Dave Anderson – one of the miners involved in the battle to save jobs and communities 25 years ago – gives a personal assessment of events
AS MANY commentators and broadcasters mark the 25th anniversary of the miners’ strike, those of us who were involved in the day-to-day reality of it are left, to some extent, as onlookers.
Several reports cast a fresh light on things which show that ordinary men and women faced a state machine that was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to defeat their union and impose its will on them. Margaret Thatcher’s Government had no intention of repeating Edward Heath’s decision to ask: “Who runs the country?” They felt no remorse in their unremitting willingness to show who was in charge, whatever the social or economic costs to the nation.
This determination was not fully grasped by the National Union of Mineworkers or those of us on the frontline. Certainly, we said that this was a fight for survival, but we didn’t believe anyone would be foolhardy enough to destroy a whole industry to prove a political point. In our hearts, we realised that some pits were never going to be economically viable. My own was then 160 years old and, while we were turning out good quality coal, we recognised that we could never make a profit. But we also knew that we had the safest and most technically advanced coal industry in the world and, surely, no one was going to throw that away?
However, that, by and large, is where we ended up. Twenty-five years later, we are entitled to say: “We told you so”, when even Norman Tebbit and John Redwood regret going too far. But that won’t help the army of men, women and their children who suffered through the deliberate attack on their way of life.
Most mining communities were self-sufficient and, to some extent, insular. We had to be. Our history was one of hard work, hard times and hard knocks. Any casual look at the peaks and troughs of economic performance in the previous century shows a mirror effect in the coal industry. Boom followed bust as surely, and almost as often, as night follows day.
In the years between the two world wars, a miner was killed, on average, every six hours. There was no investment, little regard for health and safety and no recognition for the great service these communities were providing for the nation.
It is little wonder that nationalisation was so warmly welcomed by miners in 1947. But in a sad precursor of modern times, the Government was nationalising a basket case. Thankfully, things improved with the advent of mechanisation, the development of a genuine consensual partnership between employers and unions and with immense improvements in safety.
It was the determination of the miners to keep these hard-won gains and the memory of the not-too-distant past that drove us on. We were also aware of the harsh realities of life in Thatcher’s Britain.
None of us wanted to lose our jobs, because we believed we would cost us our communities and our way of life. And that wasn’t just the Brassed Off image of the colliery band – although that film does encapsulate the importance of our communities to us. We had inter-generational solidarity before any sociologist thought up the term. We had to have. Old men taught young lads how to stay alive at work. Old women taught young girls how to feed a family on a meagre pittance. Such solidarity survived into the Thatcher era, despite the fact that we were all materially a long way from the 1930s.
We had a lot to lose and we knew it. Working hard in bad conditions was a price we were well prepared to pay to continue with our way of life.
But it wasn’t to be. None of us believed Thatcher or Ian McGregor when they announced what they wanted as a long-term future for our industry or that they were only interested in removing “four million tons” of uneconomic capacity, as they declared at the end of February 1984.
The weekend before this announcement, Mick McGahey had spoken in Durham and urged us not to be fooled by McGregor’s words. Despite the deliberate flooding of Polmaise Colliery in Scotland in early 1984, he told us not to be swayed into going out on strike. Instead, he urged us to continue with the overtime ban, which was having a significant impact on the National Coal Board, and wait until the autumn before taking strike action.
As usual with Mick, these were wise words. Sadly, they were not heard across the country. Because of what is now reported to have been a mistake by the local colliery management when the NCB announced the closure of several pits, including Cortonwood in Yorkshire, the NUM engaged in a programme of action that was, in hindsight, tactically inept.
I was a regional representative – the delegate of my branch. We held a regional council on that weekend and agreed to ballot our members as a matter of urgency. To that end, we picketed out the night shift on the Sunday. Early on Monday, we held a meeting followed by a secret ballot around lunchtime. This voted two to one in support of strike action. The die was cast. Eventually, we were cast to one side.
At the end of it all, we had pride in the fact that we had taken a principled stand to defend our jobs and communities. But we have to accept that our failure to prevent the closure programme then made it easier for the Government to carry it out. The union had exhausted itself and, more importantly, its members.
The determination to win meant that we believed our only strategy was one that relied on Government plans being stalled as long as we stayed out on strike. Unfortunately, our single-minded attitude prevented us from listening to men with whom we had been lifelong friends who were telling us that they and their families couldn’t survive any longer.
Arthur Scargill has been widely blamed for this failure and for not realising that tactics which succeeded in the early 1970s would not be enough to defeat a much more determined and better-prepared opponent in the 1980s. But all in the NUM have to accept that our loyalty to Scargill and acceptance of his tactical approach was a collective decision. And we have to accept the consequences of that decision.
Yes, we were up against a Government that was absolutely determined to win. However, if we had been able to keep the union together, we might have had the capacity to negotiate a better outcome.
I am the first to admit that, in the heat of the battle, I would have rejected such a strategy out of hand. We made the fight an all-out, win-or-bust battle. And sadly, we lost. We all lost. Thatcher was able to push her free market ideals across the whole of British society with less resistance than might otherwise have been the case. Disillusioned trade unionists became less involved with the Labour Party and “new” Labour filled the vacuum. In particular, we failed to turn the mass political awakening of women in mining communities into a real political force. It’s not much consolation to our communities or next generations to keep thinking: “If only”.
Dave Anderson is Labour MP for Blaydon and a former miner
