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

I was growing up in Sheffield at the time, although we lived on the opposite site from any of the colliery villages. I do remember that there were always miners with their children asking for money for food in town, and the sight of such visible suffering was very upsetting and quite scary. It also went on for a very long time- there were still people doing that many years after the strike was over and all the pits were closed.
I also remember my parents being incredibly critical of everyone involved- Thatcher, the police, the coal board and particularly Scargill, who they thought was using the miners for his own power and glory.

My step-dad's side of the family still don't speak to one of the brothers who went back to work. My uncle was in the police and couldn't visit his mother for a few months in case he was spotted. The children I went to school with were cold and hungry for a year straight - everyone used coal because you got it cheap from work, so when that ran out you froze in the winter. We gave every spare penny to the miners (not a mining family) and sympathy and support was generally high. But it was still an enormously difficult and divisive time.

Our community bounced back fairly quickly as there were lots of jobs for women in things like retail in the nearby city, thankfully it was nowhere near as bad for us as in some of the more rural locations. But still an entire generation of men didn't work again.

Oh and I hate Thatcher with an almost visceral hatred which has not diluted over the years. I've grown up and mellowed in most of my views, but not that one.

I live in Rotherham and my grandad worked in the pit and my oldest uncle. They never spoke again after the strikes as disagreed.

My grandad was big in the union. I didn't really discuss it much with him as he died when I was 16/17.

However my dp was born in 67 and remembers lots. Fil and his brothers worked down the pit. Dp remembers going out in the middle of the night and loading coal lorries up to steal. He would have been about 15/16 and wasn't really told what was going on. They were eventually caught and because of his age he got off. The judge was also pretty lenient with the rest of them as he apparently sympathised with them.

I still live in Rotherham in the outskirts of old mining villages. For a lot of years it has been prettt grim. But now things do seem to be improving. I have never met a family with 3 generations unemployed. There will always be rough families in any area and in this area some folk will still blame the pits closing down.

Lots of ex mining families seemed to drift towards the building trade. Certainly fil, dp and his male relatives did. As did my uncles and older cousins. Dp was working in London building on the underground by the time he was 18.

However my younger uncle who would have been 26/27 when the strikes happened never worked again. He still blames the pits closing down. The truth is he is a lazy bastard who didn't want to work. But his 3 dcs all work hard. One is an accountant, another works at management level in a call centre and his daughter works ft despite having 4 young dcs. So certainly no 3 generations of non workers.

There are deprived areas locally. But they aren't necessarily deprived because the pits closed. In fact some really nicr areas are ex mining villages and actually quite desirable places to live.

I was a young married mum with a baby and my then husband worked at the pits as an electrician in the Pontefract area. It was horrendous. No fuel to heat the house so keeping the little one warm was a nightmare through the winter. Food was scarce too and I had to queue for food parcels.
I managed to get a job in a town centre pub for a few pounds a week, but the violence was awful. At weekends the market square would be lined with police officers who jeered at - and in return were jeered by - the miners and fighting often broke out.

I have to agree with BBJefferson too in that some of the miners were just as bad as the police - my ExH included. Most men were on £3 per day picketing money, but my ex, being a crawler to those union men handing out the money got a whole lot more. He spent it on HIS car and HIS beer. I was so ashamed when i found out. He was also one of the bastards who delighted in tormenting those who, for whatever reason (mainly poverty), returned to work - forgetting to mention to everyone of course that he was getting over £100 per week from the picket line.

I hated the whole thing. I disagreed with the way Scargill manipulated the whole thing for his own agenda, it made me sick.
As my brother who was single and electrician at the pit and therefore on strike wasn't eligible for any financial assistance during that year, I tried to help him when i could. One day i took him a sack of potatoes and he cried then, he couldn't stop crying. That's what bastards like Scargill and my Ex did to decent people like my brother.

Cor ,what a fab thread,I've learned loads,thanks,going to look out for the film pride..any other films worth watching?

My grandad was a miner but had retired by the time of the strike. He and my grandma thought the sun shone out of Scargill's arse, though.

Luckily, my dad didn't work 'darn t'pit' (he had a different view of Scargill altogether) and so the strike never affected me and my family directly at the time. However, it's still affecting the town I live in. The pits closed and great swathes of men were put out of work as there were no jobs to replace the ones they left. It absolutely decimated our town and we're still feeling the effects today. We have high unemployment, a huge heroin problem and the town centre is a fucking dump and it can all be traced back to the miner's strike. I will never, never forgive Thatcher for what she did to my hometown but if I'm honest, Labour haven't done much better either (but I guess that's another story altogether).

eezer Pride is my favourite film, possibly ever. It comes up on BBC occasionally and is based on a true story. Others suggested on here are Billy Elliott and Brassed Off. Both still stories though!

Scargill's plan was to hold strikes in as many areas as voted Yes and to bully the majority in the areas which voted No into coming out too. Fortunately he failed.

When the Conservatives were re-elected in 1983 Scargill said that he did not accept that the working classes had to accept five more years of Tory rule. So much for democracy. In the event they got fourteen, and that's assuming that Blair was much different.

The strikers were lions led by donkeys, but ultimately they were trying to stop the working miners going about their lawful occasions.

Pride is a fantastic film.

Why did thatcher want to close down all the mines? What did she think all the men would do for work? So they were striking for a living wage ..so how was she allowed to close them..did her party all agree

Was this the same time as the 3 day working week...if there was coal there,why not use it? Doesn't make sense

The only problem with asking random people for their experience is that everyone's will be biased, depending on how or whether it affected them directly.

It was 10 years after the 3 day week.

There was a 3 day week in the 70s following the hiking of oil prices

The thing to do if you are interested is to read as much as you can from both sides. It's too recent for genuinely unbiased accounts

I can't belive I never covered this at school...I love British history.its fascinating all these first hand accounts are amazing.im loving this thread

You wouldn't have covered it because it was so recent. I went to school in the 70s to mid 80s - we didn't cover anything after WW2

The NUM was one of the most powerful unions and had flexed it's muscles on many occasions. Thatcher had to break them to push on with her agenda. The miners weren't going to vote Conservative and coming off the back of her post Falklands electoral victory in 1983 she had the majority to pick a fight.
Scargill played right into her hands by failing to conduct the ballots required for a strike correctly and so she went for the jugular.

It affected so many communities in the North East, I remember my uncle and grandad being on strike, luckily the rest of the family were able to help out so that their bills were paid and food was bought.
There has been a lasting legacy, some closed pits have been transformed into beautiful parks and if anyone so much catches sight of a picture or footage of Margaret Thatcher an enormous chorus of 'boo's' will be heard, we hated her in the North East.

Any good books with first hand experience in them that anyone can recommend pls

I don't know if this has already been mentioned (havent RTFT) but there's the full Battle of Orgreave documentary on YouTube here:

(it doesn't tell you the full circumstances leading up to the picket, or the frankly shocking behaviour of Thatcher's government, but it will give you some idea of how the miners were treated.)

Essentially the police were used as the government's private security company, beating up striking miners who were then threatened with life in prison for 'rioting'. The documentary's worth a watch if you want to know more.

Pride is the best film ever made. Fact.

Thatcher wanted to break the unions, they were far too strong in thise days and actually did have some power.

I live in the nort east. I am out in the sticks, but close to a, ahem, notorious pit village (think Billy Elliot), and to be honest, the scars are still raw there. Brother turned against brither, whole families split and never reconnected.

It is a run down place with boarded up shops, no hope and a general air of sadness.

It is heartbreaking. But, in addition to the pits closing, our area decided to build a super duper 'new town'. They removed all funding to the pit villages, with the intention of basically closing them down and moving everyone into this wonderful nirvana. It did not happen. The village i am closest to has the most wonderful spirit of community, poor in financial terms, but rich in friendship.

When Thatcher died, there were parties held in the working mens clubs here. I have to say that i found it distasteful, but can understand the lingering anger.

What side do you want to read about?

As above 'When Arthur met Maggie' by Patrick Hannah. It's a really interesting book with contributions from people like Kim Howells who was a union official and later an MP.
Not so much 'human interest' but it isn't a dry scholarly work either