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

Neither side comes out of this smelling of roses.

Dawndonnaagain FIL said there was around 30 years left of coal at his pit back in the 80's. Given the huge increase in demand for energy through the 80's and 90's I doubt there would have been 30 years left.
We have huge problems locally with shafts collapsing and I understand theres still a fire burning underground locally too.

MoneyBack

I grew up in a Yorkshire mining town and was about 14 at the time of the strikes. None of my family were actually miners so it didnt affect me directly. The worst effect for us was we had coal fired central heating, and you couldn't get coal.

A lot of my contemporaries were from mining families so I was very aware of the strikes. The strikers got no wage/benefits and some of them had a pretty miserable time of it. I dont know about food parcels, but I'm sure I remember the union getting donations from Russian miners? (Monetary donations, I mean).

I remember miners being bussed to other areas/ picket lines and there were some marches/protests. If you broke the strike you were a "scab", a girl at school's dad went back to work and they had scab spray painted on their house.
I cant remember Arthur Scargill being universally liked, though I think you learned to keep your mouth shut regarding that.

The town I grew up in was decimated as the mine closed, I moved away years ago but have been back since (relatives). Its doing ok, a few local jobs, or people commute.
The site of the mine is now being allowed to become a nature reserve, apparantly it will become a wetland in future years.

Millions Do you mean everyone in mining areas was in a union? If so I stand corrected, I assumed the OP was asking generally.

I knew manufacturing, mining etc had unions but I was unaware of unions for office workers etc, certainly we weren't allowed to join one

Neither side comes out of this smelling of roses

This. I'd love for any police officers or police officer families to post. Also people who had families who broke picket. There was some horrific violence and aggression shown on the part of the miners but that bit is always brushed over. The only person Scargill cared about was Scargill.

I'm guessing that most of the women in mining areas didn't work at the time due to children etc? Or lack of jobs?

I come from the midlands so no connection with the mining industry and I seem to remember a lot of mothers working when I was growing up.

Hmm they didn't when I was growing up.

Or if they did it was a job as a dinner lady or similar.

Ah okay - I didn't know anyone from those industrial areas at the time so I wasn't sure

I think some communities are only just recovering from the closure of the mines too. They were a place where the sons would follow their fathers to work , and the closure of the mines meant the sons had no jobs to go to. Here in North Nottinghamshire, the pit towns have high unemployment rates. 30 years on you're lucky to get a zero hour contract warehouse job.
I had family from Bolsover which was a pit town and I remember from a young age that the strikes had split communities apart and 'scabs' being spit on in the street.

Although the film itself it fiction , Billy Elliott shows the miners strike. It shows the desperation that some families reached when there's no coal to heat their homes , so they distroy their beloved piano just so they can start a fire . :(

My dad moved away from his pit village to go to college and settled in the South. We used to go back to his village in S Yorkshire to see my grandparents - I remember driving into the village in the winter during the strike and seeing families scavenging coal on the slag heaps. It looked like when you used to see the films of people who scavanged on the rubbish dumps in S. America - it was awful. The miners used to get coal as part of their benefits so once on strike they not only had no money coming in but no fuel to heat their houses (most of the houses in the village only had coal fired heating - why would you get gas if you got coal for practically free).

One day my grandad rang my dad really upset as he'd got up that morning and 3 men he'd taught had knocked on his door to say they'd come for his veg. They explained they were digging up veg for the soup kitchens/food parcels. My grandad was really distressed as he loved his veg garden and he and my grandma use to use all of it. The miners were really sympathetic but explained they'd only come to 'ask' because he taught them and they thought he was great - everyone else had just had their veg taken in the night. Things were that bad...

My great uncle had been a pit foreman (was retired) and his son had joined the police. My grandad's family were very hot on each generation doing better than the next and my great uncle had been so proud of his son. A brick was put through his son's window one night so he sent his wife and kids down south to her sisters as he was so scared for them. After the strike he transferred to a force in the south and never went back as the hatred for him was so strong.

It was a horrendous time; it really opened my eyes as to how lucky I was living in a lovely house in the south with food, heating etc. My dad's village never recovered, the pit closed and because there was no infrastructure or support that generation and the following ones never really found employment. Apparently it's finally had some investment and is starting to improve but it's taken a long long time.

Indeed the help from other countries mining communities sticks in my mind.
My squeamish DB had to eat forrin' tins.
Didn't stop him, mind.

There was a Beebe doc on Kellingly recently I think?

Don't forget the Kent Coalfields. Betteshanger was the last mine to return after the strike.

PlayOnWurtz DH joined the police just after the strikes. His dad wasn't happy about it. Obviously he wasn't employed during the strikes but he knew people who were. They weren't very complimentary about the miners but the miners weren't complimentary back.
I think some felt that Arthur Skargill was playing the miners a blinder as he stepped back into his posh car to drive home to his detached million pound mansion

I meant both - were more people in unions generally and were most/all miners in one.

What I was told is some of the mines could have been saved were it not for Scargill.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0845r0t

This one, may make you snuffle a bit though.
Well worth a look.

Some women from miner's families worked but remember that miners worked shifts and there wasn't as much in the way of childcare as there is now, so familiar difficulties balancing work/childcare/shifts etc.

If you had childcare in order for a mother to work, it was more likely to be an informal arrangement involving friends, neighbours or relatives rather than nurseries or childminders.

We always got the free coal and were lucky that we had somewhere to store it and we got more than we could use so had a stock that lasted through the strike and after my dad stopped working as a miner.

Similar to a PP, he got made redundant in his late 40s/early 50s I think and did various self employed jobs like window cleaning and landscaping before getting a paid job in a completely different industry that lasted him until retirement in his mid 60s.

Another oddly specific memory - no longer being woken up by the pit siren once the strike took hold - it used to sound at the change of every shift and was one of those oddly comforting sounds I associated with being at my grandma's. It was very strange to not be woken by it in the morning.

We were primarily a steel working family both Ddad and Dmum plus eldest Db all on short time (no coal for furnaces) but to my recollection they supported the strike completely.

Grandad and uncle (miners) set up shifts on the picket lines so as one could fish.

I'm from the South Wales valleys. I was 20 at the time of the strike and mostly away at uni. I was a proper left winger socialist worker girl.

Practically every man in our village worked in the colliery, but my Dad had moved to a factory a couple of years before the strike so we were one of the few families in the village with a wage coming in. Most of the women didn't work. My parents used to make a substantial cash donation to the miners fund every week, but I know my mum was embarassed about buying meat from the butcher and the like when other people were going hungry.

We were lucky in our valley: we only had one scab and he was an English outsider, so at least we escaped the bitterness and divisions some places suffered. My Dad's mate was a policeman and believed that many of the police drafted in to the picket lines were actually army. He was ashamed of much of the police behaviour. I think the miners strike led to a whole generation of working class people losing faith in the police; we had believed they were there to help us, then we realised they were there to uphold the state.

Yes it was grim in our village during the strike, but not desperate; we had a good community spirit. After the strike things were worse, when they closed the pits. I grew up in a thriving respectable little working class village and I loved it. Today it is a run down, drudging addled shit hole, a horrible scummy ghost town.

I always think of that RnR when people moan about loud noise too early

I lived in South London at the time of the Miners' strike. There was a groundswell of support amongst people I knew for them. We were twinned with a South Wales colliery (not the one in the film) and spent a lot of time collecting money and donating to the food banks. I also attended benefit gigs, there were several.
My husband's cousin was one of the Dirty Thirty (Leicestershire miners) who joined the strike. I remember him talking about how difficult it was.
At the time we were also visited by striking Nottingham miners during a solidarity visit to the South London Women's Hospital where we were in occupation.
Thatcher was continuing Heath's plan to destroy the unions, after the 1973 strike.
I cried like a baby when I watched the South Wales miners walk back to work. Heads held high behind their banners. Such brave, brave men and women.
I remember thinking that this was the end of proper unionisation and protection for ordinary working people.
Thatcher will be forever despised by some of us for what she did. Never forgotten and never forgiven.

In Billy Elliott, doesn't the dad go back to the mine to get money for Billy to go to London?

I imagine that wasn't a common thing - if people striked then they stayed striking?

I'm always surprised at how little is covered on social history at school - I remember learning about the 3 day working week when I was 11 but that's it really.

I've always been a clerical worker, and I've always been in a union. When I started work with the Post Office, you were asked straight away if you wanted to join. My grandfather had been a local councillor, and one of my uncles was senior in one of the print unions, so I'd always been aware of their existence