Miners’ Strike 1984-5 – Weeks 48-53 Update

Throughout this 40^th anniversary year of the miners’ strike, Left Horizons has published regular bulletins on important issues and developments that occurred during the strike “as it happened”.

This update, the last in the series, covers events between 25 January and 8 March 1985

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After a gruelling 11 months on strike, facing extraordinary financial hardship, mental strain and state brutality, the overwhelming mass of those who followed the call to strike in March 1984 were still solid and loyal to the NUM, as were the women of the mining communities. The miners’ struggle was a source of enormous inspiration to other workers and to the wider socialist movement.

There was still a remote hope of persuading the union of the supervisory and safety staff (NACODS) to join the strike and secure the future of the industry. However, it was becoming increasingly clear that the industrial action from other unions was not going to happen and that the miners would remain isolated.

The intense propaganda campaign continued to bully or persuade miners to go back to work, eagerly supported by the press and the TV stations. Although this involved wild exaggerations of the numbers of miners who had returned, there was a steady trickle back of miners who simply felt unable to prolong the suffering and stay out any longer.

Even among miners loyal to the strike and the union, there was a subtle shift of emphasis towards staying out “at least” until a deal was reached to protect the sacked and victimised miners. But the National Coal Board (NCB) under MacGregor, in line with the Tory government, saw their chance to inflict a major defeat on the miners and were increasingly intransigent.

The strike was finally called off on 3 March, with no deal and no guarantees of any kind.

Negotiations

The Tories had long given up any pretence of seeking any kind of fair settlement to the dispute. The danger point for them had been the previous October, when the possibility of a NACODS strike saw them considering major concessions. But when the union leaders called the strike off, and settled for a weak and shabby deal of worthless promises, the Tories were emboldened.

Moreover, it became clear to them that there was no stomach for a fight in the leaders of the major unions or the TUC and they decided that a total victory was possible. On 29 January, after months of time-wasting fake negotiations for the sake of public opinion, and to fool the TUC leaders, the NCB insisted that a precondition for any future talks would be the agreement by the NUM not to oppose pit closures! This was a calculated provocation.

The Tories were prepared to risk a serious economic crisis for the chance to crush the most militant section of the labour movement. The strike had cost £5 billion and industrial production had fallen by 2.5%. Only oil kept the economy afloat, and huge amounts of that had to be dedicated to keeping in operation the power stations where coal stocks were running dangerously low.

A joint appeal by the NUM and NACODS on 8 February to re-open talks came to nothing. Then the TUC leaders, instead of organising to support the miners, win the dispute and beat the Tory government, tried, yet again, to play the role of “mediators”. On 22 February, this, too, came to nothing, as the EC of the NUM rejected a deal that was even worse than the NACODS deal from the previous autumn – only offering another weak version of a pit closure review process with no firm guarantees.

This came as a relief to the most active miners. Paul Hotham from Armthorpe NUM said, during the lobby of the TUC on 23 February organised by the Broad Left organising Committee (BLOC): –

“I’m chuffed to bits the EC turned down the TUC deal. I believe that the TUC were going to sell us down the river and hoped to take the glory for solving the miners’ strike.”

A Kent miner said: –

“When Willis [TUC General Secretary – Ed] came out of that meeting, saying that Thatcher had told him that he’d done a good job, then I couldn’t believe it!”

[Militant 1 March 1984 – both quotes]

Sacked workers

In South Wales, for example, the TUC deal would have meant the immediate closure of 6 pits. One key demand of the striking miners was that they would not abandon those workers who had been sacked for their actions during the dispute. As Ian Isaacs, a member of the South Wales NUM executive, wrote in Militant [1 February]

“Yes, miners and their families would like this strike to be over, but they are not prepared to sign away the future of their communities and the rights of those sacked during this dispute…Any return to work must be on the basis of a general amnesty…There must be no victimisation of those whose only crime has been to fight for jobs alongside their fellow miners.”

Throughout February, there were desperate appeals for NACODS to join the strike to save the industry. Their members’ jobs depended on the success of the strike and the defeat of the pit closure plan just as much as those of NUM members. If the planned 70,000 job cuts went ahead then 7,000 of those would be in NACODS.

A strike by safety officers could have shut every pit, even in the areas where miners were mostly working. Just six months earlier, 82% of their members had voted to strike.

The so-called “deal” that led to NACODS leaders calling off the strike in October depended on an agreed “review process”, but if the NCB were now insisting on the miners’ surrender by accepting the pit closure programme, then it was argued that the agreement was void. The majority of NACODS members were not crossing NUM picket lines in many places as it was, and many lived in the same mining communities as the miners.

Even at this late stage, joint action by the two unions could have made victory more achievable. But it was not to be and the NACODS leaders paid the heavy price of the destruction of the mining industry, the loss of their members’ jobs and the decimation of the mining communities.

Solidarity action

Solidarity action was still being seen. On 11 February, the TUC in Yorkshire and the Humber called a “day of action”, which was also supported by the South East Region TUC (SERTUC). Following a march in Sheffield of a thousand people on the Saturday, many trade unionists turned up with banners at pickets on Monday 11.

In the South East, on the same day, in freezing temperatures, hundreds picketed at power stations at Tilbury in Essex and at Neasden in London, while a thousand picketed at Taylor’s Lane station in West London [Militant 15 February]

But this was all way too little, too late. For months, as the strike dragged on, the TUC leadership had completely neglected to use its power to secure meaningful solidarity action, which could have involved strike action, leading to a one-day general strike or possibly even an all-out strike.

The propaganda campaign to destroy the morale of the miners and people of the mining communities continued throughout this period, with TV news channels constantly opening each broadcast with inflated, and sometimes double-counted, figures of the numbers alleged to have returned to work and the number of pits that were “working”. Of course, in pits where only handfuls of miners had gone back there was no possibility of mining any coal, but such details were left out.

In truth, the most astonishing thing was the numbers of striking miners who stuck it out till the end, after a year of grinding poverty, intimidation, lies and brutality. Some pit villages were under virtually constant siege by hundreds of police organised like an army of occupation.

In Maesteg, in South Wales, in late January, just 17 scabs were forced through the picket line by 400 police officers – and five of those were persuaded to come back out on strike! The number was eventually reduced to just seven [Militant 1 February].

By early February, 90% of the miners who had originally joined the strike in March 1984 were still out – some 130,000. In the Barnsley area, only 600 miners were working out of 16,000. Ten pits in that area had fewer than ten working miners each. In the Frances and Seafield area, in Scotland, 150 were at work out of 7,000. [Militant 8 February].

Overall 87% of miners were still on strike in Yorkshire, and 98% in South Wales. In Easington, County Durham, there were just 52 scabs out of 2,400. [Militant 15 February] At a meeting in South Wales on 22 February, only one lodge out of 28 called for a settlement. [Militant 1 March]

Speaking to a National Union of Journalists meeting, Rex Thompson from Armthorpe pit, in Yorkshire, reported that just 19 miners had returned out of 1,700. He said that there was no question of going back unless miners who had been sacked were reinstated – but that if there was a return to work with no settlement, then there should be a work to rule until those sacked were given their jobs back. [Militant 22 February].

Shadowy world behind the scabs

Details were beginning to emerge about the shadowy world behind the scabs and the “back to work” campaigns, outlined in Militant on 22 February.

The leading scabs, such as Roland Taylor of Shirebrook, were not just ordinary miners who wanted to work but were actively colluding with the NCB and the Tory government to defeat the strike and destroy the union. The NCB gave him an office with a telephone answering machine, and laid on expensive legal advice and arranged meeting with wealthy industrialist donors. He was granted paid leave to organise other scabs.

Chris Butcher, of the ludicrous code name, “Silver Birch”, was also funded by the NCB to travel all around the country on paid leave to organise back-to-work campaigns in other areas, which mostly failed to produce any impressive results. One attempt to organise a return to work in Northumberland led to him being escorted away by police in humiliation.

Much of the funding and organising behind the scenes of these groups, and eventually of the National Working Miners’ Committee which was formed in August 1984, was allegedly carried out by a wealthy local property developer, David Hart, an adviser to Thatcher and a close family friend of Ian MacGregor. He was able to act for the government working closely  with the scabs but could pretend to be acting independently. More was to emerge about his role many years later as government papers were released.

 His views were clear, however. He wrote in The Times on 26 January: –

“The time for negotiated settlements is past…The nation wants to see him [Scargill] defeated.”

Assistance with publicity materials and PR was given by Tim Bell, formerly of Saatchi and Saatchi, the Tories’ PR and advertising agency.

Arrests and sackings

In the mining communities, the mistreatment of strikers and their supporters by the state was maintained right to the end. One case, captured in a well-known photograph, involved the arrest of Joss Smith, a retired miner in Easington, Co Durham who had been injured and had plastic discs in his spine During a mass picket which tried to prevent the police from helping the handful of scabs back to work through the rear entrance, Joss and his wife, Dot, left their house which backed on to that entrance to see what was happening.

A line of the police then blocked Joss’s way back to his house, which was just ten metres away. As he tried to explain, he was arrested, pinned to a wall and then frog-marched to a police van with his arm painfully twisted behind him, as his distressed wife tried to stop them. Facing the mounting anger of the crowd, the police released him, but then had the nerve to insist that he stay in his house during the times of a picket! [Militant 15 February].

Following a court order banning mass picketing in five collieries in South Wales, four lodge officials from St John’s Lodge, in Maesteg, were sacked for “intimidation”. The four included Ian Isaac, the lodge secretary and South Wales NUM Executive member. An urgent campaign was launched to reverse this clear victimisation of the union leadership.

On 16 February, a 50-year-old Scottish miner from Cumnock in Ayrshire, Robert Innes, was, indeed killed by a lorry driven by a scab delivering coal, profoundly  shocking the other pickets and the whole community. The driver was arrested, at least, but the incident got nothing of the publicity it would have if the victim had been a scab [Militant 1 March].

On 24 February, just one week before the strike came to an end, a demonstration was called in London to show support for the miners. In the absence of any clear lead from the TUC, it was organised by a trade union left group, the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade unions (LCDTU). 50,000 people marched. Miners and their families, including the elderly and small kids in push chairs, were joined by their supporters from the wider movement and from many sections of society.

Brutal assault against London miners protest

In spite of the nature of the march, it was a day that the vicious tactics from the coal fields and Orgreave were seen in central London. The police had tried to divide the march at Whitehall and got into clashes with demonstrators. They chased and arrested two Nottinghamshire miners so the march stopped and people were demanding their release.

The police, in a tactic that would become much more common later, then attacked the march, mounting a brutal assault, with baton swinging officers on horseback. The marchers had nowhere to go but police officers screamed at them to move, making random arrests and lashing out with batons, injuring people and terrifying the many children [Militant 1 March].

As February went on, a feeling began to grow among sections of the union, including sections of the national executive, that the strike could no longer be won. The NUM was isolated and the necessary solidarity strike action by other unions had not materialised. The trickle back to work was becoming a larger drift back, albeit still grossly exaggerated by the bosses and the media. Even in the last days before the end of the strike, 75% of the miners who had come out on strike in March 1984 were still out [Militant 1 March].

But there was a fear that if more and more miners went back to work as individuals then the union would be seriously damaged and weakened for future battles. Better, it was believed, to decide to call the strike off and march back together, and preserve unity and loyalty to the union.

Against this was a passionate determination to win, to defeat the pit closure programme. If the secret plan to cut 70 pits was implemented, then the industry would be finished and all the jobs would be gone. Moreover, there was a strong feeling of duty not to go back unless those miners who had been sacked and victimised were reinstated. This was the position of Arthur Scargill and his supporters.

But on 28 February, MacGregor, sensing victory, pledged that the sacked miners would not be re-employed [National justice for Mineworkers – njfm.org.uk]

Defeat – the vote to go back

On Sunday 3 March, a Special Delegate Conference was called. It voted, by just 98 votes to 91 and against Scargill’s recommendation, to return to work without an agreement – any agreement – on 5 March. That the vote was so close, after a whole year on strike, was an extraordinary testament to the courage and determination that still existed.

In Scotland, the NUM executive voted by 7 votes to 6 to stay on strike. In Kent, at a mass meeting, only 7 out of 1,000 voted to return. 800 Kent miners had been arrested and 40 had been sacked [Militant 8 March]. Their villages, remote from the other coalfields in the country, had been occupied by police and subject to curfews. Kent miners refused to return and even tried to picket in Yorkshire on behalf of the sacked miners, but by 8 March, they too returned to work.

In mining areas all over the country the news of the decision to end the strike was received with some feelings of relief but also with anger, anguish, bitterness and recrimination, particularly regarding the abandonment of the sacked miners, many of whom had been the most active and dedicated fighters for their colleagues. But two days later, on Tuesday 5 March the miners united to return together. In proud but unbearably poignant scenes, they marched back behind their banners, or even their colliery bands.

By proudly marching back, united, with their heads held high, the miners gave the impression that they had not been defeated, much less crushed. Many others in the Labour movement followed the same narrative, that the miners were still strong and that they could recover, regroup and fight again for their industry, in a union which had been massively radicalised by the strike and particularly by an influx of new, young, socialist activists.

Many did not fully comprehend at the time that this was an understandable, comforting falsehood which disguised the depth of the defeat for the miners and for the entire labour movement. The NUM was seriously weakened and miners could not contemplate striking again. The new Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) – a scab union – was founded in December 1985 and operated in the areas that had stayed working, making those divisions permanent.

Within ten years, the mining industry had been largely destroyed, including in the areas that mostly scabbed during the strike. The few remaining pits were privatised. The mining areas became areas of mass unemployment and severe social deprivation. The trade union movement as a whole, in the wake of the defeat of its strongest battalion, was seriously weakened for decades to come, and the New Labour project of Tony Blair fed off that defeatism and demoralisation.

Strike transformed lives

It was certainly true that the strike changed the lives of many of the miners who were active in it and of the women of the mining communities. People who were entirely non-political, who never even attended union meetings, became  experienced advocates for trade unionism and socialism with new-found  strong links with campaigners in many other sections of society. As Gerry Lerner wrote in Militant [8 March]: –

“Workers who may only have organised darts matches in the past have now learned to organise mass struggle.”

The lives of women in the strike were particularly transformed, discovering political and organisational talents and a new confidence that changed many of them forever and won them to the ranks of the labour movement, to socialism and the struggle for women’s equality.

Notwithstanding the severity of the defeat, it is absolutely true that, in the words of Pat Craven writing in Militant [1 March]: –

“The miners year of struggle has been an inspiration to every worker. Those who have played a part in this historic battle will remember it with pride for the rest of their lives”.

[NB – Much of the information in this article comes from the socialist newspaper Militant, issues 1 February-8 March 1985]