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

The destruction of the unions is why most workers have such shit pay and conditions nowadays. Zero hours contracts, lack of sick pay, rubbish pensions. You wouldn't have that if we had decent unions.

Hick I think we forget that a lot of the police involved at the time were getting dog's abuse and didn't want to be there in the first place.

Hick Your poor father suffered because he was obviously a decent man being forced to do a horrible job. There was good and bad on both sides.

I think there are multiple reasons for that tinkly

Found it I knew Maxine Peake was in it.

Its called Faith.

www.bbc.co.uk/drama/faith/

Amazing, thanks. Love a good radio drama.

Please enlighten us My.

I was surprised when I caught a few mins of Nilly Elliott on TV - I knew it was about a boy learning to dance in a mining town but I didn't realise how massively political it was

I was in SE Kent. Not directly affected but my uncle was policeman deployed elsewhere on picket duty. It got very violent. I remember school friends whose fathers worked at Betteshanger describing the Russian food parcels they received. We were about 15 and laughed along with them. I had no frigging clue really how awful it was at the time.

My uncle was a police officer during the strikes. He wasn't from the Met but it's the actions of the Met that he spoke about.

I feel ashamed that it wasn't talked about by my parents - we were too isolated from it and no one who I knew was affected by it.

It might have been very different now with 24/7 news and social media.

I don't live too far from areas affected by the strikes though. Can't believe it was only 30 years ago.

socialistworker.co.uk/art/5776/Faith%3A+betrayal+and+survival+during+the+minersstrike

My father was on strike for the whole year.
As were a huge proportion of my family and neighbours.

I was a teenager. It had a profound affect on all of us.

Agree with Twinkly.

The closure of the pits, steel works and docks devastated working class communities who were left with little in regards to support to re-train. So many unemployed blue collar workers with no suitable alternative employment at all. Even if they could have all been re-trained there weren't enough other jobs by a long stretch.

It led to cycles of poverty which are still being played out today in those communities because you still have cities that were almost completely sustained by pits/factories/steel works. Now those have gone there isn't anywhere near enough jobs for the number of people in the city, not a great deal has sprung up to fill the place of those industries and what has (call centres, retail) pays less money than traditional industry used to, not to mention the reliance on zero hours contracts.

And then people in those communities are seen as 'lacking aspiration'....it's always put back on the individual. No narrative exploring that actually, if you grew up in poverty, in a city with below average schools and little in the way of employment opportunities that it might not be all your own fault.

And I say this as someone who grew up in Stoke and graduated to work in London on high salary. One person getting out is not proof that everyone else you went to school with is lazy.

Twinkly huge shift in demographics really. Workplace conditions weren't going to stay as they were in the 80s.

imight indeed.

I get heartily sick of being the poster girl for working class done good.

I am from the north east, and all of my family were miners, except my dad, who joined the police force at 16. He was posted within his and mums communities and was regularly spat in the face and called awful names by people from his own communities. (I sure there was worse that I haven't picked up on). He took it on the chin because (his words) he had a young family to provide for. I remember my mum sending out anonymous food parcels to our neighbours and finding odd
jobs for my grandfather and uncles to do, and slipping them money.

It was really a horrible time for everyone.

Thatcher not only destroyed the mining communites, she destroyed the steel yards, ship building, sold off everything she possibly could (gas, electric, trains, council housing) and that was how the Tory's balanced the books.

The problem is that all Tory voters say that the Tories are the better with the economy. Except his time round when there is literally fuck all left to sell. Instead of investing in steel, coal, trains, housing, utilities, they were all sold off and now there is nothing left to bring in money. Instead they are going the other way and cutting everything they spend instead.

Going off track but I was 16 in 1985, living in the south, very cossetted away from the strikes but remember seeing it on TV. My exh lived in Scotland and although not from a miners family, him and his mates used to go and throw stones at the vans carrying scabs to the mines in Scotland from those down south and vice versa. He was in a union as he was a printer so it was ingrained in him that strike breaking was wrong. I don't condone throwing stuff at moving vehicles, just sharing what I remember.

This is the doc i watched on More 4

www.channel4.com/programmes/when-britain-went-to-war/episode-guide/

People have done PHDs drawing parallels between what happened when indigenous people like the Maoris were stripped of their way of life and what happened when traditional industries, like coal and shipbuilding, that dominated a whole community closed down. The result is very similar apparently.

I grew up in the Selby coalfield area, a modern mining community and was just starting secondary school at the time of the miner's strike. I can vaguely remember some resentment from many of the local (farming?) community towards the miners when the mines first opened. A lot of families came up from Notts and South Yorkshire to work. My parents were teachers and would arrive in school not knowing which children would be there and which would have done a flit with their families. Several of our neighbours suffered minor vandalism as they were breaking the pickets but I didn't really understand then why it was all happening. There was a united loathing of the Met officers though.

My dad was your typical "beat bobby" who freely admits himself that the miners strike was well out of his comfort zone. Obviously family influences (miners, steelworkers and shipyard workers) meant that he really had sympathy for the miners and he found it all very exhausting and difficult. Caulkhead He was "pensioned" off in 1994 after being badly hurt whilst arresting someone.

*disclaimer: I am v emotional at the moment.

This thread has made me cry. The honesty from people, and hearing what it was like, within my friends lifetimes has really opened my eyes. Just hearing about the lengths people went to to support their families is incredible.

The Tories are selling of the NHS now. They've already done a number on our pensions. They see the working classes as a resource to be milked.

Agreed mycatsapirate. I did an engineering degree in the early 90s and one of my tutors had worked at the Selby coalfield so we got chatting about it all. I clearly remember him saying that the Miners Strike was the beginning of the end of manufacturing in the U.K.

Without coal, steel would go. Importing steel would be too expensive so large scale manufacturing such as shipbuilding would decline. This would knock on small scale manufacturing as they would have no one to supply to which would then mean low employment opportunities. People would look to train in other business/industries and the skill base would be lost until eventually the manufacturing industry in the U.K. would virtually disappear...

The ITV doc from three years ago. The Miners Strike and Me.

www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-03-12/the-miners-strike-and-me-the-human-price-of-the-miners-strike