the miners strike

Im from a Mining town, Merthyr Tydfil. It died when they closed the mines. Same as the Rhondda.

I was just 14/15 when the strike was on. I remember having to look after my brothers and sisters as my mum was the cook in the local high school and she had to open the school during the holidays to feed the Miners kids.

Was an awful time for the Miners and their families :(

Here’s a bit of history for you tictax:

Mining communities grew up around pit heads where shafts were sunk to extract coal. Coal became a source of great wealth as it became the primary fuel used in Britain which led it to be nicknamed ‘King Coal’.

The prominence of coal as a fuel in Britain meant that the National Union of Mineworkers [NUM] was a powerful union.

During the 1970s evidence of the power of the miners and their union was demonstrated. In 1972 the miners went on strike for the first time since 1926, bringing the entire country to a virtual standstill and forcing the introduction of the three day working week.

The miners went out on strike again in 1974 with the same result. On both occasions the miners obtained the wage increases they were demanding.

The 1984-5 strike was different from the earlier strikes in the 1970s. This strike was not about obtaining an increase in pay but rather it was about jobs, industry survival and ultimately family and community survival.

The announcement in March 1984 that twenty pits were to be closed including Cortonwood Colliery near Barnsley in South Yorkshire, on which several million pounds had just been spent upgrading the pit, sparked the conflict. The proposed closures would result in 20,000 job losses across the industry. Various mines began to strike as a result of the proposed closures.

On 12 March 1984 Arthur Scargill, president of the NUM, called for the strikes at the various coal fields to become a national strike.

The Communist Party of Great Britain donated money to help the miners, specifically requesting that it help them to attend a march in London

For the first time Communist Party members joined men on the picket lines and formed part of flying pickets. In what often became a violent and confrontational situation they were in the front line, and like the miners on the pickets were injured as a result.

Despite the hard work they had put into the strike, as financial hardships increasingly took hold miners began to break the strike and return to work.

In the light of this a vote was taken by the NUM National Executive who voted 98 to 91 in favour of an organised return to work. The strike formally ended on 3 March 1985, almost a year after it had begun.

In the years following the strike there was a systematic closure of the majority of deep pits in Britain. The removal of the pits caused the death of a way of life and with it the communities that had grown up around the pits. The strike was a life changing experience for everyone who was involved and for many it was a wake up call.

The central issue is not that Margaret Thatcher set the miners up so that they could be defeated – although this is what actually happened.

Striking and secondary strikes – enforced with violent attacks on both workers and police officers – at that time had become an almost everyday event. A lot of these strikes were funded by the East European / USSR communists through a variety of seemingly innocent sounding front organisations. They had their own agenda to follow which included bringing down capitalism and democratic government – the unions were largely controlled by CPGB members and were only too willing to assist in bringing about a ‘working class revolution’.

@pete wrote:

The executive voted to recommend a return to work they couldnt end the strike themselves that was up to the miners themselves

In the light of this a vote was taken by the NUM National Executive who voted 98 to 91 in favour of an organised return to work. The strike formally ended on 3 March 1985, almost a year after it had begun.

and god bless the CP !!!

Two people destroyed the coal industry in Britain – Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill.
Remember, Scargill was arguably the second most powerful person in Britain at the time.

Having said that, it would have probably declined to its present size without the involvement of either of them.

When the left adopted the green agenda there’s no way it could have carried on supporting the coal industry.