By Elliott West
“Courage is standing up for what is right, even in the face of adversity”.
Arthur Scargill
Introduction
The year was 1984, a year that has connotations of George Orwell’s novel of the same name. A futuristic look at how a Big Brother state ruled a nation. The UK electorate had just put their trust in a second term for the Conservative government, returning Margaret Thatcher to Downing Street the previous year with a massive 144-seat majority, the largest victory since Clement Attlee’s Labour government in 1945. Yet all was not what it seemed, simmering below the surface, was a disillusioned working class that felt abandoned by those who had the keys to power. A struggle that came to a head with the Coal Board’s ambition to close coal mines on a grand scale and make thousands of coal miners, destitute and bereft of their livelihoods. A battle of strike action by the National Union of Mineworkers, led by Arthur Scargill worked to divide communities between those who were prepared to fight for the cause and those who chose to defy the strike and carry on working.
The Miner’s Strike of 1984-1985 exposed the best and worst of humanity. Communities that were prepared to stand in solidarity for what they believed in but worked against a powerful tide of the police and central government who saw them as a destabilising force, an enemy within who wanted to change the face of British politics. A militant tendency that the Conservative government were prepared to wash away at all costs through the back door, denouncing but never getting their hands dirty publicly, using other hidden forces to do their dirty work.
Blood, Sweat and Tears
Billed as the longest and most acrimonious industrial dispute in modern history, this was an industrial conflict that tested the very foundations of humankind. A strike that would divide families and friends in a dwindling mining force that had fallen from a high of 1 million between the world wars to 200,000 at the start of the 1980s. Yet the coal pit ruled communities, providing bowling greens, societies and working men’s clubs. A mother who nurtured and cared for those who lived within it, loving arms that would be strained and harmed during this year-long dispute. A fight that would aim to overturn the belief of closing an uneconomic pit and Scargill’s burning desire to keep every coal mine open, no matter the cost.
Three times, the NUM had pushed for a national strike and three times it was rejected by its members. However, the game changer came in March 1984 when the Coal Board announced a new wave of pit closures with miners in Scotland and Yorkshire desperate to save their livelihoods answering the call for industrial strife and downing tools. Arthur Scargill used this momentum to circumvent the need for a national ballot by calling for other collieries to follow suit. A blanket strike in all but name. Yet these were different times and unlike the miner’s strikes won in 1972 and 1974, solidarity didn’t run wholly through the veins of the dispute.
The Thorn in the Side
If there was one fundamental crack in this dispute, it was the Nottinghamshire miners. They refused to tow the union line and refused to strike, returning a large No vote. A resilience that eked out and tricked into other mining communities. Small at first, this rejection grew as the dispute wore on. Those who chose to work were branded as Scabs by the strikers, and large numbers of police were brought in to allow the caged buses containing workers who disguised their appearance with crash helmets and masks to cross the picket lines and enter the colliery gates. Anger reached the boiling point with the wall of strikers having to be pinned back, outraged that anyone could choose work over dispute.
The Battle for Orgreave
What was meant to be a peaceful protest, turned into a bloodbath at the British Steel coking plant in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. A battle where the state was prepared to throw its full force at the strikers. Thousands of officers were bussed in from around the country to join South Yorkshire police. In a display that resembled something out of a Napoleonic battle, ridden police horses and officers armed with riot shields and batons descended on a field outside the plant. The result was atrocious with overzealous policemen, battering anyone in their way with disastrous results. Bloodied men sustained head and body injuries and were cuffed and dragged to nearby police vans. Driven to police stations, they were thrown into cells despite the cries of innocence and charged as rioters. Trumped-up charges were created with fictitious police statements that told of a mob who attacked the police with bricks, hammers and nailed pieces of wood. A crime that carried a 25-year prison sentence for taking husbands away from their wives and children.
71 picketers were charged for rioting and 24 for violent disorder. Charges came with a life sentence but the trials collapsed due to unreliable evidence by the police. A fit-up that was described by Michael Mansfield QC as “the worst example of a mass frame-up in this country this century”. In June 1991, compensation of £425,000 was paid to 39 miners for assault, wrongful arrest, unlawful detention and malicious prosecution. Crimes that the police have never admitted or apologised for despite extensive filming by a NUM film crew of the incident. The police claimed they “were upholding the law in the face of intimidation from thousands of strikers”. An incident that was widely edited by the media to portray the strikers as confrontational, violent and the guilty party. A miscarriage of justice that bloodied the landscape and left a stain on the souls of the peaceful strikers there.
The Bubble Burst
On 3rd March 1985, nearly a year after the miner’s strike had begun, the NUM National Executive voted 98-91 to call off the action and a call was made by Arthur Scargill for the miners to return to the coal pits. Here ended one of the most heightened industrial action that this country has ever seen. The NUM fractured as a consequence and within ten years, pits like Shirebrook were raised to the ground in 1993 with the site now being used as the headquarters for Sports Direct. Thatcher had stockpiled coal before this strike, outlawed wildcat strikes and taken advantage of non-striking miners like Roland Taylor to bring the union to heel. Ultimately there were winners, just losers. The jukebox fell silent in the Miner’s Institute, darts no longer thumped into the dartboard and the dominoes now gather dust in a drawer. A heart ripped out of so many communities and the pit wheel no longer spinning as the beating heart of the community. No longer can those who toiled at the face of the pit, can be proud of their profession, their dusky jewels are now considered to be an environmental pollutant, no longer powering the nation.
