1980s miners strikes?

[CaulkheadUpNorf]

I'm watching Pride, which is set 1984-5, which is before I was born, and it's made me realise I know nothing about the miners strikes.

If you remember it, were affected by it, what was it like? Or are there some things I can read to find out more? There's very little online

Looks like deep pit coal mining is all well finished

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-35124077

If you want to experience life at the coal face the big pit at blaenavon is a fantastic experience
Their may be others

Thankyou for posting that EastMids i think there should be more TV programmes done from the wives point of view.

dowser I suspect that most miners of a certain age managed to get regularly injured.

My dad's shoulders were laced with blue scars from coal dust filled cuts. He could never make a fist because he'd dislocate a finger and it didn't heal properly.

Then obviously the chest...

I come from a mining town on the edge off Nottinghamshire. My dad worked in a coking plant. My maternal grandfather and uncle in a chemical plant (next to the pit processing coal for chemicals). IT wasn't just pit workers who went on strike. Our area was one of the first to go on strike. Dad got permission from the union to cross the picket with the rest of his crew to keep the giant boilers in operation, because if they shut down they wouldn't be starting up again. So dad says anyway. I think this must be true as my mums family were still on speaking terms with my dad afterwards.

The pit shut in 91 and the coking plant 93, the chemical plant in 2000ish. During that time they open cast as much of the landscape as possible. The whole decade was pretty shit with everyone out of work by the end of it.

But I must admit the air quality up there is a massive improvement now all the mining ceased.

I grew up in the midlands but my mum's family still live in an old pit village in S Yorks, my mum had a very poor childhood where she was always hungry. For her, education was the way out & she was able to move away. We used to go back to the village every year & you always knew when it was close as you could smell the coal fires on the air. My grandad wasn't a miner, he was a mechanic but my nan's family were pit miners back through generations.

I still go back there now but its a desperately sad place, it reeks of poverty and no work. My cousins used to say how there was no point doing well at school as there was nothing to go to after school & more than one of them have had substance dependence issues.

Every time I go back there I wonder how a person lives through that, having your community, your pride just stripped away & then watching your sons & daughters struggle in poverty. How it must have felt, at a time when men were the breadwinners & had to provide for their families, how it must have felt when they were unable to. As a woman, not being able to feed your children or keep them warm. This are recent times, not the 1800s! So many communities, so many peoples lives affected.

I've read this whole thread - so interesting.

I was born in 78 and knew nothing about the miners strike except that we all though Arthur Scargill was A BAD MAN.

My siblings and I would make 'horrid' faces in our dinner and say it was him.

Absolutely no idea why.

My parents were white collar workers in an area of the UK where there were no mines.

I've just watched the documentary recommended up thread. Incredible.

Thank-you

Just letting you know this has now been moved to The History Club.

Dowser I love Blaenavon. I used to go to the pit head for shift change with my Grandad and putting on the overalls and light felt important. I took DH down there before we were married and I'm going to try to get dd down this year and ds in 3 or 4 years time.
My grandad had half a lung out in the 60s due to lung disease and then went back underground because he was going to be sacked. He used to walk me around our valley and tell me our history and I soaked it all up. He was out on strike in the 1920s in the lead up to the shutting out and the General Strike.

Fl0ellafunbags

Well at least it wasn't Colne or, shudder, Darwin.

I love Big Pit at Blaenavon too. The guide told us that when the pits closed there was an increase in divorce and domestic violence.

Not involved in this Miners' Strike but the 1926 one is a big part of our family history that my Nan always used to tell us about. Her sister died of malnutrition and an illness brought on by her father striking. He went back to work to feed her but she died anyway and he lost all his friends because of it.

All very sad.

Amazing thread, thank you everyone for sharing.

To those who mentioned the 1926 there's a film called 'the happy lands' which was filmed near me (and involved a few people I know!) - well worth a watch as it covers the many impacts of the strike.

Seamus Milne wrote a very good book about it, called "Scargill and the Miners", which I would heartily recommend

Very interesting thread; thank you all.

DH and I are currently reading Walls Come Tumbling Down by Daniel Rachel. He found it in a charity shop. It is apparently 'An amazing oral history of a time when pop culture fought against the forces of darkness.'
It charts the time when pop music and politics came together - Rock Against Racism, Red Wedge and 2Tone etc. An interesting period.
As I said previously during the strike I was a newly married to a striking miner. We divorced shortly after. I quickly met and married current Mr EastMids. His politics and love of music lured me in 😃

So back to this book, it is a bit heavy going as it consists of lots of quotes by people such as Billy Bragg, Paul Heaton and Paul Weller, however I've just finished the chapter 'Perverts Supports The Pits'

(posted to soon)

This chapter charts their involvement in supporting the miners during the strike and their demand politics. An interesting read in view of this thread .. and it jogged my memory of how politicised certain parts of the music industry was at that time.

At the time I was a young Army wife, living and working in Germany. A girl in our office was from a mining community and had got a job so she could send her wage home to her parents.

In later years I have visited the North East a great many times and it breaks my heart to see how proud the mining villages were and how utterly failed they have been by successive governments.

With regard to unions, many industries were closed shops. I was in the print industry and we had to be in the union to be able to work. Thatcher stopped that and I immediately left the union as had a young family and a fiver a month was a lot of money. Now I realise the importance of the union movement and have been a member of various unions (depending on my job) for many years.

The miners strikes were appalling. It was a big bullying campaign to shit them up and wipe them out. No coincidence that it wa the same police who dealt with the worst strikes (orgreave) were the same that dealt with hillsborough

I know this is old but it deserves a bump, thank you to everyone who contributed such sad and interesting views.

I've been watching a series on Thatcher as I don't know much, born late 80s, and wanted to learn more - knew there'd be something useful on here.

I've no family links myself, but have lived in an ex mining town which I now feel I understand a little more. National coal mining museum is on my list now after lockdown is over!

I once heard that Arthur Scargill made lots of noise but his predecessor actually achieved far more for the miners, in his time. Was it Joe Gormley?

By the middle of the 1970s the government had trained more teachers than it could afford to employ and some teachers just never got teaching jobs at all. I knew some. The miners union didn't send them any money. When the miners were begging for money I pointed that out to one of them.
Earlier someone has mentioned the closed shop. I went to work in a factory and I had to join the union. It was a closed shop. I went to a meeting in the factory yard. I can't remember the topic but the voting was in public, where everyone could see what you voted. I don't think that is ok. It leads to bullying and bad feelings that simmer for years.
I don't know all the changes that the Tory government of 1979 brought in but I think one must have been about the voting. Subsequently I wasn't in a union at all for a little while but then I chose to be in one and I voted lots of times but it was always with a pen on paper, in a vote which was private and I think that was far better. Sometimes it resulted in a vote for a strike, even though there was no-one in a yard glowering at you because you didn't vote a certain way. This a bit off-topic but a lot of people were out of work, not only miners.