“During the strike Thatcher and her ministers often hypocritically spoke of the primacy of the rule of law, when in reality they were denying striking miners of our legal and civil rights on a massive scale.”
By Ian Lavery MP
I grew up in the Sixties in Ashington, Northumberland, a town created by the coal mining industry. My life, like the vast majority of the people in my town, was dominated by coal. Our economic security, our culture and our social cohesion all had their foundations built on the industry that had brought Ashington into existence.
In 1984 our community’s future was threatened by the Thatcher Government’s determination to destroy the mining industry in order to weaken the entire British Trade Union Movement. The National Union of Mineworkers in 1984 in response went on strike and I as a young miner joined that fight. The insights I achieved through taking part in the Strike have stayed with me for the rest of my life.
I learned the importance of working class solidarity and the incredible strength that it can nurture within individuals and communities. I heard speeches from miners as brilliant as any heard from the mouths of the Oxbridge educated. The amazing strength of the women in the Women Against Pit Closures movement taught me he ignorance and injustice of sexism. The outpouring of support from oppressed groups in our society such as the minority ethnic and LGBT+ communities, illustrated that it only serves the interest of the ruling elite for bigoted prejudices to divide working class people.
The backing we received from trade unionist in other countries revealed to me the importance of internationalism and that I had very much more in common with working people all over the world than I had with the rich and powerful in the UK.
During the Strike Thatcher and her ministers often hypocritically spoke of the primacy of the rule of law, when in reality they were denying striking miners of our legal and civil rights on a massive scale. We faced in effect martial law that saw the awesome power of the state focused on destroying trade union resistance. Miners were unlawfully stopped from travelling, phone lines illegally tapped, and there was police brutality on a colossal scale. The vicious assault by an army of police on hundreds of unarmed miners at Orgreaves stands out as the prime example of such police brutality, but we should not forget that there were numerous small-scale Orgreaves all over the country. Disgracefully, those responsible have never been held to account for what were in reality sanctioned police riots.
Even now, forty years on, we need an inquiry into the policing of the Miners’ Strike to help us try to ensure that those in power are not permitted to repeat such heinous acts.
The NUM came close to victory, but tragically we were defeated and the legacy of poverty, ill health, drug abuse and neglect in the former coalfield communities is the result. The climate crisis would have seen the demise of the coal industry in any event, but there should have been a planned transition over time that saw coal mining phased out but not before it had been replaced by advanced green industries with similarly well paid jobs.
Currently, Unite, Community and the GMB are waging a similar battle to save a working class community dependent on the steel industry in Port Talbot. The Unions have impeccably argued alternatives to the devastating cuts in the workforce announced by the owners of Tata that are both green and vital to the UK’s economic security by preserving large scale production in Wales. It is essential that all parts of the Labour Movement support their campaign and prove that the industrial changes necessitated by climate change can be achieved by a socialist approach that avoids the economic destitution suffered by former mining communities.
A nostalgic commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the Miners’ Strike will be wonderful, but learning its lessons so as to succeed in today’s struggles is more important. The Miners’ Strike illustrated above all else is that working class solidarity is essential to protect our communities and that we are defeated only when that solidarity is broken. Then the mining communities in particular faced destruction, but after 14 years of Tory neo-liberal austerity, the future of every working class community in the UK is being threatened. All of our communities are in danger because of the resulting poverty, ill health and worsening social provision. Social cohesion is being undermined by the loss of community assets such as youth clubs, local community arts, post offices and police and fire stations.
Nevertheless, if we strive to reignite trade union and political activism and seek to rediscover working class solidarity, together we can create a progressive alternative and start to rebuild. That really would be a fitting legacy of the Miners’ Strike and something truly worth celebrating.
- Ian Lavery is the MP for Wansbeck, you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X.
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