tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/miners-strike-9031/articlesminers strike – The Conversation2024-03-06T17:14:56Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2213582024-03-06T17:14:56Z2024-03-06T17:14:56ZHow the 1984 miners’ strike paved the way for devolution in Wales<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577265/original/file-20240222-24-1zfxh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2000%2C1310&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Miners from different collieries gather in Port Talbot in April 1984.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/alandenney/2457055287">Alan Denney/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>March 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the start of the <a href="https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/miners-strike-1984-5-oral-history">miners’ strike</a>. In Wales, particularly within the south Wales coalfield, it was more than an industrial dispute. This was a major political event that reflected deeper cultural and economic changes. </p>
<p>These changes, alongside discontent at the emphasis of the then-UK prime minister <a href="https://academic.oup.com/cje/article/44/2/319/5550923">Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government</a> on free market economics, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-strikes-how-margaret-thatcher-and-other-leaders-cut-trade-union-powers-over-centuries-186270">stifling trade unions</a> and reducing the size of the state shifted how many Labour heartlands viewed the idea of self-government for Wales. This was due to Thatcher’s actions hitting at the heart of many working-class Labour voters’ existence, leading to threats to livelihoods and communities. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/what-thatcher-did-for-wales/">Many started feeling</a> that some of the devastation wreaked by Thatcherism could have been avoided had there been a devolved Welsh government. That government would, in all likelihood, have been Labour controlled, acting as a “protective shield”.</p>
<p>Instead, by the time of the May 1979 general election (five years before the miners’ strike), Wales was a nation divided. Only weeks earlier, it had overwhelmingly <a href="https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP97-113/RP97-113.pdf">rejected</a> the Labour government’s proposal to create a Welsh Assembly, which would have given Wales a certain degree of autonomy from Westminster.</p>
<p>Many Labour MPs, such as Welshman Neil Kinnock, had vehemently opposed devolution and favoured a united British state. However, it was now this state, through a National Coal Board overseen by a Westminster Conservative government, that was aiming to further close Welsh coal mines. </p>
<p>The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was both a political and workplace representative for miners and their communities. For a politician like Kinnock, balancing party and local interests was difficult. </p>
<p>Thatcher’s Conservative party won a large majority at the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-information-office/m09.pdf">1983 election</a> and the Ebbw Vale MP, Michael Foot, had been Labour leader during its defeat. His left-wing manifesto had been <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8550425.stm">dubbed</a> the “longest suicide note in history” by Gerald Kaufman, himself a Labour MP. It led to Foot’s resignation and the election of Kinnock as the leader of the opposition. </p>
<p>As a miners’ strike looked more likely, the national context made Labour party support for the strike problematic. Despite his political and personal ties to the NUM, Kinnock <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/509387">disagreed</a> with its leaders, such as Arthur Scargill, and their strategies for the strike. However, the Labour leader supported the right of the miners to defend their livelihood. </p>
<p>In a period of difficult deindustrialisation across nationalised industries, Labour was caught between unstoppable economic restructuring and job losses that affected its traditional voters.</p>
<h2>Thatcherism and Wales</h2>
<p>Gwyn A. Williams, a Marxist historian, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/When_was_Wales/QUJ0QgAACAAJ?hl=en">described</a> Welsh people as “a naked people under an acid rain”. This acidity had two main ingredients: Thatcherism and the “no” vote for a Welsh Assembly in 1979. </p>
<p>According to this analysis, the absence of devolution in Wales had left it exposed to the vagaries of Conservative governance in Westminster. The dangers of this were illuminated during the miners’ strike and in high unemployment rates of <a href="https://www.gov.wales/digest-welsh-historical-statistics-0">nearly 14% in Wales</a> by the mid-1980s. </p>
<p>However, it would be a fallacy to argue that Wales was a no-go zone for the Conservatives, even after the strike. In the <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-information-office/m11.pdf">1987 general election</a>, although their number of MPs dropped from the 1983 high of 14 to eight, they were still attracting 29.5% of the Welsh vote. </p>
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<img alt="Black and white photo of Margaret Thatcher with her hands raised in front of a union flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577951/original/file-20240226-24-onf851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Was Margaret Thatcher one of the unwitting architects of Welsh devolution?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/levanrami/43795237465">Levan Ramishvili/Flickr</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>It would take several more years of Conservative policies such as the poll tax, the tenure of John Redwood as secretary of state for Wales (1993-95) and the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13689889808413006">scandal-riven sagas</a> of the party during the 1990s for them to gain zero seats in Wales in 1997. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the strike, and the febrile atmosphere of the period, had carved out a Welsh distinctiveness to anti-Conservative rhetoric. Several organisations and conferences during the 1980s laid the groundwork that shaped new questions about Welsh nationhood. They contributed to the swing towards a narrow “yes” vote in the 1997 Welsh devolution <a href="https://law.gov.wales/constitution-and-government/constitution-and-devolution/executive-devolution-1998-2007">referendum</a> offered by Tony Blair’s Labour government, which came to power in 1997.</p>
<p>In February 1985, Hywel Francis, a historian and later Labour MP for Aberafan, published an article in the magazine, <a href="https://banmarchive.org.uk/marxism-today/february-1985/mining-the-popular-front/">Marxism Today</a>, suggesting that the miners’ strike was not merely an industrial dispute but an anti-Thatcher resistance movement. </p>
<p>Central to his argument was the formation of the <a href="https://archives.library.wales/index.php/wales-congress-in-support-of-mining-communities">Wales Congress in Support of Mining Communities</a> the previous autumn, which formalised some of the “unexpected alliances” heralded by the strike. The Congress coordinated the demonstrations and activism of some of the diverse groups that both supported the miners and simultaneously resisted many of the policies of the Thatcher government. These included trade unionists, religious leaders, the women’s peace movement, gay rights campaigners, as well as Labour members and Welsh nationalist activists. According to Francis, the latter two realised that “unless they joined, the world would pass them by”.</p>
<p>The congress aimed to stimulate a coordinated debate about Welsh mining communities, moving the narrative away from picket-line conflict and towards a democratic vision of Wales’s future. </p>
<p>While the strike ended only a month after Francis’s article, and the organisation itself dissolved in 1986, the congress had bridged many chasms in Welsh society. It showed old enemies in Labour and Plaid Cymru that solidarity could reap more benefits than the overt tribalism that had blighted the devolution campaign of the 1970s. </p>
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<img alt="A large modern building with a large roof that juts out." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578555/original/file-20240228-24-bi5coh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Senedd in Cardiff.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cardiff-wales-united-kingdom-06-17-2335002765">meunierd/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Legacy</h2>
<p>In 1988, the campaign for a Welsh Assembly was <a href="https://academic.oup.com/manchester-scholarship-online/book/29790/chapter-abstract/251892249?redirectedFrom=fulltext">established</a> in Cardiff by Siân Caiach of Plaid Cymru and Jon Owen Jones of Labour. It was a direct descendant of this collaborative ethos, feeding an altogether more mature debate around Welsh devolution than had been seen in the 1970s. </p>
<p>For example, Ron Davies, an arch-devolutionist in 1990s Labour, <a href="https://www.iwa.wales/wp-content/media/2016/03/acceleratinghistory.pdf">had voted “no”</a> in 1979. This was predominantly because he saw devolution as a Trojan horse for Plaid. </p>
<p>However, seeing the consequences of the miners’ strike and Thatcherism on his constituency of Caerffili drove him towards a drastic re-evaluation of devolution as being a protective buffer for the people of Wales. He became leader of Welsh Labour in 1998, eventually joining Plaid in 2010.</p>
<p>Historian Martin Johnes <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-16315966">has described</a> Thatcher as an “unlikely architect of Welsh devolution”. Indeed, her inadvertent <a href="https://www.iwa.wales/agenda/2013/04/we-voted-labour-but-got-thatcher/">help</a> in orchestrating the Welsh Assembly rested in the forging of Labour and Plaid Cymru cooperation, with the miners’ strike as a watershed movement. </p>
<p>The strike remains a vivid memory in many Welsh communities. It stands as a reminder to 21st-century politicians that today’s Senedd (Welsh parliament) was built on cross-party cooperation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The strike saw different political factions uniting, which eventually led to a more collaborative form of politics in Wales.Mari Wiliam, Lecturer in Modern and Welsh History, Bangor UniversityMarc Collinson, Lecturer in Political History, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1945982022-11-22T11:46:18Z2022-11-22T11:46:18ZStrikes: how do they work?<p>The UK has seen an autumn of strikes. Workers on the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/27/uk-railways-disrupted-again-as-workers-strike-over-pay-and-conditions">railways</a>, at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/09/london-underground-strike-will-halt-nearly-all-tube-services-on-thursday">London Underground</a> and at <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63055394">Royal Mail</a> have been among those taking action. This looks set to continue through the winter, with <a href="https://www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-centre/junior-doctors-to-ballot-in-early-january-for-industrial-action">doctors</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-63561317">nurses</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-63254720">teachers</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/nov/08/university-staff-to-strike-across-uk-in-pay-and-conditions-dispute">university staff</a> planning strike action. </p>
<p>Workers who opt into a strike collectively decide to refuse to do their jobs in an attempt to gain concessions from their employer. Industrial action can also include action short of a strike, such as refusing to <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/health/overtime-ban-and-work-to-rule-as-scottish-ambulance-staff-reveal-industrial-action-3915863">work overtime</a>.</p>
<p>Strikes are typically conducted by workers organised into a trade union – voluntary, democratic, membership-based organisations that can negotiate with employers on their members’ behalf to defend or improve terms and conditions and enforce or enhance workplace rights. </p>
<p>Unions are a way for workers to address the <a href="https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/news/nowak-power-imbalances-the-root-cause-of-workplace-conflict">power imbalance</a> between employers and workers, and they believe that doing this collectively is more effective than on an individual basis. But strikes can happen among non-unionised workers, such as the recent action by Amazon <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/amazon-uk-pay-protests">warehouse workers</a>.</p>
<h2>Why do people go on strike?</h2>
<p>Most disputes are resolved without strike action, but sometimes negotiations between the union and the employer break down. This is why strikes are often referred to as a
“<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-63026682">last resort</a>”.</p>
<p>Common reasons for disputes between employers and workers include <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/23/liverpool-dock-workers-to-begin-two-week-strike-after-talks-end-in-chaos">pay</a>, <a href="https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/news/2022/june/royal-mail-depending-on-1-800-unpaid-jobs-as-unite-prepares-to-strike-to-save-542-posts/">job losses</a> and <a href="https://uk.fashionnetwork.com/news/Asos-workers-walk-out-over-lack-of-covid-19-protection-firm-denies-it-s-unsafe,1202851.html">health and safety</a> issues. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/nov/01/on-your-way-pinochet-factory-workers-fought-fascism-from-glasgow-chile-coup-nae-pasaran">Political strikes</a>, when workers might protest a government policy or action unrelated to their workplace, and <a href="https://my.ucu.org.uk/app/answers/detail/a_id/51/%7E/what-is-secondary-%28or-sympathy%29-industrial-action-and-is-it-unlawful%3F">sympathy</a> strikes, where workers take strike action in support of another group of workers at a different employer, are now both unlawful in the UK due to <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-strikes-how-margaret-thatcher-and-other-leaders-cut-trade-union-powers-over-centuries-186270">legislation</a> imposed and maintained by successive governments.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1591813956997451782"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/09/royal-society-of-arts-staff-union-hypocrisy-iwgb">Some employers</a> refuse to recognise unions, but others negotiate with them in a process known as “<a href="https://www.tuc.org.uk/workplace-guidance/organising-and-bargaining/collective-bargaining">collective bargaining</a>”. During strike talks, HR departments or senior managers of an employer may be present, as well as representatives of the union from the workplace or union officers. </p>
<p>Sometimes an independent dispute resolution service such as the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (<a href="https://www.acas.org.uk/dispute-resolution">ACAS</a>) may be used. Unions have various committees who discuss and vote on the dispute process. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-workers-go-on-strike-93815">Trade-offs</a> may take place, such as an employer granting a pay rise in exchange for employees working more flexible hours. Unions may put a final offer to a vote of members. If workers are still unsatisfied further strikes may be called or if they vote to accept the terms an agreement will be made and striking will cease.</p>
<h2>How is a strike called?</h2>
<p>Union members will be sent a confidential ballot paper through the post and vote on whether they are willing to strike. The votes are counted by an independent scrutineer. </p>
<p>Strike action in the UK is subject to complex <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/52/contents">legislation</a>, and for a strike to be considered lawful at least half of the balloted workers must have voted and the majority must vote yes. Unions have to provide notice to the employer of when strike action will take place.</p>
<p>As strikes consist of people not going into work, this can result in workplaces being closed or services not running. Trains may not run during a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/29/rail-strike-to-cause-severe-disruption-great-britain-saturday">rail strike</a>, or there may be a build up of refuse when <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-58953236">bin collectors strike</a>. </p>
<p>People may also see workers holding picket lines or <a href="https://kingston.web.ucu.org.uk/ucu-strike-2021/what-is-a-teach-out/">other events</a> outside their place of work.</p>
<h2>What is a picket line?</h2>
<p>A picket line is when workers congregate outside their workplace to demonstrate that they are not working and raise awareness of their dispute. People <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/28/labour-mps-may-join-pickets-starmer-faces-test-party-unity">may visit</a> who wish to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/23/climate-justice-groups-join-british-rail-strike-picket-lines">show support</a> to striking workers. Pickets may try to discourage non-striking employees from going into work as they believe they are undermining the dispute and making the strike less effective by weakening the group’s collective power. </p>
<p>Strike-breaking – going into the workplace when a strike is taking place – is <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0730888413481481">socially taboo</a> to union members who have voted to strike and can still cause <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-47401859">social divisions</a> long after the strike has taken place. </p>
<p>Employers do not have to pay workers who are on strike. Some unions operate what is called a hardship or strike fund, which will issue strikers a small amount of money taken from membership subscriptions to help with their loss of earnings. Additionally, strikers may hold collections on picket lines, and supporters hold <a href="https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/people/edinburgh-bin-strike-fringe-stars-stage-gala-fundraiser-to-support-workers-strike-fund-3813831">fundraising events</a> to help strikers. Most unions also now accept donations through their websites.</p>
<h2>Can workers get sacked for going on strike?</h2>
<p>While there is <a href="https://ukandeu.ac.uk/the-facts/is-there-a-right-to-strike-in-the-uk/">no legal “right”</a> to strike in the UK, workers who engage in strike action organised by a trade union through the legal balloting procedure have <a href="https://www.thompsonstradeunion.law/media/1175/unfair-dismissal-a-summary-of-the-law-thompsons-solicitors.pdf">statutory protection</a> from dismissal.</p>
<p>Recent <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/287278/uk-trade-union-wage-premium/#:%7E:text=In%202021%20members%20of%20trade,more%20than%20the%20average%20worker.">figures</a> show that UK union members earn 4.8% more than the average worker, and high levels of trade union membership <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/chart-of-the-day/2022/06/countries-high-trade-union-membership-more-equal">are linked</a> with lower income inequality. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/10/increase-benefits-and-wages-line-inflation-or-lives-will-be-lost-un-poverty">Poverty experts</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-wages-should-keep-up-with-inflation-the-economic-case-for-getting-a-pay-rise-186851">economists</a> have called for wages to rise in line with inflation to help with the increasing cost of living, and throughout 2022 trade unions have achieved a <a href="https://leftfootforward.org/2022/06/10-massive-pay-rises-unite-has-won-for-workers-in-the-last-month/">raft</a> of substantial pay deals for their members.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194598/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Holly Smith is a member of The University and College Union (UCU) and currently works on an ESRC-funded research project. </span></em></p>From unions and ballots to picket-lines and sympathy strikes.Holly Smith, Research Associate at the Work and Equalities Institute, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/924482018-03-09T13:01:46Z2018-03-09T13:01:46Z‘We are women, we are strong’: celebrating the unsung heroines of the miners’ strike<p>The miners’ strike of the 1980s is often depicted as a bitter clash between Ian MacGregor and Margaret Thatcher on one side, and Arthur Scargill and the National Union of Mineworkers on the other. The battle lines were drawn up and down the country as flying pickets and the police went head to head. The strike was the closest the UK has come to civil war in recent times. Not even the 1980s or <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/london-riots-1173">2011 riots</a> can compare to the year-long confrontation.</p>
<p>Much has been written about this strike, but what is often missing from this story of rage and dissent are the voices of the women involved. This was a pivotal moment in Britain and the women, often absent from the media’s gaze and the public’s memory, were there fighting alongside with the men. Their presence on the picket lines has been <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0950017008089108">acknowledged</a> but their story of defiance, their skill in raising funds, promoting the cause and standing in battle with the men is generally overlooked. </p>
<p>“Coal not dole” stickers covered the plastic buckets that were used to collect donations from the public. The women travelled beyond their pit villages and around the country to raise funds. They spoke at rallies in London and abroad, talking about the struggle and the hardships that the miners’ and their families faced. The result was allegiance from people and places they least expected, and when it was most needed – Russia sent lorries to the UK providing food and Christmas presents for the miners’ children.</p>
<p>In her book “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/nov/06/queen-coal-review-miners-strike-yorkshire-margaret-thatcher">Queen Coal</a>” Triona Holden tells how the women in Yorkshire experienced opposition to setting up a soup kitchen from the local NUM representatives who wanted the kitchen to serve the striking men only. Determined that a soup kitchen would also serve the families, the women organised cutlery, crockery and the necessary permissions. They raised money by knocking on doors and asked people if they could spare a bit of food. This and funding from “Women Against Pit Closure” meant that they were able to feed the the striking community. </p>
<p>But women were not resigned to domestic duties alone, they were also at the coalface of the strike, they were on the front line – not shouting from the sidelines but in battle, along with the men, against the police. Some were arrested, some went to court and some were even strip-searched.</p>
<h2>Defying the times</h2>
<p>The 1980s was a different time socially, economically and politically for women. Despite having a woman prime minister, women were discouraged from working and an arrogant, male culture pervaded. But the women who took part in the strike were strong working-class activists whose actions undermined the narcissistic culture of the time. Their livelihoods, their families, their communities and their way of life was under threat and this fuelled their anger. In many cases, these women never returned to domestic life after the strikes. Some even took up careers in politics.</p>
<p>The women’s welfare clinics ensured the strikers’ families received the benefits to which they were entitled. The National Union of Miners encouraged strikers to claim benefits, but the number of members who actually made claims had been low in previous strikes. In 1984, when the welfare clinics were up and running, the benefit take-up rate was <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1410129.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">nearly 80%</a>. This record high was a result of the women being able to successfully advise striking miners and their families about welfare claims and benefit applications, preventing them from going hungry. These actions, it might be argued, helped give the strike longevity. </p>
<p>Many of the women surprised even themselves with their tenacity during the strike. For them this was a working-class fight and they demonstrated a camaraderie and a skill that rivalled that of the men working down the pits. They even had their own campaign song:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are women, we are strong,<br>
We are fighting for our lives<br>
Side by side with our men<br>
Who work the nation’s mines,<br>
United by the past,<br>
And it’s - Here we go! Here we go!<br>
For the women of the working class.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Today retail parks and new roads have been built over the ground upon which communities once thrived and fierce battles took place. However what cannot be erased from history is how this group of men and women, led by Scargill, defied class and gender boundaries and went head-to-head with the government.</p>
<p>Now, 20 years on, society is in a different place. The topless Page 3 model has disappeared and <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/metoo-45316">#MeToo</a> is holding men to account. The miners’ wives maintained they were not feminists and perhaps their collective description “miners’ wives” is evidence of that position. But ironically Thatcher and the strike helped to liberalise gender relationships. The women’s collective voices occupied a space not occupied by other feminist groups. They had created their own working-class feminism that spoke of protecting the family and their husbands while also claiming a place in the workspace.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92448/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricia Francis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Women played and integral role in the year-long struggle – despite a culture that expected them to stay at home.Patricia Francis, Postgraduate Researcher, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/856972017-10-16T09:00:12Z2017-10-16T09:00:12ZNew files add weight to calls for Battle of Orgreave inquiry<p>In a dramatic decision, Amber Rudd, the home secretary, decided a year ago not to hold a Hillsborough-style inquiry into the <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-orgreave-to-rotherham-the-trials-and-tribulations-of-south-yorkshire-police-69690">Battle of Orgreave</a>. This conflict during the 1984-5 miners’ strike resulted in the arrest of 95 miners and a trial on the (very serious) charge of riot that collapsed spectacularly due to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/18/scandal-of-orgreave-miners-strike-hillsborough-theresa-may">unreliable evidence</a> from South Yorkshire Police. </p>
<p>Files newly released and declassified since Rudd’s decision shed more light on the actions of both South Yorkshire Police and the Thatcher government during this time. These new files add more evidence relating to many long-standing accusations made by the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, which continues to press for an inquiry. </p>
<p>Principle among the claims from the original 1985 trial is that the police collaborated on their statements about the incident. They’ve been accused of directing or consulting with each other on events, rather than providing their actual evidence or experiences of events.</p>
<p>This claim is now arguably supported by a 1991 letter from South Yorkshire Police deputy chief constable Peter Hayes to West Midlands chief constable Ron Hadfield in 1991. Hayes wrote that given the large number of different police forces present, “teams of South Yorkshire detectives found it necessary to assist them in the preparation of their statements”.</p>
<p>Hayes claims this was done because some officers drafted in from other parts of the country had a “complete lack of local knowledge” of the area and needed assistance with their statements. Or it was for “scene-setting and introductory information before those officers left the South Yorkshire Police area” and returned to their home force. Whatever the reasoning, this is a clear admission of some kind of collaboration on police statements by South Yorkshire Police.</p>
<h2>Thatcher’s role</h2>
<p>The newly released files also shed more light on the role played by the government. As shown by <a href="http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/tom-richmond-the-confidential-cabinet-papers-and-how-thatcher-interfered-in-policing-of-miners-strike-1-7911007">previously released files</a>, Margaret Thatcher had a strong personal investment in ensuring the dispute was (heavily) policed. These files further demonstrate her strong personal involvement. In the weeks following the strike, Thatcher attended a drinks party held for chief police officers, where she took the time to “thank them personally for all that they and their forces did to maintain public order”, and “discuss with them other matters of current concern to us”.</p>
<p>This sense of gratitude was clearly shared by other senior cabinet ministers. They also felt the need to offer some protection to South Yorkshire Police and other forces involved in the strike. In a January 1985 meeting at his department, Leon Brittan, then home secretary, said he “remained of the view that the government should not encourage any form of public enquiry [sic] into the conduct of police during the miners’ dispute”. He said he feared an “anti-police bias” that would eventually turn into a “witch-hunt”. This was despite suggestions from civil servants present at the meeting that such an inquiry would be “helpful in terms of enabling the police to defend their conduct of the dispute”.</p>
<p>The Home Office’s policy of resisting such investigations, particularly into the Battle of Orgreave, continued. Civil servants stated in a 1991 brief on policing at Orgreave, prepared for John MacGregor when he was leader of the House of Commons, that “the government does not believe that a public inquiry into police operations during the miners’ strike is necessary”, feeling there was more to lose than gain. The argument was that such an inquiry “would stir up the deep feelings which were aroused by the miners’ strike and its policing at the time”, and would simply turn into an exercise of seeking to apportion blame. </p>
<p>For the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, finding out about all this has been a slow and arduous process. Many files related to the battle have been held back from public release. Indeed, some of the files from folders I’ve used in my research are to remain classified until 2072.</p>
<p>South Yorkshire Police is under intense public pressure over its actions in the 1980s. Several senior officers are currently being prosecuted in relation to their roles in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/hillsborough-3838">Hillsborough disaster</a>, which left 96 dead. The Hillsborough disaster also involved allegations of fabrication of police statements and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/apr/12/hillsborough-battle-orgreave">cover-ups</a> designed to blame fans by South Yorkshire Police – allegations that were eventually proven to be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/hillsborough-families-27-year-struggle-for-truth-vindicated">correct</a>.</p>
<p>The Hillsborough campaign has shown what can be achieved by persistence from a determined organisation eager for the truth. As more files are declassified and released, pressure will continue to mount on the government and South Yorkshire Police to hold an inquiry into this crucial event in post-war policing. Did South Yorkshire Police seek to turn the striking miners at the 1985 trial into scapegoats? The appetite for answers regarding South Yorkshire Police will not be sated anytime soon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85697/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Daniels does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Latest releases suggest police collaborated on statements and benefitted from the Thatcher government’s desire not to hold an inquiry.Steven Daniels, PhD Candidate, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/809192017-07-20T12:14:31Z2017-07-20T12:14:31ZNew documents reveal true extent of miners’ cooperation with Thatcher<p>With the rise of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/jeremy-corbyn-18860">Jeremy Corbyn</a>, much has been made of a return to the politics of the 1970s, when trade unions dominated the political agenda and major state industries were nationalised.</p>
<p>One of those industries was coal. Before 1994, the coal industry was publicly owned and the vast majority of coal miners favoured this arrangement. The two most powerful trade unions of the time – <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10573570/The-rise-and-fall-of-Arthur-Scargill.html">Arthur Scargill’s National Union of Mineworkers</a> (NUM) and <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/government-in-crisis-udm-leader-reflects-on-road-to-dole-queue-barrie-clement-looks-at-why-roy-lynk-1558693.html">Roy Lynk’s</a> Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) – both clashed with Margaret Thatcher’s government as it sought to privatise coal. </p>
<p>But newly released files reveal that Lynk’s UDM had far closer ties to Thatcher than previously thought.</p>
<p>Lynk met Thatcher three times between 1986 and 1989 – and he insisted each time that the details of these meetings be kept secret. Now, 30 years later, the secret is out, and it’s clear why he was eager for the information not to become public. Files from the National Archives in London on these meetings shed new light on the true nature of the UDM and its plans for the industry. The minutes of the meeting note:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Mr Lynk … wished to clarify the UDM’s position on coal privatisation. The Union’s public position had to be one of opposition. But privately the union leadership supported privatisation and saw it as an opportunity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://thatchernet.org/2017/07/07/the-forgotten-history-of-the-udm-by-steven-daniels/">Accusations</a> of being in the back pocket of the Thatcher government dogged the UDM for years, but no proof could ever be produced – until now. Had Lynk’s position on privatisation been known in the 1980s, it would have been a major scandal that could have crippled his organisation. The new files make it clear just how close the two parties were, and how vital an ally the government considered the UDM to be. David Norgrove’s report on their October 1986 meeting showed how “The Prime Minister … emphasised her great concern that everything possible should be done to help the UDM”. </p>
<p>This was not an isolated incident. Notes prepared for the meetings emphasise how committed various government and government-owned agencies were to helping the UDM. Energy minister Peter Walker, in preparing a brief on the UDM for Thatcher, stressed that he and junior whip <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11952878/The-unknown-hand-in-Margaret-Thatchers-victories.html">David Hunt</a> “have done everything in our power to be of assistance to the UDM”. Similarly, Robert Haslam, chairman of the taxpayer owned National Coal Board, stressed the important role the UDM played in reshaping post-strike industrial relations, telling Walker “There is indeed a great advantage to us in the continuance of the UDM so long as we have anything like the present NUM leadership”.</p>
<p>The UDM was clearly being rewarded for cooperating with the Thatcher government. Notes between ministers make regular reference to how the union was being given preferential treatment over Scargill’s NUM. At each meeting, UDM leaders were reassured by Thatcher that they were free to approach her at any time, and that guidance, support, and training was to be provided to them.</p>
<p>Crucially, this preferential treatment was extended to uneconomical pits. Notes prepared by civil servants for Thatcher’s January 1988 meeting with the UDM reveal that certain pits would have closed earlier had they been controlled by the NUM. UDM control could help buy a pit extra time. </p>
<p>Cadley Hill colliery in Derbyshire is singled out as a pit which was given a stay of execution on this basis, with “some marginal pits … being given great encouragement to reach profitability”, the inference being that NUM pits were being left to fend for themselves, while UDM pits were given a leg up to remain economically viable.</p>
<p>Set up in the dying days of the 1984-5 <a href="https://theconversation.com/war-on-the-picket-line-how-the-british-press-made-a-battle-out-of-the-miners-strike-60470">miners’ strike</a>, the UDM positioned itself as an alternative for “moderate” miners who felt that the hard-left NUM, under Scargill, no longer represented their interests. It was smaller than the NUM but had at least some members in virtually every pit in the country, representing between a fifth and a third of the total workforce at various points before privatisation.</p>
<p>For many NUM supporters and Scargill loyalists, the UDM will always be a scab union – a byword for betrayal. They argue that the UDM split the miners by setting itself up as a rival to the NUM, leaving the latter too weak to defend the industry effectively. </p>
<p>The last deep coal mine in Britain, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-35803048">Kellingley</a>, closed in December 2015. This followed nearly three decades of pit closures, each one declared too uneconomical to keep open – a drain on public finances that the Thatcher and John Major governments believed the taxpayer would not tolerate.</p>
<p>Significant divisions remain in former mining towns in the UK. For some, these revelations about the UDM will justify their view that the breakaway union was too close to the Thatcher government, and no doubt provide some closure. Others will feel betrayed by the union that was supposed to be protecting them. Either way, the old arguments are bound to resurface, made new again with these files.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80919/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Daniels does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>National Archive files reveal how the PM offered preferential treatment to a breakaway union in a bid to weaken its rivals.Steven Daniels, PhD Candidate, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/696902017-01-04T11:20:26Z2017-01-04T11:20:26ZFrom Orgreave to Rotherham – the trials and tribulations of South Yorkshire Police<p>Home Secretary Amber Rudd’s decision to rule out a public inquiry into the “Battle of Orgreave” is once again back in the spotlight after being <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2017-01-02/council-to-call-for-orgreave-public-inquiry-derbyshire/">publicly condemned</a> by North East Derbyshire Council. The Labour-run council is now calling on Rudd to “think again” about her decision not to order a full probe into the notorious miners’ strike clash between South Yorkshire Police and striking pitmen.</p>
<p>Rudd made the decision not to hold a public inquiry into Orgreave without reviewing all of the evidence. In an <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/government-decision-rule-out-orgreave-9553428#ICID=sharebar_twitter">announcement in 2016</a>, she claimed that there had been “very significant changes” in the oversight of policing since the miners’ strike, meaning that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There would be very few lessons for the policing system today to be learned from any review of the events and practices of three decades ago.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She further suggested that there were “no miscarriages of justice” at Orgreave, given “there were no deaths” and “no convictions”.</p>
<p>At the time, Rudd’s decision triggered widespread condemnation and was said by <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2017-01-02/council-to-call-for-orgreave-public-inquiry-derbyshire/">councillor Derrick Skinner</a> to show “contempt for the many former miners, their families and communities … who have waited patiently for decades for the truth”.</p>
<p>This news comes after it was recently announced that files relating to the so-called Battle of Orgreave are expected <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-38276208">to be made public this year</a>, which could well lead to further scrutiny of South Yorkshire Police.</p>
<h2>A bloody battle</h2>
<p>The “Battle of Orgreave” became one of the most decisive events of the 1984-85 miners’ strike. It happened on June 18 1984, after <a href="https://theconversation.com/war-on-the-picket-line-how-the-british-press-made-a-battle-out-of-the-miners-strike-60470">striking miners</a> picketing a South Yorkshire coking plant were herded into a field near Orgreave coking plant, outside Rotherham.
The miners were then reportedly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/21/orgreave-campaigners-tell-amber-rudd-trust-in-police-remains-broken">charged by cavalry</a> and subject to a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/sheffield/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8217000/8217946.stm">series of violent attacks by police</a> on foot and horseback. </p>
<p>Ninety-five miners and supporters were subsequently charged with riot and unlawful assembly, but were acquitted after a seven-week trial in light of allegations that police officers had lied in court and fabricated evidence. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151636/original/image-20170103-18641-1g4r14j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151636/original/image-20170103-18641-1g4r14j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151636/original/image-20170103-18641-1g4r14j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151636/original/image-20170103-18641-1g4r14j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151636/original/image-20170103-18641-1g4r14j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151636/original/image-20170103-18641-1g4r14j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151636/original/image-20170103-18641-1g4r14j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151636/original/image-20170103-18641-1g4r14j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1098&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Orgreave coke works in Yorkshire during the miners’ strike.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The events have caused lasting rifts between police and former mining communities, and serious questions remain about the relationship between the policing operation at Orgreave and the “underhand tactics” used by the same police force to deadly affect at the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hillsborough-at-last-the-shameful-truth-is-out-58456">Hillsborough stadium disaster</a> less than six years later. </p>
<p>And in 2016, the conduct of South Yorkshire police was once again called into question at the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/nov/16/asian-men-far-right-rotherham-cleared-violent-disorder">conclusion of a trial of ten Asian men</a> accused of violent disorder. </p>
<h2>Further scrutiny</h2>
<p>The men were arrested along with two others following their involvement in an anti-racism protest in Rotherham in September 2015. In the aftermath of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-28934963">child abuse scandal</a> which erupted in the town earlier that year, the area had become a magnet for far-right groups, who organised a series of provocative marches in the town. </p>
<p>And while the jury at Sheffield Crown Court heard that members of Rotherham’s Muslim community had largely chosen to ignore the far-right marches following <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-35688543">the racist murder</a> of 81-year-old Mushin Ahmed in August – who suffered a brutal attack as he walked to mosque for morning prayers – the community organised a peaceful counter-demonstration.</p>
<p>When the protest came to an end, the anti-racist group were shepherded by police past a local pub known to be associated with the far-right. There, they were physically attacked, suffered a barrage of racist abuse and were forced to defend themselves. Following a gruelling six-week trial, the jury unanimously returned not guilty verdicts for all ten of the men standing trial. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151637/original/image-20170103-18641-t0w1rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151637/original/image-20170103-18641-t0w1rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151637/original/image-20170103-18641-t0w1rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151637/original/image-20170103-18641-t0w1rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151637/original/image-20170103-18641-t0w1rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151637/original/image-20170103-18641-t0w1rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151637/original/image-20170103-18641-t0w1rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151637/original/image-20170103-18641-t0w1rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not guilty verdicts in the Rotherham 12 case raise serious questions about the conduct of South Yorkshire Police.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rotherham 12 campaign</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Rotherham 12 case triggered a national campaign in support of the arrested men. This was backed by the <a href="http://otjc.org.uk/">Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign</a> whose members attended the trial to show support. Both groups have drawn parallels between the Rotherham 12 case and the treatment of the miners at Orgreave. </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.tmg-uk.org/rotherham-12-the-jury-finds-all-the-defendants-not-guilty/">public statement</a> following the verdicts, the Rotherham 12 Defence Campaign was heavily critical of South Yorkshire Police, stating that officers “led the local community towards danger and left them unprotected”. </p>
<p>In the words of one of the acquitted men:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are similarities with what the police did to the Orgreave miners, and how they herded them to a particular spot … I had a bin thrown at me, punches thrown at me and I had literally done nothing. Now you imagine five weeks later, at six or seven in the morning, police officers, ten of them, coming to your house. Your children are scared, you’re scared, you’re treated as some common criminal.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>From bad to worse</h2>
<p>The arrests have worsened the already strained relations between South Yorkshire Police and the local Muslim community in Rotherham, who have raised concerns that the force have failed to adequately respond to far-right violence in the town. </p>
<p>The Rotherham 12 Defence Campaign have called for an independent inquiry into the conduct and behaviour of the police, noting that public confidence in the force “is at an all time low”. The police force <a href="http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/south-yorkshire-police-told-to-improve-1-8279247">has also been told</a> it “requires improvement” in how it keeps people safe and reduces crime by the police watchdog, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of the Constabulary.</p>
<p>So, two cases, over 30 years apart, both involving a community under siege, constructed as an enemy within. Over-policed and under-protected, a fundamental breakdown in police community relations and a deep sense of injustice. And at the heart of both cases is South Yorkshire Police. </p>
<p>Perhaps then Rudd’s refusal to hold a public inquiry into Orgreave is not because the event is no longer relevant to contemporary policing, but because of just how relevant it continues to be. </p>
<p>The Orgreave and Rotherham campaigners have made clear that their fight for justice will continue and a protest has been called outside the Home Office on March 13. And despite the home secretary’s decision, the trials and tribulations of South Yorkshire Police look set to continue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69690/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Gilmore is affiliated with the Northern Police Monitoring Project. </span></em></p>South Yorkshire Police has recently been criticised for how well it protects people and prevents crime, and it isn’t the first time.Joanna Gilmore, Lecturer in Law, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/604702016-06-08T11:12:21Z2016-06-08T11:12:21ZWar on the picket line: how the British press made a battle out of the miners’ strike<p>The recent <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/26/hillsborough-inquests-jury-says-96-victims-were-unlawfully-killed">Hillsborough verdict</a> highlighted the way the British press <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/29/hillsborough-disaster-press-coverage-odious-sisters">demonised Liverpool football fans</a> while justifying the actions of South Yorkshire police in their coverage of the disaster. </p>
<p>In light of this, calls have been made for a similar Hillsborough style public inquiry <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/04/police-fahy-inquiry-1980s-miners-strike-scargill-orgreave-thatcher-hillsborough">into the policing of the British miners’ strike</a> between 1984-5, with newspapers facing fresh allegations that the coverage of the strike amounted to a “<a href="http://www.londonfreelance.org/fl/0905shaf.html?i=flolder&d=2009_05">propaganda assault on the miners</a>”. </p>
<p>The miners’ strike started when the Conservative government, led by Margaret Thatcher, announced the closure of Cortonwood Colliery in Yorkshire. This was to be the first of 20 pit closures and, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25549596">with many more believed to be in the planning</a>, it led to the longest running industrial action in Britain since the 1926 General Strike.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://hartcda.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/metaphor-and-intertextuality-in-media-framings-of-the-1984-85-british-miners-strike.pdf">recent research</a>, which involved analysis of both news language and press photographs of the time, shows that this year-long strike was portrayed by newspapers – on all sides – as a metaphorical war between the government and the National Union of Mineworkers.</p>
<p>It shows how the media used “war framing” words, phrases and photographs while reporting the strike – often drawing on iconic texts and images associated with World War I. This framing presented the miners as “the enemy”, while at the same time, it justified the actions of the government and the police as necessary and even noble. </p>
<p>This “war framing” is likely to have had a significant impact on the course and eventual outcome of the strike as research has shown that <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016782">metaphors help to shape public opinion</a>. The war framing even worked its way up into government policy-making. </p>
<h2>Waging war</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125500/original/image-20160607-15021-7xvc8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125500/original/image-20160607-15021-7xvc8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125500/original/image-20160607-15021-7xvc8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125500/original/image-20160607-15021-7xvc8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125500/original/image-20160607-15021-7xvc8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125500/original/image-20160607-15021-7xvc8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125500/original/image-20160607-15021-7xvc8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Front page of The Sun, March 1984.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The “war metaphor” was established from the very beginning of the strike with the headline in The Sun Newspaper on 13 March 1984: “Pit war: Violence erupts on the picket line as miner fights miner”. A few days later, in reference to violence at Ollerton colliery, the Express described “rampaging armies of pickets at the besieged Nottinghamshire pit”.</p>
<p>Later, The Sun went on to describe “an army of 8,000 police at battle stations in the bloody pit war”. Police officers and picketing miners were seen as soldiers on opposite sides of the “war”. Arthur Scargill – the then president of the National Union of Mineworkers – was described as an “army general” in the Express and a “dictator” in The Sun.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125501/original/image-20160607-15061-lcnqzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125501/original/image-20160607-15061-lcnqzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125501/original/image-20160607-15061-lcnqzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125501/original/image-20160607-15061-lcnqzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125501/original/image-20160607-15061-lcnqzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125501/original/image-20160607-15061-lcnqzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125501/original/image-20160607-15061-lcnqzu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Police on horses at the miners’ strike.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>News photographs painted a similar picture, drawing subtle analogies with World War I in particular. <a href="http://bit.ly/1X8nx0P">Images of wooden stakes at Orgreave</a>, South Yorkshire, resembled the barbed wire barricades associated with German defences in the Battle of the Somme. Pictures of police on horseback were reminiscent of mounted warfare typically associated with cavalry charges in World War I.</p>
<p>Even peaceful moments that were captured on camera, such as a football match played between police and miners at Bilsthorne colliery in Nottinghamshire, stuck to the war narrative – with the image bringing to mind the celebrated 1914 Christmas Day football match played between German and allied forces. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125503/original/image-20160607-15045-1os44p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125503/original/image-20160607-15045-1os44p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125503/original/image-20160607-15045-1os44p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125503/original/image-20160607-15045-1os44p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125503/original/image-20160607-15045-1os44p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125503/original/image-20160607-15045-1os44p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125503/original/image-20160607-15045-1os44p1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Football played in ‘No mans land’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This was reinforced in the caption that accompanied the photograph which described a football match “played on no-mans land during a break from picketing”.</p>
<p>At the end of the strike, the front cover of The Sun showed a picture of a blooded police officer accompanied by the headline “Lest we Forget”. This evocative phrase is associated with the Ode of Remembrance where it is added as a final line to the fourth stanza of Laurence Binyon’s poem <a href="https://theconversation.com/lest-we-forget-binyons-ode-of-remembrance-13642">For the Fallen</a>, written in 1914 in honour of British soldiers who had already lost their lives in World War I. It serves to compare the efforts of police officers during the strike with the sacrifice of British soldiers during the Great War. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125502/original/image-20160607-15021-1ppp0yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125502/original/image-20160607-15021-1ppp0yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125502/original/image-20160607-15021-1ppp0yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125502/original/image-20160607-15021-1ppp0yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125502/original/image-20160607-15021-1ppp0yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125502/original/image-20160607-15021-1ppp0yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125502/original/image-20160607-15021-1ppp0yr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Headline from The Sun at the end of the miner’s strike.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The war metaphor eventually became part of government policy. This can be seen in <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/901.htm">Cabinet documents</a> recently released under the 30-year rule. Thatcher was encouraged by her policy unit to pursue “a war of attrition” with the miners.</p>
<h2>A war of words</h2>
<p>With the miners’ strike thought of in terms of a war, it helped to define the miners as “the enemy”, who must be “defeated”. This meant that any chance of compromise or resolution in the strike was very much diminished from the beginning.</p>
<p>The “war metaphor” justifies the violent actions of the police “on the frontline” at Orgreave. Analogies with World War I in particular exploit collective emotions associated with key historical moments and arouse feelings of both national pride and prejudice. </p>
<p>Constructing the miners’ strike as a war was one way in which a powerful media demonised miners – just as they did with football fans at Hillsborough – while at the same time justifying police practices. It also helped pave the way for the government’s hard line policy toward the miners. Had the media followed an alternative strategy in linguistic and visual representations of the strike, it may well have taken a different, and less violent course.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60470/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Hart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The truth is out on how the media’s reporting of the Hillsborough disaster impacted the public perception of the tragedy, but could the same be said for the British miners’ strike?Christopher Hart, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/405172015-04-27T05:15:01Z2015-04-27T05:15:01ZBritain’s battered unions have new battles round the corner<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79241/original/image-20150424-14581-1risfuc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Union City Blues. Activists join anti-Thatcher protests in 2013.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisjohnbeckett/8649672668/in/photolist-3fiy8-3fiFS-3fiFY-3fiyR-3fizW-3fiHt-3fiL9-a4X1wd-ebkQko-7czuti-8nqSwr">Chris Beckett</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We often hear about how <a href="http://affairstoday.co.uk/are-unions-a-thing-of-the-past/">“old-fashioned” trade unionism is</a> in Britain. The popular image worldwide may even be that Margaret Thatcher had dealt the movement a body blow from which it could not recover during her polarising prime ministership. </p>
<p>However, when the UK Conservative Party recently announced that it would develop a scheme to allow employees <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11526478/David-Cameron-15-million-workers-to-get-three-days-paid-volunteering-leave-each-year.html">three days per year of leave</a> to encourage volunteering, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, Frances O’Grady, was quick to point out that trade unions are still the largest organisations of volunteers in the country. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this prompted a quick clarification from the Conservative Party explaining that trade union volunteering was not within the remit of the plans. </p>
<p>With 6.5m members in the UK, the trade union movement is a still a force to be reckoned with, but there have been <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/313768/bis-14-p77-trade-union-membership-statistical-bulletin-2013.pdf">profound changes since the peak</a> of the late 1970s when more than 70% of the workforce worked in jobs where the terms and conditions were negotiated by unions. Now that figure is around a third of workers and outside the public sector it is around one in six. </p>
<h2>Confrontation</h2>
<p>So what happened? Well first off, there was a deliberate and sustained effort by both employers and the state to reduce the influence of unions in workplaces and across the economy as a whole. In other words, the decline of union influence was no accident. There was a series of high-profile confrontations; Thatcher gave no ground during the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/guardianwitness-blog/2015/mar/05/miners-strike-30-years-on-i-fought-not-just-for-my-pit-but-for-the-community">Miners’ Strike of 1984-5</a> and media baron Rupert Murdoch took the same line with the print unions during the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/15/newsid_3455000/3455083.stm">Wapping disputes of 1986</a>. It resulted in a gradual tightening of the regulations governing unions and the right to take collective action, the balance of influence slowly but emphatically turned back towards employers. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79249/original/image-20150424-14543-11jp9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79249/original/image-20150424-14543-11jp9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79249/original/image-20150424-14543-11jp9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79249/original/image-20150424-14543-11jp9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79249/original/image-20150424-14543-11jp9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79249/original/image-20150424-14543-11jp9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79249/original/image-20150424-14543-11jp9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79249/original/image-20150424-14543-11jp9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Maggie Maggie Maggie …</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rahul3/2873745549/in/photolist-5nWGr4-4P53pU-eadhsn-ec1ucv-ec1tKT-4EBFMS-eb8Zui-9HTyCM-eaj5MC-ec79Yf-eadrEV-op3KkZ-pewkNL-5MMhef-82KikS-nXq9wY-op3XKh-ocuFBt-nAYM5m-pmQVNi-oFvHj7-kmDUw2-nKdCNP-edCsBc-eaokuG-4RHnev-ec4sXf-eauL7d-ecmCfo-ecfYFT-ec9yAu-eadzq2-ec9rRb-gpF6sJ-eauLcy-ec5ieQ-e9YKTH-ebYDji-4w858g-ec4qJQ-nF2qxx-5323eT-nXdLAT-bst3qE-mCdUn-aJPRzP-kcszdZ-echSU5-4FfW9j-ecc4ih">R Barraez D´Lucca</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>The outcomes were highly predictable. Rather than collectively negotiating wages and other terms and conditions, most British workers now face a “take it or leave it” position from their employers. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/nov/09/wage-gap-rich-poor-widens-25-years-data">Wage and wealth inequality has risen dramatically</a> – and trade unionism is often regarded as alien to workers and managers outside the sectors where it is still common; often, but not only, the public sector. As a result of the very organised challenge to the legitimacy of the unions, membership fell and companies in many industries withdrew from collectively negotiating terms and conditions of work. </p>
<p>Without the constraining influence of a strong collective voice representing the workforce, capital and managers have a renewed confidence to prioritise their own preferences. Previous writers have identified that companies, managers and policy makers have increasingly prioritised financial objectives in what has become known as the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vVqYAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=financialization+work&source=bl&ots=8gGE-njsQ0&sig=94oupNOfl6ubiRGJoQGhulI5Wlk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xgc6Ve22OcnPaLKngfgG&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=financialization%20work&f=false">“financialisation” of decision making</a>. This has profound effects for us all in many areas of our lives. </p>
<p>At work, the effects are widespread and include the rapid spread of employment contracts that <a href="https://theconversation.com/zero-hour-contracts-the-dark-side-of-flexible-labour-markets-16500">guarantee few or no hours</a>, but expect flexibility from the employee, the absence of organised pressure to increase wages, and no mechanism to discuss the problematic aspects of productivity that we have seen in the economy in recent years. Financialisation brings new challenges to trade unions in the UK and elsewhere because it brings a risk that employees are increasingly seen as “costs” rather than “assets” in both company and national discussions. </p>
<h2>Labourers</h2>
<p>This offers a gloomy view of the unions’ future perhaps, but there is bedrock for some stability. Unlike the US, where the meagre political influence of unions is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-us-labor-unions-and-why-they-still-matter-38263">subject of much hand-wringing</a>, in the UK, they do still have an important policy voice within the Labour Party. They still donate a large part of the Labour Party’s funds and provide activists and volunteers to help support candidates. </p>
<p>In this way, their influence is not only limited to collective bargaining about people’s terms and conditions of work but also visible in the political arena. Their voice in the political process, combined with the will of other Labour Party members allows a route for employment issues to be regulated beyond formal, collective bargaining. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26381922">There are many rumblings</a> that this link will be softened in the future, but in the current general election campaign it is clear that the Labour Party has a very strong message on issues related to working conditions such as the national minimum wage, regulation of flexible contracts and skills development. </p>
<p>British unions, however, have a difficult job to retain their influence and avoid the fate of their US counterparts. Overall, there has been an important shift away from the kind of joint mechanisms whereby employers and unions can regulate the labour market. That change is so marked that it would take time to rebuild even if there was a political will to do so. </p>
<h2>Inequality</h2>
<p>These institutions are common in other EU countries. There you will find far greater co-ordination in skills policy, training, wages and other conditions of work all of which relies on these joint regulation mechanisms – take a look at <a href="http://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Relations/Countries/Germany/Collective-Bargaining">Germany’s collective bargaining system</a> as an example. And the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/low-pay-commission">existence of the Low Pay Commission</a> shows that they can be effective here when they are given an opportunity. Without them, the UK relies on labour markets to operate with very minimal regulation and the inevitable result is the growing inequality of wages and wealth. </p>
<p>Unions help to balance out the power of managers in the workplace and they continue to do an effective job in many of the workplaces were they retain a presence. In this sense, they remain as relevant today as they did 130 years ago when they started to become a general movement to represent workers across different occupations. But they face profound and continued challenges to their legitimacy, shrinking resources and a lack of institutional framework to represent workers. Without a political will to re-build those institutions, their influence will remain constrained and many workers will continue to suffer the brutality of poor working conditions and insecurity. </p>
<p><em>This is part of an ongoing series on the waning power of organised labour. <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/labor-power">Click here</a> to see other articles in the series, which culminates on May 1, International Workers’ day.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Simms has previously undertaken research for the Trades Union Congress and affiliated unions. She is a member of the Labour Party and an active member of the University and Colleges Union. </span></em></p>British orgainsed labour has remained relevant despite the onslaught suffered during the 1980s, but it lacks the institutional structure that would make the future secure.Melanie Simms, Professor of Work and Employment, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/313262014-09-09T05:34:28Z2014-09-09T05:34:28ZThe miner returns to the silver screen in Pride – a radical, rare and emotional film<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58472/original/zvqskyrm-1410182493.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gay activists took up the cause of a group of Welsh miners.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pathé Production UK & Ireland</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a largely unknown aspect of the 1984-5 Miners’ strike, gay activists from London gave much needed help to an embattled South Wales community. Their story is told in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3169706/">Pride</a>, a film released in the UK this week. </p>
<p>Given it shows two of Margaret Thatcher’s “enemies from within” forming a united front against her government, Pride will appeal to many on the left – <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/18/solidarity-pride-film-british-tradition">Guardian columnist Owen Jones</a> wrote that it made him cry. </p>
<p>Yet, if the politics of Pride is fairly blatant, a less obvious point of interest is that the film is one of the very few screen dramatisations of miners to appear in recent years. So far as I am aware, not since <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0249462/">Billy Elliot</a> in 2000 has a commercial movie depicted miners in any significant way. </p>
<p>But there was a time when those living in the shadow of the pit dominated the imagination of many novelists and dramatists, embodying as they were deemed to do, in heightened form, the virtues of the British working class. Sometimes brutal, often noble, but always suffering, the miners were to many eyes the great victims of capitalism as well as the best hope that its evils might one day be challenged. </p>
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<p>At its peak, immediately after 1918, <a href="http://www.ncm.org.uk/docs/collections-documents/statistics-in-mining.pdf?sfvrsn=2">1.2 million</a> people were employed in mining. But the working class was always much more than just the miners. As feminists later suggested, this dramatic emphasis unduly distorted the real nature of the world of work, exaggerating its masculine character. There were, after all, <a href="http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk/story/intro.aspx?storyUid=63">1.5 million mostly female domestic servants in 1901</a> – but they never quite attracted the same attention.</p>
<p>Despite the number of miners <a href="http://www.ncm.org.uk/docs/collections-documents/statistics-in-mining.pdf?sfvrsn=2">falling to 280,000</a> by the start of the 70s, it was in then that their cultural predominance was most obvious. This was partly due to a National Union of Mineworkers’ strike that effectively ended Edward Heath’s Conservative government in 1974. But that wasn’t the only reason.</p>
<p>As stand-ins for the working class as a whole, miners’ stories dramatised in a heroic form the more banal experience of millions. Consequently, during the 70s television broadcast an unprecedented number of drama series in which miners were the main protagonists. The likes of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159204/">Sam</a> (1973-5), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072513/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3">How Green is My Valley</a> (1975), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072566/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">The Stars Look Down</a> (1975), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0150282/">Days of Hope</a> (1975), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074072/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">When the Boat Comes In</a> (1976-7) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1380818/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">The Camerons</a> (1979) reflected the experience and politics of mining families across Britain and drew in millions of viewers every week. Matters went so far that in October 1975 the Daily Mirror argued: “Miners have become the new TV heroes on both channels, ousting gun-slinging cowboys and private eyes.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58482/original/29m7c8wb-1410189901.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58482/original/29m7c8wb-1410189901.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58482/original/29m7c8wb-1410189901.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58482/original/29m7c8wb-1410189901.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58482/original/29m7c8wb-1410189901.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58482/original/29m7c8wb-1410189901.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58482/original/29m7c8wb-1410189901.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paddy Considine (Dai) and Bill Nighy (Cliff) in Pride.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pathé Production UK & Ireland </span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like Pride, these series were set in the past and underpinned by political motives. Miners were by no means all shown to be heroes, but it was difficult to dramatise coal mining and not be skeptical about the virtues of the free market. ITV’s The Stars Look Down was an adaptation of AJ Cronin’s 1935 novel, but producer Howard Baker expressed the hope it would create “a little more sympathy and understanding for the miners”. He went on: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Unless we can appreciate the history of coal mining – all the struggles and betrayals – the miners’ arguments for £100 a week appear unintelligible. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>If Baker directly linked his series to the NUM’s campaign to increase wages, the four part series Days of Hope, written by Jim Allen and directed by Ken Loach, instead called for revolutionary change based on an interpretation of how the miners were betrayed during the 1926 General Strike. It even attracted criticism from Thatcher herself. </p>
<p>Loach was famous for the “authenticity” of his films, due in part to his careful casting of hitherto unknown working-class actors, including club comedians. His casting notes for Days of Hope (held at the British Film Institute) put the relationship between class politics and sexual politics in the 1970s in an ironic light, containing as they do occasional references to some actors being too “camp” to play miners. One in particular was rejected for a leading role because he is, “soft but not bent – I think!!” </p>
<p>A few weeks after Days of Hope concluded its run, with much self-conscious bravery, ITV broadcast – at 10.30 – <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073438/">The Naked Civil Servant</a>, a dramatisation of Quentin Crisp’s memoirs of his life as a gay man. This was yet another period drama with a political motive, albeit of a sort that was rather different to the one on show in the miners’ dramas. </p>
<p>John Hurt’s sympathetic portrayal of Crisp is credited with helping change many viewers’ prejudices; and Pride is but the latest of similarly themed works to have followed in his wake. Arguably many such gay dramas have largely focused on the struggle of the individual, in isolation from the labour movement, echoing the great strides in sexual equality that have occurred since the 70s (accompanied by a rise in income inequality). In highlighting a moment when both class and sexual politics combined, Pride is therefore a very rare and uniquely radical drama for 2014. I can see why it made Owen Jones cry.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31326/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Fielding receives funding from the British Academy which has helped him research period dramas in the 1970s.</span></em></p>In a largely unknown aspect of the 1984-5 Miners’ strike, gay activists from London gave much needed help to an embattled South Wales community. Their story is told in Pride, a film released in the UK…Steven Fielding, Professor of Political History, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/233362014-03-14T07:16:16Z2014-03-14T07:16:16ZTony Benn, conviction politician and old-Labour stalwart, dies<p>Tony Benn, who has died aged 88, was one of the great characters in 20th-century British politics. When he announced in 2001 he was “leaving Parliament to spend more time on politics” it was widely held to be judgement not only on the impoverishment of the British political system, but also a lament for the decline of his beloved Labour Party and the rise of the spin-obsessed forces of New Labour. </p>
<p>Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn was born in Marylebone, London on April 3, 1925, son of William Wedgwood Benn and his wife Margaret. Politics ran in Tony Benn’s blood. Like both his grandfathers, Benn’s father was a Liberal MP – but he later shifted his allegiance to the Labour Party and was elevated to the peerage in 1941 as the 1st Viscount Stansgate. </p>
<p>Tony’s mother, was a theologian, a feminist and president of the Congregational Federation. She was also a strong advocate of the ordination of women priests. Her religious convictions did not rub off on Tony who was a lifelong agnostic. </p>
<p>Benn was educated at Westminster School and went on to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at New College, Oxford where he was elected president of the Oxford Union in 1947. He always felt at odds with his privileged upbringing and education, but particularly with his hereditary title which he unsuccessfully attempted to renounce in 1955 and again in 1960. As a result, when his father died in 1960 he became 2nd Viscount Stansgate and when he won a by-election that May was prevented from taking his seat in the House of Commons. He successfully disclaimed his title for life in 1963. </p>
<p>In the 1970s Benn tried to remove public references to his privileged private education from Who’s Who. In the 1976 edition his entry contained only the barest of facts and in the 1977 there was no entry at all. </p>
<p>Benn joined the RAF in 1943, joining his father and elder brother, Michael, who were already serving. He served as a pilot officer in South Africa and Rhodesia and in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve from 1943-45 and in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve from 1945-46. In later life Benn adopted an anti-war stance and in 1982 strongly objected the escalation of hostilities between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands, arguing instead for a peaceful settlement through the United Nations. </p>
<p>Two years later he was supporting the women at the US Air Force base at Greenham Common and complaining about their treatment by the police and the erosion of civil liberties. In 2009 Benn was openly critical of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, labelling them “imperialist”. Benn had been elected as President of the Stop the War Coalition. </p>
<h2>Servant of the people</h2>
<p>Although never leader of the Labour Party, Benn’s political achievements were remarkable. He was first elected as an MP in 1950 for Bristol South East and, barring a short period from 1961-1963 when he was ruled ineligible due to his peerage, held the seat from for almost 20 years, until it was abolished before the 1983 election. He was elected as MP for the Chesterfield constituency after a by-election in March 1984, a constituency he continued to represent until to June 2001.</p>
<p>Benn was clearly favoured by Harold Wilson and held many senior political positions. From October 1964 to July 1966 he was postmaster-general, in which role he had to deal with the militant Union of Post Office Workers under the leadership of the extravagantly moustachioed Tom Jackson. He oversaw the opening of the Post Office tower in London and proposed the introduction of postage stamps without the Queen’s head. </p>
<p>Benn spent four years as minister of technology from July 1966 to June 1970 and was responsible for the development of Concorde. He was chairman of the Labour Party from September 1971 to September 1972. He also assumed responsibility for the ministry of aviation in 1967 and for the ministry of power in 1969. </p>
<p>In opposition, Benn was a formidable opponent of the Heath government. He leaked a controversial paper, written by Nicholas Ridley, which advocated a complete government withdrawal from the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, a consortium of five shipbuilders, which had been causing problems for the government. Benn also encouraged the UCS workforce to embark on a “work-in”. Heath found both interventions highly irritating and unnecessary. </p>
<p>When Labour was re-elected in 1974, Benn was appointed secretary of state for industry, a post he held until May 1975, at which point he took over the energy portfolio until Labour lost office in May 1979. Both these jobs were performed against a background of unrest and these were particularly sensitive and trying posts. Prior to winning office in 1974, Wilson had entered into the “social contract” with the trade unions: restraint on wage claims in return for union-friendly legislation. But Labour’s period of office was a period of industrial chaos: inflation was running at 16% and a year later had soared to 24.5%.</p>
<p>Labour delivered its side of the deal in the form of the Employment Protection Act, which provided for statutory trade union recognition but pay restraint proved a bigger problem, with spiralling inflation the government’s relations with the trade unions became increasingly fractious and after four years the deal lay in tatters. The Winter of Discontent saw much of the public sector on strike and Labour’s popularity in freefall, ushering in the Thatcher years.</p>
<h2>Stalwart of the left</h2>
<p>Benn was well known as one of the few really significant Labour politicians whose views became more left wing the older he got – partly due to his disenchantment with the way that civil servants were abusing their power and frustrating the endeavours of elected government. </p>
<p>In a similar way, his democratic principles were offended by what he saw as a habit of Labour leaders of treating the party as their personal fiefdom and running it in a centralised, authoritarian way. On the other side of the political ledger, he was outraged at the manner in which industrialists and bankers would use any means available to exert economic pressure to get their own way. </p>
<p>Benn was a vocal supporter of the National Union of Mineworkers in the 1984-5 strike and had a close friendship with the miners’ leader Arthur Scargill. He was so popular with the miners that his picture appeared on the NUM Blackhall Lodge union banner. After the NUM was defeated he introduced the Miners’ Amnesty (General Pardon) Bill 1985 to the House of Commons which would have secured an amnesty for all miners imprisoned during the strike. </p>
<h2>Family man</h2>
<p>Benn was clearly a romantic at heart. He met his wife Caroline in 1949 at Worcester College, Oxford, and some nine days later proposed to her on a park bench. Benn later bought the bench from Oxford City Council and placed it in his garden in Holland Park. Caroline died in 2000. </p>
<p>The Benns had three sons, Stephen, Hillary, and Joshua, and a daughter, Melissa, who went on to become a journalist. Eldest son, Stephen, was a member of the Inner London Educational Authority from 1986 to 1990 and Hillary was elected as MP for Leeds Central in 1999. Hillary went on to become secretary of state for international development from 2003 to 2007 and secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs from 2007 to 2010. Tony Benn was famously proud that Stephen became the third generation of the family to hold a Cabinet office. </p>
<p>Benn was an ardent diarist and recorded every detail of his life in and out of Westminster, publishing eight volumes covering the period from 1940 to 2013 before he stopped after suffering a stroke. He was a visiting professor of government at the London School of Economics from 2001 to 2002 and was awarded ten honorary doctorates from UK and US universities.</p>
<p>Tony Benn was an old-fashioned, ideological politician who was steadfast in his principles and uncompromising in his views. In a 1992 diary entry he poured scorn on David Owen, accusing him of being a Tory rather than a Labour moderate. His speeches were clever, articulate, compelling, and delivered with enthusiasm. His retirement was no doubt welcomed by his opponents, like a painful thorn being removed from the side. There is no doubt that politics – and Westminster – is much duller in his absence. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23336/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alf Crossman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tony Benn, who has died aged 88, was one of the great characters in 20th-century British politics. When he announced in 2001 he was “leaving Parliament to spend more time on politics” it was widely held…Alf Crossman, Senior Lecturer in Industrial Relations and HRM, University of SurreyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/240042014-03-05T06:07:49Z2014-03-05T06:07:49ZMiners’ strike the first IR dispute won and lost in the media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43109/original/xm8q9jw9-1393956545.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The miners shouted, but most of the media wasn't listening.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">PA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On 5 March 1984 workers downed tools at <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2004/feb/01/features.magazine17%20%20">Cortonwood Colliery </a> in South Yorkshire, in protest at the Conservative government’s plans to close pits across the country. A week later, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) president Arthur Scargill called a national strike. Thus began the UK’s final and most significant industrial dispute of the 20th century.</p>
<p>We have learned a great deal about the strike in the 30 years since – that the government planned to declare a state of emergency and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jan/03/margaret-thatcher-secret-plan-army-miners-strike">call in the army</a>, for instance, or that Thatcher revealed to Cabinet her long-held ambitions “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/margaret-thatcher-trade-union-reform-national-archives">to crush the power of Britain’s trade unions</a>.”</p>
<p>But one further aspect has become clear only over time: this was the first mass industrial dispute played out largely in the media. In a foretaste of the era of the spin doctor, the winning side had the best communications strategy, the clearest narrative and the most compliant media. </p>
<h2>Mines to media</h2>
<p>Vitally, the miner’s strike emphasised that industrial disputes could no longer be won on the picket lines. The battleground was the media, and Thatcher came prepared. Norman Tebbit, writing in <a href="http://www.abebooks.co.uk/Upwardly-Mobile-Autobiography-Norman-Tebbit-Weidenfeld/963562293/bd">his autobiography</a>, stated: “I do not think that anyone has properly assessed the skill with which the dispute was foreseen and then managed by the government.” Indeed, such media management was rare at the time: the phrase “spin doctor” wasn’t first used in print until <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-1124,00.html">later that year</a>.</p>
<p>The government conducted itself during the strike as if it were engaged in an election campaign. This was not just a direct battle with the pit workers but rather an attempt to persuade the public that trade unionism was an inherently pernicious entity. The whole weight of the Conservative Party’s political machine was thrown behind a cause which was regularly depicted as a simple battle between good and evil. It became a debate solely about the personality of the government and the personality of Scargill.</p>
<p>While Thatcher was generally careful to limit her personal proclamations on the strike, as far as the media was concerned Scargill himself was the NUM. He was responsible for issuing each and every national media statement on the behalf of the miners and he appeared at every news conference. As official spokesman, only his words were heard. He embodied the strike. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43115/original/p99wvhng-1393959205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43115/original/p99wvhng-1393959205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/43115/original/p99wvhng-1393959205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43115/original/p99wvhng-1393959205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43115/original/p99wvhng-1393959205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43115/original/p99wvhng-1393959205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43115/original/p99wvhng-1393959205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/43115/original/p99wvhng-1393959205.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Arthur Scargill had the support of the NUM, but not the media.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">PA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Scargill did recognise how important television was as a means to communicate with both NUM members and the wider public. However, though he made perceptively timed appearances throughout the dispute, he continually accused the BBC and ITN of distorted coverage, particularly concerning picket line violence. Nell Myers, Scargill’s press officer during the strike, outlined the union’s attitude in an interview with The Guardian in 1985: “The industrial correspondents, along with the broadcasting technicians, are basically our enemies. Responsible for … a cyclone of vilification, distortion and untruth.”</p>
<h2>Exploiting the news</h2>
<p>By contrast, throughout the strike the government and the National Coal Board (NCB) were able to exploit the news media. They realised that there had to be a massive propaganda operation to convince strikers that there was absolutely no point in them staying out any longer. </p>
<p>The Sunday newspapers set the agenda for other sections of the media – particularly television – and the government was well aware of this. To this day, in the internet age, the same strategy is still adhered to by those seeking to manage the news agenda: launch stories late on Saturday but early enough for other Sunday papers to recycle. </p>
<p>The story would then move onto television. In 1984, the BBC and ITV’s breakfast news programmes dominated and Thatcher’s media strategists ensured that throughout the strike a minister or member of the NCB was available for media comment first thing on Monday mornings. If the timing went to plan the story could be stretched over a further two or three days – longer than if it had broken on a weekday. Through such meticulous planning the government was able to ensure maximum media exposure.</p>
<p>But talking heads on the news weren’t enough by themselves. As the dispute wore on, the government became increasingly reliant on the expertise of advertising consultants. <a href="http://www.nicholasjones.org.uk/books/199-strikes-and-the-media">Nicholas Jones</a>, an expert on the media and strikes, points out the government revealed in 1985 that it had spent £4,266,000 on national advertising plus a further £300,000 locally.</p>
<p>In the end, the government won the communication battle by continually highlighting the futility of continued action while miners were steadily returning to work. It ran a highly effective propaganda campaign orchestrated by party strategists who had already won two elections. And, of course, it benefited from a largely compliant media.</p>
<p>In complete contrast, Scargill found it impossible to delegate any of his responsibilities as official spokesman for the NUM. There was no overall communications strategy, his technique was too one-dimensional and his persistence and ingenuity didn’t endear him to those outside the union. In the last great industrial dispute of the 20th century, these factors were crucial.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24004/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Jewell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On 5 March 1984 workers downed tools at Cortonwood Colliery in South Yorkshire, in protest at the Conservative government’s plans to close pits across the country. A week later, National Union of Mineworkers…John Jewell, Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.