History on our Side: Wales and the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike by Hywel Francis
Iconau, £9.99
OF ALL the numerous books on the miners’ historic strike of 1984-1985 this one, written by an expert on the history of the labour movement in Wales, carries a special and quite different approach, as well as fresh quality. It is also quite brief – a mere 97 pages – yet in fact it gains from this brevity since it focuses largely on the uniqueness of the South Wales mining community from which the entire British labour movement has drawn so much of its strength and inspiration.
Another important aspect of Hywel Francis’ excellent little book is that it refrains from simplistic verdicts on the rights and wrongs of Arthur Scargill’s questionable leadership of the strike – which has tended to dominate so many previous reflections on the year-long dispute.
It certainly contains several critical references to the former president of the National Union of Mineworkers but it doesn’t make a meal of these criticisms; what it does impressively well is to describe the extraordinary solidarity of the South Wales miners and their families and the sacrifices they made, especially the women of the mining communities. This is described so effectively by Dr Francis who uses his deep knowledge of the sociology and history of his subject, enabling him to paint a vivid picture of the South Wales mining communities waging their remarkable struggle not because they believed every word that emerged from the NUM headquarters in Sheffield – they didn’t – but because of their history.
Perhaps more than most areas of Britain’s coalfields, South Wales had a tradition of unusually selfless commitment to supporting their union – shades of the old Fed, the South Wales Miners’ Federation – and a deep soul of loyalty within the pit villages as they dug coal for the nation and fought to protect the men who did that lung-breaking job. It helped them rise above their own doubts and differences. Hywel Francis draws a picture of this commitment with great warmth and skill as he writes about the heart-rending sacrifices it often involved.
Nor is this surprising from the author. Dr Francis is not only the Labour MP for Aberavon with a past record as a distinguished labour historian – he was co-author of the history of the South Wales miners – he is also the son of the late Dai Francis, who was general secretary of the South Wales NUM from 1963 to 1976 and a leading Communist Party figure in South Wales who followed in the great traditions of Arthur Horner and Will Paynter.
Early in the book Hywel Francis makes the point about the differences of emphasis in policy between NUM HQ in Sheffield and the South Wales leaders in Cardiff. There was, he writes, “a mixture of deep pessimism, genuine concern about lack of democratic consultation and a fear of acting in isolation from other coalfields.” But despite all the differences with and scepticism about Scargill’s leadership – notably because of the absence of a ballot – there was “tremendous loyalty to the union ingrained in them from generations past and also the personal loyalty to lodge officers”. In summing up this atmosphere Dr Francis says: “It was a combination of loyalty to the union and a determination to honour family bonds that characterised the strike throughout South Wales for the next 12 months.”
Even so, that loyalty was being stretched to breaking point. From October 1984 the South Wales NUM leaders toured the coalfield urging continuing loyalty despite the suffering and the rejection of any compromise deal to settle the strike which they knew to be available. Francis writes: “By the new year [1985] it was loyalty alone that was sustaining the fragile unity of the commited activists and the majority of the strikers.” The sufferings within miners’ families were often beyond belief; not just immense but sometimes tragic. Even now, with so many books having been written and with so much debate still going on about the year-long struggle, we are still discovering fresh and terrible accounts of those sacrifices.
That indeed is the true merit of Hywel Francis’s contribution; it opens new windows on this extraordinary event and enables us to judge again on the horrific consequences of the policies of Margaret Thatcher’s Government and, to be sure, on the wisdom of Arthur Scargill’s strategy. In this new book, with a commendable quiet tone and a well-informed dignity, Hywel Francis enables us to do this.
Geoffrey Goodman
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