BITTER LEGACY OF THE MINERS’ STRIKE
A horrific industrial conflict that destroyed families, tore apart communities and de fined a decade. Yet as ministers prepare to pardon hundreds of miners, why DOES this war for a dying industry still divide Britain?
THE stand-off began long before the coal lorries rumbled towards the gates of Cartmore open cast mine. On one side stood members of the National Union of Mineworkers sent by their union to prevent what they regarded as ‘scab’ vehicles crossing their picket line. On the other, police officers formed a line to ensure the lorries passed into the pit at Lochgelly, Fife, to collect the stockpiled coal needed to power the country’s power stations.
An unstoppable force was about to meet its immovable object. And, as men like Bob Young were to discover even at this early stage in the year-long miners’ strike of the mid-1980s, that force was determined to win through, at any cost.
‘It was June 1984 and I was in charge of the picket line. The National Coal Board (NCB) were using scab lorry drivers to carry the coal. The police came hell-bent on making arrests.
‘A big push went on and I fell and my leg was trampled. The police picked me up as soon as the push went on and threw me in the back of the van before I knew what had happened. We knew they had singled out officials like me in the hope the strike would fall apart.’
Mr Young was chairman of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) at the Comrie Colliery near Dunfermline and organised strike action across Fife.
Arrested five times in total, he said: ‘I had a target on my back and whenever the police moved in to arrest anybody, I was obviously going to be one of them.
‘I didn’t have such a good time with the police at all. Lots of things happened that weren’t very nice.’ Charged with a breach of the peace, he was fined £75, but his criminal conviction would cost him much more.
Of the 133 miners arrested at Cartmore over several days, Mr Young was the only one sacked – a move he sees as punishment for his prominent union involvement. He said: ‘I battled for 14 months to get my job back. Those months were harder than the strike.’ At the age of 77, it remains an irritant – the only stain on an otherwise unblemished character.
Bob Young’s case is far from isolated. And for others, the pain goes much deeper.
Thousands of miners across the UK were convicted and some were dismissed and blacklisted from working elsewhere. Many never worked again and there is widespread bitterness at their treatment.
IN 2018, the Scottish Government announced a review of the impact of policing on affected communities during the strike. The review panel, chaired by humans rights lawyer John Scott, QC, noted that 1,400 miners in Scotland were arrested, with more than 500 convicted.
It found that most of the miners’ actions were unlikely to lead to prosecution today and said those affected believed they were punished in a ‘grossly excessive manner’. Its report concludes: ‘It is hard to disagree.’ Some men, it says, reported being ‘crushed’ by the combined loss of their work, employability, income, family, selfrespect and dignity.
It notes that some suffered nervous breakdowns or committed suicide, with illness and death attributed by the men and their families to the lasting damage of the strike. The report, now with Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf, recommends that many of them, including miners who have since died, should now be pardoned by an Act of the Scottish parliament.
Labour MSP Neil Findlay, who has spent years pushing for a pardon for miners, said: ‘The scars of that time are still deep and people have gone to their graves with this against their names. This is an opportunity to right a historical wrong and deliver justice.’
The strike, led by NUM president Arthur Scargill, began on March 5, 1984, and ended almost exactly a year later. It saw tens of thousands of workers from British pits lay down their tools in protest at the NCB’s pit closure policy, which was backed by Margaret Thatcher’s Tory Government. More than half of Scotland’s 15,000 miners remained on strike to the end, marching back to work behind union banners on March 5, 1985, two days after the dispute was called off.
Yet despite accounting for just 10 per cent of the UK’s total mining workforce in the mid-1980s, Scottish miners made up a disproportionate 30 per cent of all arrests during the strike.
In June 1984, at the height of the arrests, Alex Bennett was chairman of the NUM at Monktonhall Colliery, near the Midlothian mining village of Danderhall.
He had travelled to the nearby Bilston Glen colliery to bolster the picket line following reports that strike-breakers were being lured to the mine with large payments by the NCB in a bid to divide the union.
The move coincided with a change in police tactics after the pivotal ‘Battle of Orgreave’, where flying bricks and police baton charges left dozens injured at the Orgreave coking plant in South Yorkshire.
Until then, the police posted at Bilston Glen were local officers. ‘They were men I would have a pint with in the [miners’] club and Lothian and Borders Police played their annual bowling competition at our bowling green. Some of the miners’ brothers were police. There was no problem and no arrests,’ said Mr Bennett, now 73.
When other forces were drafted in with none of the local officers’ loyalties, snatch squads were set up to pull targeted miners out of the picket lines.
Mr Bennett was arrested at 5.30am. ‘There were no scabs at that time so the picket was calm,’ he said. ‘Police were snatching individuals, a lot of them officials and that may have been why they picked me.’
Lifted up by the arms, he was flung into a police van with 12 colleagues and driven to Dalkeith police station where they were fingerprinted and photographed.
Threatened with a charge of inciting a riot – later reduced to breach of the peace – Mr Bennett appeared in court on December 20, 1984, when two police officers gave evidence against him.
‘I had never set eyes on these guys before,’ he said.
‘They lied and said I was causing bother, wilfully forcing my way through police lines. That was hard to sit and listen to because I knew I had done nothing wrong. The sheriff believed them anyway.’
Following his conviction, he was sacked and blacklisted. It took him three years to find another job although he later won an unfair dismissal claim.
The father-of-two said: ‘I have never had so much as a speeding ticket before or since, but I’m stuck with a conviction. I resent that. This was a trade dispute. We were not criminals.’
HE added: ‘I remember my daughter was doing skiing lessons with school because they were going on a school trip. She couldn’t go because we didn’t have the money. I always remember that. I felt rotten.’
In its report, the review panel states that the convicted men’s families and communities suffered too, as did ‘confidence in the police, judiciary and the state’. The review arranged public meet
ings to hear from those affected by the strike. One such meeting at Auchengeich Miners Club, in Moodiesburn, Lanarkshire, heard from former strike organiser Willie Doolan, who was arrested on his 28th birthday, also at Bilston Glen.
It happened as he went to help a police officer who had taken a tumble when strikers surged as strikebreakers crossed the picket line. ‘I was grabbed and carried bodily and face-down by six police officers through the cordons,’ he said.
‘It was a scorching hot day and the dust was being kicked up from the road and into my face.’
One of 17 union officials lifted that day, he was charged with breach of the peace.
‘We were treated like hardened criminals. I had been out there to preserve my future employment. I was not a law breaker.’
Later, the courts recognised that Mr Doolan had been trying to help the fallen officer and he was admonished.
But he said: ‘It still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.’
Mr Young claimed pickets were often goaded into retaliating. ‘I was at Ravenscraig and Hunterston when Yuill and Dodds lorries broke the picket line to bring in foreign coal. And the police and the workers at Ravenscraig would wave £20 notes at us, just to let us know they were being paid all this money for working during the strike.
‘When you’re six months into a strike and someone does that to you, understandably it can make you angry. I’m sure a lot of them regret doing what they did.
‘But every time I see a Yuill and Dodds lorry I won’t tell you what I think. Many ex-miners feel the same.’
Privation became the norm as the strike wore on towards Christmas 1984 and communities fell back on the tight bonds forged working in pits miles underground. With no money coming in, most relied on weekly food parcels and clothes donations.
Mr Young said: ‘Our soup kitchen in Dunfermline fed hundreds of kids and their families and that was mirrored throughout the communities and that’s where the closeness came in.
‘My son was an apprentice printer and I can remember him coming home and giving all his wages to my wife to help out. It was hard, but we managed.
‘The East German unions sent us toys for the kids and the EEPTU electricians’ union working at Longannet power station sent us a lorry-load of toys. I thought we would be OK because there was something to give all the kids and we had Santa Claus in the strike centre to give out the presents.
WHEN I was a kid I would get an apple, an orange and a shilling in my stocking so I felt it wasn’t much different. But it was tough.’ The festive season placed huge pressure on relationships. ‘Marriages broke up and relationships ended and psychologically it was really a devastating time for many,’ said Mr Young.
‘Some wives were pushing for their men to return to work because there was no money coming in. In a sense, the women went through a more difficult time in the relationship than the guys.
‘The guys are on the picket line meeting up with his pals and getting a break from the everyday tensions of worrying about paying the rent, the mortgage, the heating bills, whereas the wives are at home with these problems in her lap wondering how she’s going to feed the kids.’
But many women found the strike empowering and would attend rallies and meetings of Women Against Pit Closures. However,
by the time the union accepted the inevitable and voted to return to work in March 1985, some miners felt broken. ‘A good friend of mine just couldn’t take it at the end and took his own life. It was tragic,’ said Mr Young.
He only found out he had been sacked the day before the Comrie miners were due to return to work. He came to wish them well and then had to walk back to his car parked at the end of the pit road.
‘By the time I got there I realised I was on my own. It’s hard to explain to people but I was crying. You had that closeness during the strike and it had all gone.’
After taking his case to a tribunal, Mr Young was fully reinstated with his pay and pension backdated. He was back at work for one year before the Comrie Colliery closed for good in January 1987.
At the start of the strike, there were 12 Scottish pits employing 15,000 miners, but the last closed in 2002.
Mr Young, Mr Bennett and Mr Doolan would all enter local politics as councillors after hanging up their pit boots, while Mr Young also ran a large retraining company and is a trustee of the Coalfield Regeneration Trust, which aims to regenerate former mining communities.
He remains philosophical about having his name cleared. ‘I got on with my life and have done pretty well. I have little to win or lose out of this now, but there are other guys, some of whom never worked again, some of whom took their own lives, who would benefit from having that stigma removed from over their heads.
‘This is not about revenge. We just want justice for the guys.’