Throughout this 40th anniversary year of the miners’ strike, Left Horizons will publish regular bulletins on important issues and developments that occurred during the strike “as it happened”.
This update covers events between 14 December and 25 January 1985.
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The mining communities endured the physical and mental hardship of the Christmas period, where enormous efforts tried to ensure that the children had the best Christmas that was possible in the circumstances. January brought much colder weather, which simultaneously increased their hardship but also boosted the hopes for energy shortages and power cuts to put pressure on the bosses and Thatcher’s government.
Attempts to close down power stations became the central task of the strike, focused on maintaining the rail workers’ admirable solidarity and preventing coal and oil supplies being delivered by scab lorry drivers. All this was against the backdrop of continuing harassment from the state and intense efforts to persuade or bully miners back to work.
Christmas
Mining communities and their supporters in every part of the country redoubled their efforts in fundraising in December to try to provide Christmas food and presents for the children, especially the younger ones. For example, in Newcastle, miners from Eppleton Lodge held a street collection on Christmas Eve, alongside supporters of Militant in the area, raising £671! Similar reports could have been made from every town and city by socialists and trade unionists. In Ireland, a collection in Dublin raised £1,600 in one day. The Irish Post Office Engineering Union pledged a £3,500. Even in Limerick, £406 was collected [Militant 4 January 1985]
Apart from money, small gifts, toys and sweets were donated both in Britain and internationally. In South Wales, a hamper was provided for every family and a huge consignment of toys and sweets arrived from France and Belgium. Christmas parties were held in every mining community in South Wales.
In the Hemsworth area of South Yorkshire, two children’s parties were organised, one for over 8s and one for those under 8. These were funded by print workers from the NGA trade union working at The Sun and The Daily Mirror, who raised thousands of pounds between them. And these efforts were duplicated in every mining area [Militant 4 January]. Some older children, who were old enough to understand the situation, remember that Christmas fondly.
Isobel Knight, a miner’s wife from Cynheidre pit in South Wales, explained that, with no coal in a cold winter, they spend a lot of time scavenging for wood. She says: –
“The struggle has brought our family very close together. The kids understand the need to economise everything. They don’t refuse to help with the scavenging, and the older boys are always ready to help their father doing support work. Christmas is not the same this year, but I managed to save 50p a week for a turkey and presents for the younger children. Dick, (her husband, a winder [lift operator-Ed]) has said ‘no way will I wind for scabs.’ I fully support him. We will never give in now to the scabs or the Coal Board.”
[Militant 4 January]
Of course, not all were that lucky and the strike did cause some families to break up under the economic pressure and the stress.
As the miners’ strike entered its eleventh month, in itself an incredible feat of courage, organisation, solidarity and grim determination, the usual harassment and abuse of striking miners and their families and supporters continued, while the press and TV hyper-focused on any violence that they alleged was committed by striking miners. One man in the north-east of England claimed to have had acid thrown in his face by three pickets, and the allegation was widely broadcast, only for police to later announce that they are not looking for any other person – ie he had done it to himself! [Militant 4 January].
Increasing the pressure
The benefits system was being tightened to increase the pressure. Single miners had been able to claim benefits to cover payments for “board” (living expenses, money for bills etc) to their parents or other close relatives. The Tories abolished that on 18 December.
In Ashington, in Northumberland, a police inspector driving past women who were picketing, stopped his car and wound down the window to stick up two fingers and shout, “You are nothing but sluts. Your husbands ought to get themselves back to work!” [Militant 4 January].
In Fitzwilliam in Yorkshire, after a long-drawn-out saga after the people of the village fought back against police violence, the trial finally found seven of the “Fitzwilliam Nine”, including two young women, guilty, solely on police evidence, of “threatening behaviour” and “breach of the peace”. Three were also found guilty of “assaulting a police officer” and one of those, Peter Hurst, was jailed for six months. Other sentences were suspended. Two were found not-guilty.
But the most important element of the trial was the detailed political cross examination of the defendants, about their membership of the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS). In spite of the guilty verdicts, an extremely successful and well-supported campaign was organised around the arrests of the “Fitzwilliam 9” [Militant 4 January]
In Coventry, Gas Board officials turned up at the houses of all the officers of the strike committee, and other active strikers, with a large police escort, claiming they needed access for a “safety inspection” of the meter. They found nothing wrong with the meters but insisted on putting locks and clamps on them.
The local newspaper was primed to report on officers acting on an anonymous phone call, clearly implying that that the miners were guilty of some unspecified offence. The gas workers’ union GMBATU (now the GMB) were outraged and their employers and the local newspaper, the Coventry Evening Telegraph. In fact, the gas workers had a position not disconnecting miners for debt and were fully supportive of the miners’ struggle [Militant 18 January]
Media “return to work” claims
As January wore on, every news broadcast seemed to lead with figures, often double counted (or just made up) about how many miners had returned to work and which pits were “working”.
But the definition of “working” was often deliberately misleading. Handfuls of scabs being bussed through picket lines to work did not mean at all that any coal would be produced at that pit. Production was often impossible with such a level of staffing. But the media lies and distortions created the constant impression that the strike was somehow “crumbling”.
The really astonishing thing was how many miners were still out on strike after such a long and bitter dispute. On 7 January in South Wales, according to the Coal Board’s own figures, 141 miners had returned to work out of 20,000! Only 2 pits were working, out of 27. Reports from Polkemmet pit in Scotland counted only 88 working miners – just 6.2%. [Militant 11 January]
By 18 January, there were still 140,000 miners still on strike – representing 72% of the total workforce. Those figures included both those working from the beginning, in Nottinghamshire and other areas, and those who had gone back more recently. And the hundreds of striking miners who had been sacked during the dispute were not included.
In the six pits in the Hemsworth area of South Yorkshire, only 37 miners had gone back, out of 4,500 [Militant 18 January]. One miner at Parkside colliery in Lancashire who had returned to work only lasted a shift before coming back out on strike, once he had seen the new management style down the pit. [Militant 4 January]
The economic effects of the strike on the wider UK economy were enormous. In early January the strike was costing the government at least £85 million per week. The cost of oil imports to break the strike alone was £40 million per week, and had cost £350 million so far. 77 million tonnes of coal production had been lost. Overall, it was estimated that the strike had cost £5 billion. The pound had fallen in value by 20% [Militant 4 January]
Thatcher’s fight to the finish
Yet Thatcher and the Tories were determined to fight to the finish. This was in spite of serious discontent in their own ranks caused by the social chasm that had opened up in the mining areas and more generally, and the wave of radicalisation and class tension. On 17December, MacGregor, at the National Coal Board (NCB) slammed the door on “peace” efforts which were being brokered by the TUC. Attempts by the NUM General Secretary, Peter Heathfield, to open discussions with the NCB on 23rd January were blocked by an intervention from MacGregor [National Justice for Mineworkers – njfm.org.uk]
The TUC leaders had seen themselves all along as “peacemakers” and did all they could to wriggle out of leading a determined united fightback from the whole movement. In a highly symbolic move, the previous TUC General Secretary, Len Murray, and the appalling right-wing leader of the Electrical and Plumbing Union (EEPTU), Frank Chapple, were ennobled in Thatcher’s New Year’s Honours List. Meanwhile, a listeners’ poll for the BBC’s flagship Today programme on Radio 4, voted for their “Man of the Year” – Arthur Scargill!!
There were calls for the TUC to take the lead in organising wider solidarity action, including a 24-hour general strike, building to an all-out strike, uniting the separate grievances of different groups of workers with the struggle of the miners, and to resist the threat to the movement of the government’s anti-trade union laws. The NUM in North Derbyshire, for example, called for a general strike. [Militant 18 January]. In Yorkshire a “day of action” was called for 11th February, urging other workers to take a day, or at least half a day, off work.
A rally was organised by the new group of left trade unionists – the Broad Left Organising Committee (BLOC) – outside the TUC General Council meeting on 23 January, to try to pressure them into taking bolder action.
In fact, the TUC just needed to abide by existing TUC policy, on not crossing picket lines and not accepting the new Tory laws. The leadership were indecisive, however, and some right-wing leaders were effectively endorsing strike breaking.
“Sick and tired of standing alone.”
In the words of Rita Aspinall from Coppull, who spoke at a 3,000 strong demonstration in Manchester on 19 January, while acknowledging that food and kitchens were vital: –
“To put it bluntly, we are sick and tired of standing alone. What we want is action, industrial action to make sure we win as soon as possible…This is all a first step in a campaign to take away the rights of the working class. It is a campaign that will affect every trade unionist, the young, the old, the sick and the unemployed. No-one in the labour movement can stand on one side and say it is not their strike”
[Militant 25 January]
The key to any possibility of winning the strike at this stage was stopping he power stations, and causing power cuts. The rail unions (NUR and ASLEF) had shown fantastic solidarity throughout the strike in not moving coal by rail. Their solidarity even extended to areas like Coalville in Leicestershire, where 90% of the miners were working but rail workers still refused to move the coal.
Those workers had been victimised, threatened with the loss of all non-coal shipments, and even harassed by police on vindictive allegations of stealing minor items of kit from work. Even where some rail workers did move coal, in the Trent Valley area, the signal workers refused to let the trains pass. A similar story of harassment of rail workers was seen at Shirebrook depot in Nottingham, also in an area where most miners were working. The fact that rail workers were still solid in such areas seemed to particularly incense management.
On 17 January, there was strike action on the Eastern and London Midland Region railways as a response to this harassment, though many rail workers wanted the action to extend wider. Eleven depots were called out on strike (and Waterloo, in London, joined in anyway) in a successful day of action that won some concessions, such as the right to be put on alternative work rather than be sent home if they refused to move coal shipments, but the main management push to keep moving scab coal continued [Militant 25 January]
The sad truth was that the huge imports of oil, and the supply of coal from scab pits, transported by scab lorry drivers made the task of shutting power stations extremely difficult. Both non-union lorry drivers and some TGWU members took part in the governments massive push to move coal (and oil) by road. At Bickenshaw, in Lancashire, the TGWU finally expelled scab lorry drivers but much more needed to be done [Militant 18 January]
But although difficult, the task of shutting power stations was not impossible. The key power stations were the coal-fired stations outside the Midlands area. It was calculated that coal stocks at these power stations were low, and that if no more coal were delivered, then they could run out by late January. If 100,000 tonnes were delivered per week and used, then they could last until February and if 200,000 tonnes were delivered then they could last until March [Militant 11 January].
Six key power stations
If six power stations – West Thurrock, Fiddler’s Ferry, Aberthaw A+B, Eggborough, Ferrybridge B+C, and Drax A+B – could be stopped, then the National Grid, it was thought, would need to make power cuts. West Thurrock power workers had already refused to deal with scab coal and it was running at minimum capacity (or not at all). Workers at nearby Tilbury power station met with striking miners to hear their case and a rally was organised for 21 January. It was explained that, in spite of threats, workers at West Thurrock had not actually been disciplined.
[Militant 25 January 1985]
In South Wales, industry was “energy saving” between 4pm and 7pm each day. In the northern towns of Doncaster and Ellesmere Port, voluntary power cuts for customers in exchange for cheaper tariffs, were being reported [Militant 11 January].
In a bizarre twist, talks between the pit supervisory and safety staff, NACODS, and the Coal Board broke down on 15th January after the union walked out. They organised a ballot for 25 January on a 5.2% pay offer! This, after the shameful capitulation back in October, when the union leadership reneged on an 82% vote for strike action. In an extraordinary statement, Ken Sampey, the union President, criticised Mac Gregor’s “negative attitude” and said that they were not prepared to see the NUM decimated(!) [Militant 25 January].
In Parliament, protests from left, Campaign Group, MPs continued. Dave Nellist, Tony Benn, Dennis Skinner, Terry Fields and other had called for a debate in which they could highlight the enormous cost of the strike in terms of oil imports. When the speaker refused, the Campaign Group MPs remained standing, which in the arcane nonsense of Parliament is a serious disciplinary offence!
At the meeting of the Parliamentary Party later that day, the Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, used the opportunity, naturally, to attack the left MPs, turning an anti-government protest to a media story about divisions in the Labour Party. Kinnock condemned the MPs’ actions as “a piece of entertainment, a self-indulgence, a hobby!” [Militant 25 January]. Earlier in January, Dennis Skinner MP had called upon Kinnock and other Labour MPs to donate their recent pay increase to the miners! [Militant 11 January]
The beginning of a split and a breakaway union
January saw an important development both for the strike and for the future of the industry. The split between the striking and working miners, though extremely bitter, had not actually split the union organising structures. However, on 12 January, Henry Richardson, the pro-strike leader of the NUM in Nottingham, who had picketed and worked against the majority of scabs in that coalfield for eleven months, was “suspended” from his position as General Secretary of the area NUM [NJFM]
It became clear that the scab leaders in Nottinghamshire, such as Roy Lynk, working closely with the Coal Board and government were planning to split the NUM and form a breakaway union. The full extent of Lynk’s collaboration with the government only became fully known after the strike, but it was clear that he was working actively to defeat the strike and split away from the NUM. They proposed local rule changes that were obviously the beginnings of a process to start a new, scab union.
The loyal NUM officers and activists, understandably, then brought forward rule changes to take disciplinary action against the scab leaders, but it was presented to working miners in the Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire, that all scabs would be expelled, thus hastening, and setting in stone, a damaging permanent split in the union.
[NB – Much of the information in this article comes from the socialist newspaper Militant – issues 4 January – 25 January 1985]
