‘The feeling of betrayal at how we were treated has never left us’
Two police officers are restraining him, others are ringing his fellow strikers sitting on the road behind him, a badge on his jersey promises Victory to the Miners, it’s May 10, 1984, and James Tierney is being arrested for the first time.
He would be arrested another three occasions before the seismic, year-long industrial dispute would end, with pits closed, communities in tatters and hundreds of strikers, like Tierney, facing the consequences of a criminal conviction.
Proposed legislation soon to be discussed by MSPS would formally pardon the 500 miners convicted of criminal offences linked to the strike. The Miners’ Strike (Pardons) (Scotland) Bill follows an independent review, led by John Scott QC, into the impact of policing on Scottish communities during the strike.
However, for many, a pardon is not enough for unfair convictions that cost them redundancy payments, pensions and, for some, the chance to work again.
Tierney, now 66, from Dunfermline, can still detail the day the photograph was taken after police stopped a bus full of strikers on the way from Fife to picket Ravenscraig steel works in Motherwell.
In a change in tactics, Strathclyde Police stopped the fleet of buses the day after the UK cabinet discussed the strike. The miners refused to say where they were going, spilling onto the A80, linking arms and sitting down in protest until, one by one, they were taken to the cells in Glasgow.
He said: “We didn’t know it then, but that day changed everything. We now know Maggie Thatcher and her cabinet were furious not enough arrests and punishments were being handed out. It’s always been believed orders were passed down the line to ramp things up.
“I was one of the strike organisers, bringing 300 miners from West Fife, Clackmannanshire and Stirlingshire to Ravenscraig Steel works in Motherwell to protest over imported coal being brought in to keep the plant working.
“It was an unprecedented move for the police, that day, when they stopped the strike buses at Stepps. It was a turning point, laying the foundation for what was to follow.”
Scotland would record some of the highest arrest and conviction rates in the UK during the strike and a conviction meant a miner would be sacked, losing out on any redundancy or pension payments. Charged with various minor offences, none of the men arrested at Stepps, including Tierney, ever appeared in court, although the move ensured the names and addresses of strikers were taken for the record.
Seven months later, Castlehill Colliery miner Tierney was arrested again, and this time he was charged over an altercation with a bus taking strike-breaking miners to the pit.
It ended with him spending weeks in Barlinnie prison, losing his job, redundancy and pension as well as leaving him with a criminal record. He said: “The scab bus carrying strike breakers passed by five of us at 5.30am on November 26, 1984, while we were just sitting outside the Fishcross miner’s welfare waiting to go off to our picket lines.
“We did nothing, but some younger lads coming from Sauchie passed by the bus 100 yards further down the road and stones were thrown.
“I’d already been arrested three times before, and it was known I was a strike organiser, so even although I wasn’t near the scab bus, I was picked up along with the four others who
were with me. We were taken to the cells and then to Alloa Sheriff Court for a trial which lasted five days.
“There were 15 witnesses including the working miners on that bus who all said none of us did anything, but two policemen stood up and said they saw us.
“Out of the five of us, only one was found not guilty.
“The judge took just 30 seconds to sentence us.
“I spent 26 days in Barlinnie and was fined around £600 which was a huge sum back then. Of course I was sacked, lost my pension and any redundancy money. It would be another six years before I was able to retrain and start working as a teacher, so it’s hard to put a financial value on all I lost.
“I was luckier than others as my wife was a trainee teacher and that kept us going. Many families were never the same again. The feeling of betrayal and anger at the way we were treated has never left the communities hit hardest. The strike wasn’t just about the miners.
“It was about the end of the trade unions, the end of the heavy industries which had been Scotland’s bread and butter for generations.” Tierney eventually became faculty head of maths and business at Grangemouth High School but he still burns with the injustice of what was done to the miners.
He said: “We knew once the government broke the miners, they would turn on all the other unions.
“It’s only now that people are beginning to understand this is how we’ve ended up with dreadful things such as zero-hour contracts and people working as carers for little more than minimum wage.”