The 1983-1984 English miners strike was a bitter clash. It devastated the coal mining industry and those who worked in it. It also made the labour party electable with the divorce between unions and the party of the left.
Coal Miners or there union caused the defeat of both a conservative and a labour government in the 1970’s and so this beast would have had to have been tamed by somebody sooner or later.
The reaction to tame it was Margaret Thatcher, and despite what other parties might think about her and the actions that took place stopped three day weeks and made governments govern rather than being beer and sandwich vendors for union leaders and business.
Isbn 9781845296148 is a book by Francis Beckett and David Hencke called marching to the fault line which takes a 25 years plus look at the dispute and provides an interesting left wing view of the strike which the acknowledges faults on both sides.
Worsborough (near Barnsley/Sheffield) is the village where an Arthur Scargill came to prominence and in his early days did good on being union rep. Eventually he became leader of the mineworkers union the num.
Instead of the politicians clashing on idealogy it was him against government, Scargill was outclassed on the third attempt of regime change as the rules where rewritten and old demons returned to haunt the num.
If you go back far enough somebody will have a grudge – the mineworker grudge goes back to 1926 in britian, and they would have claimed that they where better trade unionists than others making those other trade unionists untrustworthy. The end of the second world war saw that the miners became government employees
The strike (illegal or not under law) is well documented, the book details the posible breakthroughs and downright strange dealings by the Barnsley centric Scargil and close friends to travellers of the union cause during the year that collasped the industry.
Many have suffered as a result and Billy Elliot (my blog) has ensured it has become not just an dull strike.
5/5 bananas.
