Miners' dispute divided the nation

In 1984, the National Coal Board announced that an agreement made with the miners in 1974 not to close pits was no longer valid and they intended to shut 20.

Frank Elson looks back at a dispute that split towns, communities, and even families.

Breaking the unions - Thatcher-style

NO matter what side of the political divide you belong to, history now shows that, rather than economics, the decision to close the pits was made in an effort to break the stranglehold of the unions in the UK at the time.

Arthur Scargill, leader of the National Union of Mineworkers was - depending on your point of view - a rabble rouser or the champion of the working classes.

Margaret Thatcher was either the person to save the country from union blackmail or an oppressor of the working classes.

Miners first walked out in Yorkshire on March 1, 1984, after the NCB announcement.

Crunch day locally came on March 22. Pickets from Yorkshire and Durham had been to pits throughout Lancashire from day one, and many men were already on strike. But, on this day, the Lancashire leadership finally called the strike official.

But it was not as simple as that - families were divided with some continuing to work while others went out.

In the absence of a national strike ballot - the NUM claimed that a previous ballot still appllied - the full force of the law was turned on the union and the strikers.

NUM funds were seized by the High Court, miners were denied state benefits and their wages, and the police were mobilised to deal with pickets on the grounds that they represented illegal public disturbances.

Lancashire was a "moderate" county and spared the worst of the violence that filled our TV screens night after night.

On April 3, miners picketed the NUM Bolton offices in Bridgeman Place. Staff refused to cross the picket line.

Again confusion reigned, with those against the strike claiming intimidation by pickets from Durham, and local strikers insisting that it had been a local event protesting against their "leaders".

A few weeks later, the offices were occupied by miners from Bold, Sutton Manor, Parkside and Golborne Collieries - the strike was declared "official" and the offices became a strike fund centre.

On May 9, there were 10 arrests at Parkside after scuffles between pickets and men who were continuing to work.

On May 29, Lancashire miners still at work were threatened with five years suspension from the union.

By the beginning of June, the strike in Lancashire was complete. They stayed out until the official end on March 3, 1985.

The strike cost more than £10 million to police, led to a division in the Miners' Union that even resulted in the setting up of another union - and the rundown of the coal industry continued.

Historians are divided on the effects of the strike. Some say that the strike slowed down the closures; others that it accelerated them.

All we can say, with absolute certainty, is that, for those involved, miners, their families, their supporters and their opponents, the memories of that unhappy year have not faded.

Campaigner Billy looks back on that turmoil

BILLY Kelly worked at Agecroft Collierywhen the strike broke. He recalls how the dispute left him, his wife and their four children struggling to make ends meet:

ONE day during the strike a neighbour knocked on Billy Kelly's door.

In her arms was a huge bowl of potato hash: "I've made too much of this, Billy, can you help me out?"

Another day Billy was driving to Manchester when he felt a wheel wobbling: "The nuts had been loosened on one wheel," said the father of four.

" I saw the best of people and the worst of people that year."

Billy, from Moses Gate, Farnworth, was a coalface electrician at Agecroft Colliery on the Salford/Prestwich at the time of the strike. Now 63 and general secretary of the NUM Lancashire area he looks back with a mixture of pride and sorrow.

"We knew something was going to happen when they appointed Ian MacGregor as head of the NCB (National Coal Board.

"He had made his name as a union basher in America. It was just a matter of when.

"Thatcher had to break the unions as part of her policy. It was obvious that she intended to take on the NUM, the strongest union in the country at the time."

Billy doesn't even remember on what date he, personally, joined the strike.

"I went in to work one night, I was on regular nights in those days, and there was a picket line from Yorkshire. I turned 'round and went home.

"The next night I went again, they were there again, so I went home.

"The third night they weren't there but I thought about it and went home. I told my wife, Dot, that I thought I had to strike, she just told me to do what I thought was best.

"I went in the next day to tell the union officials in the pit that I was on strike. They told me there was only me and one other man - which I later found out to be a lie - and advised me to go on the sick!"

Billy stayed at home, alone and slightly bewildered, for a week before he met another worker from Agecroft standing by his car in the centre of Farnworth: "He said he was on strike as well, and he knew some others, so we were able to start to get organised."

It was also a strange time because NUM officials, at the collieries and at the union offices in Bolton, were against the strike: "We had to organise on our own but it was very wrong. You elect a government or a council to do what you have asked them to do - they don't have another ballot to go to war in Iraq do they? But, despite it being national union policy to walk out if they started closing pits, our officials said we had to have another, area, ballot. Then they put the ballot boxes in the colliery grounds, knowing that we wouldn't cross picket lines."

There are obvious some very unpleasant memories from those days: "Some people have not forgotten, and perhaps never will."

The most immediate, and long lasting problem, that Billy and local miners concentrated on, was the hardship to families.

"We were very lucky in our area, I lived, in a council house and we were surrounded by a strong working class population who were just marvelous. "Money and donations of clothes and food started coming in very soon.

"I got the job of going round to miners' homes and asking their wives what the problems were. The lads, they always said things were OK, but I found a lot of hardship and was able to help distribute a lot of much needed items.

"One lad, someone found him crying, he was about to be evicted from his home. The pickets, can you believe it, the pickets had a whip round and raised enough to put the eviction off, then I contacted the company and explained and we got it sorted out.

"One night there was a knock on the door and a woman asked if I was Billy Kelly. I said yes and she told me to wait and went to this parked van - I didn't know what to expect, it could have been blokes with pickaxe handles, but she brought a huge turkey out and said she'd bought it and it was too big for her oven."

Eventually Billy was able to travel around the country on his welfare work: "I went to this village near to Durham. It was a colliery village so it was full of men on strike with no non-mining friends anywhere near. They showed me a room where they were collecting toys for their children at Christmas. It was heartbreaking there was just this handful of things...

"Still, soon after a lorry arrived from the French mining union - it was packed to the roof with toys and stuff for the kids," he said, with a twinkle in his eye.

Throughout all this helping others of course Billy himself had no income, I asked how he managed: "Dot had a bit of a job and my eldest daughter had just started work," he shrugged, "we managed."

From a non-activist to general secretary of his area, Billy Kelly obviously changed, I asked if the strike had been the cause. I didn't get a clear answer.

"We did what was right, and Thatcher did what she thought was right.

"They destroyed the coal industry for political ends, cuting off their nose to spite their face.

"How many windfarms will it take to replace one coal-powered power station?

"It's still there, the coal. There is no doubt that one day the mines will have to be re-opened."

Strike diary:

March 1, 1984: Closure of Cortonwood pit in Yorkshire announced, 55,000 Yorkshire miners walked out.

March 5: Yorkshire miners' strike started officially.

March 12: National miners' strike began.

March15: Yorkshire miner David Jones died on a picket line at Ollerton in Nottinghamshire.

March 16: Notts miners voted against a strike.

April 11: Pit deputies vote by 7,638 to 6,661 in favour of strike, but their rules required a two-third majority.

April 12: Arthur Scargill rules out national strike ballot.

May 4: Biggest demonstration of the strike so far, 10,000 pickets at Haworth pit, Notts.

May 23: NUM meets NCB chief Ian MacGregor for talks which break down after one hour.

May 29: Violence at Orgreave coke plant in Yorkshire when 7,000 pickets clash with police. There were 82 arrested, 69 injured.

May 30: Arthur Scargill arrested at Orgreave for obstruction.

June 15: Joe Green crushed to death by a lorry while picketing at Ferrybridge, Yorkshire.

June 18: More violence at Orgreave. 93 arrested, 79 injured, including Scargill.

October 10: NUM fined £200,000, peace formula presented to ACAS, talks break down again.

October 25: Court orders seizure of NUM assets after £200,00 fine not paid.

November 13: TUC general secretary Norman Willis condemns violence during a rally in South Wales and is booed.

November 30: South Wales taxi driver David Wilkie killed by concrete post as he drives miner to work.

February 21: NUM delegate conference rejects TUC formula for ending strike.

February 27: Coal Board says that more than half the NUM's 180,000 are back at work.

March 1: NUM area conferences call for return to work.

March 3: Special delegate conference votes 98 to 91 for return to work on March 5. The strike is over.