Haunting image of the 1984/85 British miners strike.
The Miners’ Strike of 1984 was a turning point in British history. Miners left their pits to fight the attempt of the Thatcher government to close the collieries, break the miners’ union and the labour movement in general, and open the way to a free market economy in which deregulated financial capitalism would be set free by the Big Bang of 1986.
The full force of the police, the courts and the media were mobilised to defeat the miners, culminating with the battle of Orgreave on 18 June 1984. Thousands of miners were arrested, fined, imprisoned or sacked, some never to work again. Not long into the strike the slogan was invented, ‘close a pit, kill a community’.
The miners – an all-male occupation – were powerfully backed by their wives, who saw clearly that without the pits there was little hope for their children’s future or the viability of the mining community. They set up support groups to run soup kitchens and put together food parcels for striking miner’s families, raising money from local pubs and clubs and then further afield, nationally and later internationally.
Behind the women were politically active members of the local community and country as a whole, including Greenham Common women and gay and lesbian activists, who 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.
By December 1984, Britain's miners had been on strike for nine months, and were ready to face Christmas on strike. The propoganda from the government, Coal Board and the police was relentless. Many were suffering real hardship. But were to stand solid for a further 3 months. With friendship and solidarity, despite the unbelieavable significant hardship and relentless harassment they refused to be broken. United by struggle, united by belief, generating images of strike action that remain powerful today
It was difficult to get by at any point in the strike, but it is difficult for anyone who was not there to imagine what Christmas was like for the many mining communities, as parents relied on their unions, charity and the goodwill of strangers miles away for presents for their kids. The combination of local and international solidarity brought them everything from turkeys to children's toys and stopped even Thatcher from crushing their festive spirit.
In the Britain of 1984, too, Christmas came as hunger was being weaponised by Thatcher’s government in an attempt to starve striking miners back to work. The true scale of the hardship they were facing was rarely understood outside of pit communities.
Miners skipped meals they couldn’t afford and burnt furniture to keep warm after concessional coal supplies were withdrawn. For the government, by contrast, money was no object. Millions would be spent on militarised police forces, who earned thousands of pounds in overtime payments over the Christmas period. Miners have since bitterly recalled how officers would taunt them on picket lines by displaying £10 and £20 notes and speaking loudly about how much money they were making.
Neverthless people carried on raising money until the bitter end of the Miners’ Strike, and learned a lot from it. The experience am sure was unforgettable and was indeed life-changing, not just for the miners and their families, but I’m sure it marked every one of their loyal supporters too.
The defeat of the strike led very quickly to the closure of most coal mines, a general deindustrialisation of the economy, the rapid privatisation of nationalised industries, the shattering of organised labour, growing unemployment, the hollowing-out of mining and other working-class communities, and a steady increase in social inequality in British society.
It marked, in a word, the end of twentieth-century Britain and the ushering in of twenty-first century Britain characterised by speculative capitalism, the dismantling of workers’ protections and the rise of the gig economy.
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. Passions remain unwaned, and 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. And 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 also politicised mining families and encouraged many of them to become involved in other causes, to become local councillors or even MPs.
The passions aroused by the Miners' Strike are still very real and alive We should never forget the brave men and women who stood up to the Thatcher Government. And never forgive the police who brutalised the working class men and women. 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, today as then solidarity is needed more than ever, as we continue our own for jobs, social justice and welfare.
The bitter legacy of Thatcher is that 20,000 people die in the UK every winter because they cannot afford heat, yet the very industry that could have sustained people was crushed, and closed down. Resulting in 20,000 people dying every year because of Margeret Thatchers's cruel twisted policies. Lest we forget
Notice the boarded up fireplace.
