“The NUM has challenged the very heart of the capitalist system. We have refused to accept that any industry in capitalist society – whether public or private – has the right to destroy the livelihood of men and women at the stroke of an accountant’s pen. Our challenge has been met by an Establishment reaction of unprecedented savagery.”
Arthur Scargill, at the NUM Conference in 1985
The words of Arthur Scargill at the 1985 National Union of Miners conference, following the conclusion of the year-long miner’s strike, were echoed at Arise Festival’s ‘Class War in Britain – The Miners’ Strike 40 Years On‘ online event marking 40 years since the strike with a range of voices involved in the struggle and campaigners from today’s movement.
A year-long strike of over 160,000 miners, which laid waste to coalfields across Britain with the poverty and the violence it imposed remains a seminal moment in UK industrial history and a turning point in post-war economics.
The event saw hundreds of activists tune in throughout the day for three sessions: ‘What really happened during the ‘84-85 strike?’; ‘The Role of the State, Media & Ruling Class in Class War Britain’; and Solidarity Forever! Class Unity – the Fight for Coal not Dole, and the Struggle for Socialism.’
The sessions were addressed by several speakers who were present at the strike including Ian Lavery MP, a striking Northumberland miner who was subject to multiple police arrests in 1984-85, Jon Trickett MP, an MP in the former Yorkshire coalfield, and Lord John Hendy KC, who had acted as junior counsel in countless legal cases defending miners during the strike.
We also heard from a range of movement and trade union voices including Chris Peace from the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, Sarah Woolley General Secretary of the Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), Lucy Coleman from the National Education Union (NEU) and Andi Kocsandi from NAPO.
Mish Rahman and Sabby Dhalu, Stand Up to Racism, looked at the solidarity between miners and diverse communities, including black communities, while young trade unionist Niamh Iliffe, student activist at Warwick University, looked at the lessons for today’s struggle.
At the start of the day, it was remarked how this series of events was not a history class, because everywhere we look, we still live the political and economic realities the strike unleashed – whether that’s the zero hours, low pay and the gig economy, dominated by big finance, that the defeat of the miners, and ultimately the labour movement, led to. Further still, we’ve experienced the collective cultural scars in coalfield communities opening the door to the rise of the far right; or even the bonds of solidarity it created between the miners and other persecuted workers, both in Britain and internationally, that have lasted the decades and led to other forms of social transformation.
John Hendy KC gave a powerful outline of the lengths the government went to develop its strategy from defeats inflicted by the miners in the early 1970s, through the drafting of the Stepping Stones paper and the Ridley Report and the Tory initiative to trigger the strike at a time of their choosing through the announcement of pit closures.
He set out how the government used disturbing police tactics and made use of strategic litigation – involving grassroots miners groups rather than the NCB to bog down the NUM and sequester its resources, and he challenged the assertions that the NUM had not followed its own rules – as the union’s enemies argued in the media and in court – to divide miners and delegitimise the strike.
The trade union lawyer and Labour Peer went on to detail how the miners’ defeat paved the way for a succession of acts of parliament which stripped away trade union rights and allowed for privatisation, deregulation and worsening working conditions which have left us with the rise of zero hours contracts and over a decade of stagnating pay. Commenting on the Employment Rights Bill currently before the House of Commons, John explained that for the advances it does make – largely for individual rights – the majority of Thatcherite anti-union legislation is untouched.
Chris Peace highlighted the development of policing tactics to physically combat and demoralise the miners, most memorably in the use of batons, long shields and mounted police against the mass picket at Orgreave.
And Ian Lavery MP talked about the poverty of the miners, the reliance on solidarity from local communities up and down the country, of trade union and Labour Party branches, and of international labour
Jon Trickett’s contribution spoke to the experience of a police state operation in the Yorkshire coalfield with roadblocks and police checks interfering with everyday life to disrupt and prevent picketing and demoralised community support for the miners.
Sam Browse, speaking as an Arise activist, noted how the exhaustion of the Labour right government in the 1970s had opened the door to conflict with the trade unions through policies such as In Place of Strife income controls. The 70s Labour Government was under siege not only from the newly emerging monetarism that would make Thatcher’s brand of neo-liberal Conservatism but a different way forward on the left, of Tony Benn and his Alternative Economic Strategy, of Labour politicians supporting the NUM in struggle and the examples of the left in political leadership with Ken Livinstone leading the Greater London Council. The industrial defeat of the NUM was a necessity to neuter challenges to neoliberalism from the political left.
In summarising the day’s discussion, Matt Willgress of Arise repeated Scargill’s assertion on the viciousness of the ruling-class offensive against the NUM during the strike and said it, “springs from the knowledge that the heart of their own-class ridden system is under attack.”
He also said, ‘if we are serious about understanding the defeat of the strike, we must also be honest to look at the role played by those in the labour movement who do the bidding of capital rather than working-class people” and understand that we can only win if we stand in solidarity with each other.
The NUM during the strike understood this – with the entire arsenal of the capitalist class against them, and sought to mobilise throughout the movement and win allies to their fight.
There is much to learn from understanding the miner’s strike – you can start by watching the discussions from Arise’s event: Class War in Britain.
- Watch ‘Class War in Britain – The Miners’ Strike 40 Years On’ here.
- You can follow Arise Festival on Facebook, Instagram and twitter; and listen to the Arise Festival podcast on Spotify.
- You can see upcoming events from Arise Festival here.
