‘Coal mining was in my blood’ Now councillor Jim McMahon looks back at the miners’ strike
THIS year marks the 40th anniversary of the miners strike which ripped Ayrshire communities apart.
When thousands of Ayrshire miners downed tools on Friday, March 9, 1984, they were fighting to preserve generations of history and a future not blighted by poverty and unemployment.
They believed Margaret Thatcher’s government, supported by the National Coal Board (NCB), wanted to destroy the industry.
But the government said the industry was running at a loss and change was inevitable.
And 40 years on, the bitter divisions caused by the strike are far from healed - and emotions remain raw.
Jim McMahon, now an East Ayrshire councillor representing Cumnock and New Cumnock, was a miner from Logan when National Union of Miners leader Arthur Scargill called the strike.
Today, he says: “I knew the devastation that was going to follow. They took away the jobs and ripped the heart out of communities.”
Jim himself was arrested when miners picketed North Ayrshire’s Hunterston ore terminal in May 1984 to stop “scab coal” being brought in from overseas.
An estimated 1,000 miners were met by 2,000 police officers - many mounted on horses determined to allow dozens of Yuill and Dodds lorries to leave the site carrying coal shipped in from South Africa and South America.
At 12.57pm that day, the first of the 39 lorries swept in through the entrance as the pickets surged forward towards the police lines, trying to outflank them.
But the police line held firm and the frustrated miners could only watch and jeer as the lorries sped past them.
It took just three minutes for all the lorries to make it through.
And then the violence erupted. Pickets pushed forward on the left, and a brigade of mounted police advanced to repel them.
A bottle was thrown, a scuffle broke out, and police hats flew through the air. A band of officers moved right into the crowd in a bid to break it up.
Then the arrests began. Police filled vans with more than 80 pickets over two days.
Jim said: “I was talking to the police officer and suddenly his attitude changed. A shove came from the back.
“I fell. I was arrested, led to a van and my photograph was taken.”
Councillor McMahon landed in the dock at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court.
His solicitor accused Sheriff