Arrests and injuries as miners and police clash at picket line over strike
Homes and businesses were without electricity for up to nine hours a day when striking miners began picketing power stations in a dispute with the government over pay.
Electricity was cut off on a rota basis between 7am and midnight every day, forcing factories and businesses to close.
Miners began their first official national walk out for 50 years on January 9. They were demanding a £9-a-week pay rise on top of an average wage of £25. The UK Government’s National Coal Board offered a 7.9% deal but the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) refused to put it to the vote.
The then little-known Yorkshire NUM official called Arthur Scargill led a mass of flying pickets who targeted power stations.
Striking miners were backed by thousands of members of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers.
In Scotland, 2,000 coal miners and their supporters attempted to prevent South of Scotland Electricity Board (SSEB) employees from entering the Longannet power station in Fife.
The disturbance on February 14 saw 400 police officers hold back the miners to allow workers to drive in to the power plant.
Several officers were injured and 13 pickets were arrested and charged with mobbing and rioting.
The dispute forced the government to declare a State of Emergency, to ration electricity and maintain some order in industrial and domestic life.
The result of the seven-week strike was an NUM victory that shook to its core Ted Heath’s Conservative Government in which a young Margaret Thatcher was a cabinet member.
A deal was reached on February 19 with miners agreeing a £95 million package, below the £120m the National Coal Board said the miners were claiming. Government papers released 30 years later revealed a volunteer force was planned in Scotland to break the miners’ pickets during the strike. Civil servants, police, local authorities and other organisations worked on a secret project to gather hundreds of drivers to supply the country’s power stations during the strike.
A Royal Air Force base was to be used for the unit, which was to have between 400 and 600 trucks and drivers. Fire brigades were also contacted to provide off-duty staff and volunteer groups.
The role of the volunteers was to drive in convoys to break the picket lines blocking the supply of coal to the Scottish power plants.
The plans were never put into the place because the dispute was settled and the miners returned to work on February 25.
Miners did not call a national strike again until March 1984, which became the longest and most damaging dispute in Britain’s industrial history.
The nationwide strike was a last attempt by the mining unions to save the industry after the National Coal Board announced pit closures.
By 1984 Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and Arthur Scargill was the leader of the NUM.
Thatcher’s government held firm and, after 362 days of industrial action, the dispute ended in defeat for Scargill and the NUM.
Pits were closed and an industry that at its height employed more than a million people was cut drastically along with the economic future of hundreds of small mining communities.