up on trumped up charges.The communities that never fully recovered from the financial blow of the strike. Those who fought for the survival of a humane society here in Wales and across Britain, and a vile government who used the powers of the state in almost all its entirety to defeat the miners and to teach the whole working class a lesson.
Miners and their families will remember those miners and their strike supporters who will have passed away since, and in particular those who were killed either by reckless lorry drivers at picket lines at the time or from the “death by malice” of someone hurling a brick at a striking miner, as was the case with the two individuals mentioned a bit earlier David Jones outside Thorseby Colliery in the Nottingham coalfield and Joe Green who was killed on the picket line.
The folksinger Dick Gaughan was also a tireless supporter of the Miners Strike, performing at benefit gigs all over the UK. Immediately after the strike he wrote a song about it entitled The Ballad of 84, first performed at a benefit for sacked miners at Woodburn Miners Welfare Club in Dalkeith, Midlothian in '85. Gaughan's song recalls the strikers who died, as well mentioning Malcolm Pitt and others who were imprisoned:
Let's pause here to remember the men who gave their lives / Joe Green and David Jones were killed in fighting for their rights / But their courage and their sacrifice we never will forget / And we won't forget the reason, too, they met an early death / For the strikebreakers in uniforms were many thousand strong / And any picket who was in the way was battered to the ground / With police vans driving into them and truncheons on the head/ It's just a bloody miracle that hundreds more aren't dead... And Malcolm Pitt and Davy Hamilton and the rest of them as well / Who were torn from home and family and locked in prison cells'.
Whatever the cold economic arguments about the profitability of coal, or otherwise, the end of the strike paved the way for the destruction of a proud industry and the communities it had sustained for generations.The legacy of its defeat can be seen today in our workplaces and communities following an advancement of free-market capitalism that has resulted in low pay, precarious work and the extensive privatisation of our public services.
Passions remain unwaned, with a lingering resentment toward the government and police force that endure to this day, but in the end I feel the miners strike has left us with a legacy that we should be proud of, of a people and community standing together in solidarity in the face of adversity.
I will never forget the tremendous hardship and suffering the miners and their families suffered whilst trying to protect their communities The fighting spirit of the miners lives on , It has left behind a tradition of courageous struggle, which can still be seen among us today with people fighting for their lives and what they believe in.
Forty years after this bitter dispute ended the courage and determination of the miners and their families, struggling to defend their communities from an unparalleled assault by the ruling class, should serve as an inspiration to a new generation. The miners might have lost the strike but they had made history. Their struggle to defend their industry and their communities had earned them their place alongside the Chartists, the Levellers, the demonstrators at Peterloo, and the Jarrow marchers of 1936 in the annals of English radicalism..
Lest we forget either that out of the strike came a rebirth in many ways. While many former miners faced unemployment, others went back to college and requalified for new professions. Miners’ wives, in even greater numbers, returned to education and became teachers, social workers or probation officers. The children of mining families, brought up during and after the strike, made the fullest use of the expansion of the university sector.
The strike had politicised mining families and encouraged many of them to become involved in other causes, to become local councillors or even MPs. And while the pits closed, the heritage of the mining industry was preserved through mining museums, the revival of banner-making for the Durham miners’ gala, and the political struggle continues through the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign.https://otjc.org.uk/
The strike is rich in lessons, and we would be doing that heroic struggle no favours if we did not also try to understand the mistakes which played an important role in the dispute as well as drawing inspiration from the colossal resolve and sacrifice of the miners’ struggle.and the voices of those who sustained it for a year, and offers some guidance and hope to public and private sector trade unionists in dispute today. The circumstances are very different, of course, but today’s activists could certainly draw courage and resolve from that momentous time in history. .
Test Department and the South Wales Miners Striking Choir - Comrades in Arms
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