The miners' strike
Britain's miners strike for a year against pit closures and are defeated by Margaret Thatcher's government, hastening the end of the coal industry and the communities built around it.
- Marching to the Fault Line: The 1984 Miners' Strike and the Death of Industrial Britain — Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Constable (2009)
- The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners — Seumas Milne, Verso (1994)
- Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography — Charles Moore, Allen Lane (2019)
- History on Our Side: Wales and the 1984–85 Miners' Strike — Hywel Francis, Iconau (2009)
In March 1984 the National Coal Board announced pit closures, and miners in Yorkshire and then across most of Britain walked out. The strike lasted a year, the longest major strike in British history, before the miners returned to work in March 1985 without a deal, and over the following decade most of Britain’s remaining coal mines closed.
- Marching to the Fault Line: The 1984 Miners' Strike and the Death of Industrial Britain — Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Constable (2009)
- History on Our Side: Wales and the 1984–85 Miners' Strike — Hywel Francis, Iconau (2009)
The union’s leader, Arthur Scargill, called the action area by area rather than holding a national ballot, which split the miners. Most in Nottinghamshire kept working. The government had stockpiled coal and used thousands of police from across the country to stop “flying pickets”. On 18 June 1984 police on horseback charged pickets at the Orgreave coking plant near Sheffield; the prosecutions of miners that followed collapsed.
- Marching to the Fault Line: The 1984 Miners' Strike and the Death of Industrial Britain — Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Constable (2009)
- The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners — Seumas Milne, Verso (1994)
In south Wales the strike was almost total. Villages fed families through soup kitchens, women organised and spoke publicly for the first time, and unlikely allies such as Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, who twinned with the Dulais valley, raised money, a story later told in the film Pride. In November 1984 a taxi driver, David Wilkie, was killed when two striking miners dropped a concrete block onto his car as he drove a working miner to Merthyr Vale colliery, a tragedy that shocked the coalfield.
- History on Our Side: Wales and the 1984–85 Miners' Strike — Hywel Francis, Iconau (2009)
- Wales since 1939 — Martin Johnes, Manchester University Press (2012)
After the defeat, the closures came fast. Kellingley in Yorkshire, Britain’s last deep coal mine, closed in 2015. Many former mining towns in England and Wales still have high rates of long-term sickness and lower life expectancy.
- Marching to the Fault Line: The 1984 Miners' Strike and the Death of Industrial Britain — Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Constable (2009)
- Wales since 1939 — Martin Johnes, Manchester University Press (2012)
The government deliberately set out to break the National Union of Mineworkers, using the police as a political weapon, most notoriously at Orgreave in June 1984, and destroyed whole communities with no plan for what came after.
- The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners — Seumas Milne, Verso (1994)
- History on Our Side: Wales and the 1984–85 Miners' Strike — Hywel Francis, Iconau (2009)
Many pits were losing money, the strike was called without a national ballot, and its leader Arthur Scargill sought political confrontation; defeating it ended a decade in which unions had brought down governments, and was necessary to modernise the economy.
- Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography — Charles Moore, Allen Lane (2019)
Most miners in Nottinghamshire and some other areas kept working, angry that there had been no ballot; many later formed a breakaway union and were called "scabs" for years afterwards.
- Marching to the Fault Line: The 1984 Miners' Strike and the Death of Industrial Britain — Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Constable (2009)
Why it matters today
The strike is one of the great dividing lines of modern England. In the former coalfields of Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Durham and the Midlands it still decides family loyalties, how people feel about the police and whether they will ever vote Conservative, and the poverty left by the pit closures fed the anger of "left-behind" towns decades later.
South Wales was the most solid area in the whole strike, and its defeat, followed by the closure of almost every pit, ended the industry that had made modern Wales. The solidarity of those months, from women's support groups to London's lesbian and gay supporters, is remembered with pride; the unemployment and ill-health that followed in the valleys are remembered with bitterness.