When miner was pitted against miner in a bleak time for Scotland’s industrial future as violence erupted

during the miners’ strike. The steelworkers were sympathetic to the plight of the miners, but they knew that if the steelworks closed, it might not open again, so limited production was kept going.

The scenes below are far more threatening. No, that is not a broken down van getting a push from a lot of helpful policemen, but a miner driving to work at Bilston Glen Colliery in Midlothian during the strike.

Bilston Glen was one of Scotland’s biggest and most modern pits and the Coal Board was keen to keep it open. Initially about half the miners on the day-shift turned up for work, unsupportive of the strike as it was called without a ballot.

The number of pickets however, in these pictures taken in April, 1984, was swelled by so-called flying pickets from other pits, and the protests turned ugly with stones thrown, punches traded, police assaulted, and numerous miners arrested.

Copies of our archive photographs can be purchased by emailing photoenquiries@heraldandtimes.co.uk or via our website www.thepicturedesk.co.uk By the next shift, the number of workers had tumbled, and management had to concede that there were not enough to start production.

Friends were pitted against friends, never to speak again, as both sides believed passionately that only their action could save the coal industry.

The sadness, disbelief, and anger on the faces of the pickets in the bottom right picture, shows the anguish as they fought for their future.

In the end it came to naught. All the deep coal mines closed during, or shortly after the strike with the loss of 14,000 jobs.

It was a bleak time in Scotland’s industrial history.