Lasting one year, the strike pitted more than 100,000 miners and countless other working people against the mine bosses and the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, who were driving to close unprofitable mines, privatize the nationalized industry, and destroy tens of thousands of jobs. Although the miners were defeated, they retained their union and set a powerful example of militant struggle.

The anniversary of this fight has been an occasion for anti-labor forces, speaking on behalf of Britain’s capitalist rulers, to slander the NUM and, by implication, all those who acted in solidarity with its stand against layoffs and in defense of union rights.

In one example, a recent documentary on the strike shown on the Channel Four television channel described picketing miners as “storm troopers” and “hit squads,” and likened union actions to a “blitzkreig”—comments reminiscent of Thatcher’s statement during the strike that the miners were “the enemy within.”

Kim Howells, the Transport Minister in the current Labour Party government, took a less frontal line of attack on BBC News Online March 10, saying that the Conservative, or Tory, government’s pit [mine] closure program “should not have meant a strike.” Howells was a research officer for the NUM during the 1984-85 strike. Mine closures carried out by Labour 20 years earlier were “done in a civilized way,” he said.

The Thatcher government prepared ahead of time to take on the NUM, which had frequently been an obstacle to the rulers’ attacks. In the previous decade the NUM had twice defeated a Tory government in big confrontations—most humiliatingly in 1974, when the government of Prime Minister Edward Heath was forced to step down after failing to break a national strike by miners.

In 1980 and 1982 the parliament passed laws banning the closed shop and limiting picket lines to no more than six workers. A specially commissioned report by Tory Member of Parliament (MP) Nicholas Ridley proposed building up coal stocks in preparation for the fight, and recommended the organization of large mobile police squads for use against picket lines.  
 
A strike against closures
The strike began March 5, 1984, after the government announced it was shutting Yorkshire’s Cortonwood colliery—the first of 20 mines, employing 20,000, scheduled for closure. Within one week, half of Britain’s 187,000 miners had downed tools.

The miners used large-scale pickets to stop production, moving from mine to mine as the situation demanded. Their militant actions drew solidarity from other unionists and from working people more broadly.

Police used roadblocks and direct attacks to try to throttle and intimidate the pickets. In 12 months, they arrested 10,000 miners and injured 5,000 in attacks against pickets.

Two miners, David Jones and Joe Green, were killed on the picket line. Green, who worked at Kellingley colliery, was killed at Ferrybridge Power Station, struck by the back wheel of a truck as it crossed the line. Three striking miners were killed digging for coal to keep their families warm.

The government won a court order sequestering the union’s funds as fines for “illegal picketing.”

In a June 18 confrontation, the NUM organized a mass picket of Orgreave coking plant to force its closure, at least temporarily. Around 5,000 miners faced up to 8,000 cops outfitted with riot gear and swinging truncheons. Cops rode horses into the pickets and set dogs on them. Miners defended themselves tenaciously and many were arrested.

In August dockworkers refused to handle coal imported to break the strike. Workers in the National Union of Railwaymen stopped almost all movement of coal, oil, and iron ore by rail. Their action was particularly important where the strike was not so strong. Despite the fact that only 30 of the 2,500 miners in Coalville, Leicestershire, were on strike, for example, coal mined there was never moved because of solidarity action by the town’s 150 rail workers, who stood solid throughout the strike despite the sacking of three of their number.

Strike support groups were established in small towns and major cities. In south Wales dairy farmers donated 20,000 gallons of milk to picket lines and joined Women Against Pit Closures in a demonstration against a visit by Margaret Thatcher to the area.

Organized in Women against Pit Closures and other groups, women in the mining communities stood at the forefront of the struggle. Maureen Douglas from the Hatfield Main miners’ wives support group explained at a demonstration in Barnsley of 12,000 women that “what we are doing…is making history. We are setting a pattern for the future for the involvement of women in political struggles which will show what a formidable force we are.”

Women organized food relief, joined picket lines, and spoke at solidarity meetings. In the words of the Yorkshire Miner, they were “the strike’s backbone.”

In the course of the strike, vanguard miners reaching out for solidarity also began seeing the connections between their struggle and other fights against oppression and exploitation. In August 1984, for example, several miners took part in a delegation of trade unionists to British-occupied Northern Ireland. Kent miners leader Malcolm Pitt spoke at a demonstration demanding the withdrawal of British troops from Ireland. “The people of Ireland, the British miners, and the British working class are locked in a struggle with the same enemy but on different fronts,” he said.  
 
Divisions at Nottingham
Not all the mines were struck, however. The government succeeded in carving off the Nottingham area, scene of some of the largest confrontations of pickets and police.

One of the authors of this article, Paul Galloway, was employed at the 1,200-worker Thorseby colliery in Nottingham-one of 80 who stayed out for the duration of the strike. At first, more than 50 percent of miners honored the Nottingham picket lines. Miners had to confront tens of thousands of police, while soldiers drove police vehicles during some of the battles. The besieged union supporters were fortified by miners from other areas, who came to strengthen the picket lines. Pickets who left the area had to skirt police lines to get back in. Some camped for days on end in Sherwood Forest before making it back to the lines.

The seeds of the Nottingham division had been sown by the previous Labour government, which established a bonus system that frequently paid workers in the productive Nottingham pits twice the national average. Thatcher’s ministers deepened divisions by claiming the Nottingham mines would not be affected by the planned closures.

The failure of the leadership of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), the national union federation, to mobilize the unions in support of the strike dealt another telling blow to the miners’ fight. For his part, Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock attacked the pickets’ alleged “violence” while keeping silent about the brutal police attacks.

In February 1985 a special delegates conference narrowly voted to return to work.

Although the NUM continued to reject the bosses’ pit closure program, the government accelerated its layoffs and closures in the years that followed. In 1992, in the face of an escalation of the pit closure program, threatening 25,000 jobs, the TUC called a protest march in London that drew hundreds of thousands of people.

By 1995 the total number of miners in the UK had dropped to 11,000, down from 187,000 ten years before. Yet the NUM remains an obstacle to the bosses’ continuing drive for speedup and longer hours. In 2001 NUM members at Rossington colliery in Yorkshire organized the first indefinite strike since the yearlong strike.

Since March, NUM members at Kellingley colliery in north Yorkshire have organized several of one-day strikes and an overtime ban to oppose attempts to extend the working day and impose weekend working.

In the battles that lie ahead, workers will turn to the miners’ fight, drawing inspiration and lessons from the yearlong strike.

Paul Galloway and Jim Spaul are former miners who worked underground for 18 and 36 years, respectively.
 
 
Related articles:
Kellingley miners in UK hold one-day walkout  
 
 
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