The miners’ strike of 1984-85 was the bitterest class war since the 1926 General Strike. The Tory government of Margaret Thatcher mobilised the entire strength of the state to crush the National Union of Mineworkers. Paramilitary riot police placed mining communities under total siege. The welfare state was manipulated to starve miners back to work. A scab workforce was organised to break the strike, and billions were spent to keep the power stations running without coal. The full weight of the courts was used to sequestrate the funds of the miners’ union and break its resolve. The capitalist press churned out a Niagara of lies against the miners. As with all great events, it exposed the class relations of society. All the forces of the old society combined in order to crush the miners.
For twelve months, the miners and their families held out against this unprecedented onslaught. Their heroism, determination and courage astonished the world and inspired millions. They demonstrated their unconquerable will to fight. This struggle brings to mind the epic words of the revolutionary poet Shelley, written in the aftermath of the massacre at Peterloo:
Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth, like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many – they are few!
At the time of Thatcher’s second election victory in 1983, plans were well advanced to take revenge on the miners. Coal stocks were steadily built up, totalling nearly 49 million tons by the time of the strike. The Central Electricity Generating Board increasingly switched from coal to nuclear power. Everything was done to make existing pits appear “uneconomic” and therefore “unprofitable”. The Tories demanded they be shut down, despite the terrible social consequences. They were determined to impose the “rigours of the market”, which had already destroyed swathes of manufacturing jobs, on the coal industry. This policy had been bitterly opposed by the NUM, which insisted that pits should only close when they run out of mineable reserves, and not on so-called “uneconomic” grounds.
This plan to defeat the miners was more than just about revenge for past humiliations. The Tories wanted to crush the miners because to them they epitomised militancy. Their real aim, however, was to cow the rest of the working class, and completely alter the balance of forces across British industry. Thatcher imagined that Great Britain could only become great once more on the backs of an oppressed and exploited working class. Wages had to be driven down to the lowest levels possible. In effect, the programme of Thatcherism meant an attempt to return to Victorian times. A humiliating defeat of the NUM would represent a decisive blow to the morale of the British workers, and open up a new stage of capitalist domination.
In preparation for the struggle, the Tories had placed the police force under centralised command in the guise of the National Reporting Centre at New Scotland Yard. Thousands of extra riot police were trained and the Special Patrol Group was beefed up. New anti-union laws were on the statute books. Non-unionism had been systematically encouraged amongst road haulage firms. In October, the NUM had begun an overtime ban over wages to reduce coal stocks and to prepare the ground for industrial action. By early 1984 Thatcher believed everything was in place to quickly isolate and defeat the miners. The Tories boasted that it was to be their “industrial Falklands”.
The Coal Board chairman Ian MacGregor immediately set about making provocative statements about reducing the size of the coal industry. In the course of this he dropped a bombshell about plans to shed 20,000 jobs and close some twenty pits. On 1 March 1984 the NCB announced the closure of Cortonwood colliery in Yorkshire. It was to be the first pit closure on “uneconomic” grounds without NUM consent since 1981. The fat was on the fire; there was no turning back. The stage was set for the “mother of all class battles”.
Superficial commentators in the capitalist press had written-off the fighting abilities of the miners. They said the old militant traditions of 1972 and 1974 had been swamped by consumer affluence. Young miners now had mortgages, cars, TVs, videos, foreign holidays and such like. Such opinions were reinforced by the likes of Professor Hobsbawm, of the British “Communist” Party, who had drawn deeply pessimistic conclusions about the working class in his essay The Forward March of Labour Halted? For him, the highpoint of working class solidarity and consciousness had peaked some 25-30 years earlier, and from then on it was downhill all the way. Events were soon to give the lie to this ingrained pessimism, so characteristic of the “left” intelligentsia.
On hearing the news of the Cortonwood closure, and without waiting for the NUM executive to call a national ballot, there were spontaneous walkouts across the coalfields. It was like a mighty army regrouping for battle. As in 1981, flying pickets were sent out to bring all pits to a standstill. In South Wales, Tyrone O’sullivan, the branch secretary of Tower colliery, took the initiative of sending pickets to every Welsh pit to rally support, to great effect. In South Wales, at the initial pithead ballots only 11 out of 28 pits voted to strike. Clearly bad feeling had been created by the abandonment of the earlier struggle over Lewis Merthyr. However, once the pickets arrived and the case was explained, the situation was transformed. The South Wales coalfield was rock solid for action, and would remain so for the duration of the strike. By early March some 171 pits were at a standstill. Not only were Yorkshire, Scotland, Wales, Kent and Durham firm, flying pickets were sent into Nottinghamshire, North Derbyshire and Lancashire to spread the stoppage.
A special issue of The Miner was rushed out with the heading “The Fight’s On.” Unfortunately, the national executive of the union decided not to call a national ballot. This was a serious mistake since there is no doubt that a ballot could have been won with a campaign. This was demonstrated by what happened in South Wales. Also a MORI poll for LWT’s Weekend World, taken on Friday 9 March, showed that 62 per cent of miners were prepared to strike over pit closures, compared with 33 per cent against.[1] Instead the executive endorsed the strike through Rule 41, which gave powers to the Areas to call strikes. “I want to make it clear that we are not dealing with niceties here,” explained Mick McGahey, the union’s vice-president. “Area by area will decide, and in my opinion it will have a domino effect.” He went on to oppose a national ballot with the words: “We shall not be constitutionalised out of a defence of our jobs.”[2]
But this was a tactical blunder of the first magnitude. It reflected a lack of confidence in the miners. Traditionally, as was evident from 1972 and 1974, miners held a national ballot before any national action. The attempt to circumvent this practice simply served to play into the hands of the Tories and all those who opposed the miners. This and other mistakes were to have far reaching consequences for the dispute. A successful ballot for action, a united army facing the NCB and Tories, would have resulted in victory within a space of three or four months. Now there was to be a long drawn-out battle.