UK miners' strike 1984-1985: Encyclopedia II - UK miners' strike 1984-1985 - History

UK miners' strike 1984-1985 - History

In 1984, the National Coal Board (the UK Public Body which controlled coal mining) announced that an agreement reached after the 1974 miners' strike had become obsolete, and that they intended to close 20 coal mines because they were uneconomical. 20,000 jobs would be lost, and many communities in the north of England and in Wales would lose their primary source of employment. Unbeknown to anybody outside the upper echelons of the executive, the government had been preparing for tortuous industrial action by secretly stock-piling coal for a number of months in order to enable the country to keep running throughout the winter of 1984.

Sensitive to the impact of the proposed closures in their own areas, miners in various coal fields began strike action. In the Yorkshire coal field strike action began when workers at the Manvers complex walked out over the lack of consultation. Over 6,000 miners were already on strike when a local ballot led to strike action from March 5 at Cortonwood Colliery at Brampton, South Yorkshire, and at Bulcliffe Wood colliery, near Ossett. On the next day pickets from the Yorkshire area appeared at pits in the Nottinghamshire coal field (one of those least threatened by pit closures). On March 12, 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.

Scargill did not call a ballot for national strike action, perhaps because of uncertainty over the level of support amongst members - polls showed that more than 60% of miners intended to continue working. However, the union had a tradition of voting at open meeting where all votes were cast by a public raising of hands. Scargill claimed that the government had no claim to take away the union's right to conduct internal affairs and complained that no associations other than unions were being forced to hold ballots on all decisions. The omission of the ballot was used as a smokescreen by the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher to use new laws which required unions to ballot members on strike action. The strike was ruled illegal, and the NUM's funds were seized on October 24, 1984 by order of the High Court. Miners were denied state benefits and their wages.

The Government mobilised the police in huge numbers to deal with picket lines on the grounds that they represented illegal intimidation and sometimes illegal violence against those miners who wanted to go to work. During the industrial action 11,291 people were arrested and 8,392 charged with offences such as breach of the peace and obstructing the highway. Former striking miners and others have alleged that soldiers of the British Army were dressed as policemen and used on the picket lines. While concrete evidence of this has not been produced (although film footage exists of "policemen" wearing tunics without any identifying numbers on their lapels) it remains a point of contention today, and in many former mining areas antipathy towards the police remains strong. The Government was criticised for abusing its power when it ruled that local police might be too sympathetic to the miners to take action against the strike and instead bringing in forces from distant counties. Occasions where private aeroplanes were hired to fly policemen to tackle pickets was considered by some to be a waste of public money.

At the beginning, the strike was almost universally observed in the coalfields of Yorkshire, South Wales and Kent. It was less strong in areas where there were fewer pits. In Nottinghamshire most of the pits had modern equipment and had large coal reserves; most of the Nottinghamshire miners remained at work and the Nottinghamshire NUM disagreed with the decision to launch a national strike without a ballot. The 1977 industry reforms had given Nottinghamshire miners larger salaries than workers in any of the other counties and they were unwilling to give up their daily pay. Many within the NUM condemned them as strikebreakers, and the Nottinghamshire branch, heavily aided by the Thatcher government, eventually broke away to form the core of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. Since the end of the strike both the UDM and the NUM have been involved in numerous court cases concerning financial irregularities.

A widely reported clash during the Miners' Strike took place at Orgreave near Rotherham on June 18, 1984. This confrontation between striking miners and police, dubbed by some 'The Battle of Orgreave', was the subject of a TV re-enactment in 2001, conceived and organized by artist Jeremy Deller and recorded by Mike Figgis for Channel 4. News footage of the 'Battle of Orgreave' showing the miners initiating disturbances by charging the police has since proven to have been doctored. Violence flared after police on horse-back charged the miners with truncheons drawn and inflicted serious injuries upon several individuals.

The strike ended on March 3, 1985, nearly a year after it had begun. Some workers had returned to work of their own accord, a symbolic victory for the Government, although ministers later admitted that the figures of returnees were inflated. In order to save the union, the NUM voted, by a tiny margin, to return to work without a new agreement with management. Events that prompted the end of the strike included a loss of public support following a severe beating of a working miner in Castleford in November, a murder of a taxi driver escorting a working miner to work in South Wales in December and the distraction of attention to the famine in Ethiopia. The union's funds had also run too low to pay for pickets' transportation and many miners had been unable to pay for heating over the Winter.

In addition to the murder of taxi driver David Wilkie, six pickets died during the strike and three young men - all less than 16 - died from picking coal in the Winter.

During the strike many pits permanently lost their customers. Much of the immediate problem facing the industry was due to the economic recession in the early 1980s. However, there was also extensive competition within the world coal market as well as a concerted move towards oil and gas for energy production. The Government claimed that coal could be imported from Colombia cheaper than it could be extracted from beneath Britain. The Government's own policy, known as the Ridley Plan (after its author Nicholas Ridley) was to reduce Britain's reliance on coal. The strike subsequently allowed the Government to accelerate the closure of many pits on economic grounds.

Dame Stella Rimington (MI5 Director General, 1992–1996) published an autobiography in 2001 in which she revealed MI5 'counter-subversion' exercises against the NUM and the striking miners, which included the tapping of union leaders' phones. However, she denied that the agency had informers in the NUM, specifically denying that then chief executive Roger Windsor had been an agent. [1] Documents later showed that Special Branch had a highly-placed mole codenamed "Silver Fox", with one officer saying the information "beat the strike, there's no doubt about that". [2]

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki