The British Miners' Strike: Forty Years on.

Richard Mellor

HEO/GED

I owe John Throne, (Sean O'Torain) a debt of Gratitude for getting me on the bus at Wembley and sending me up to Barnsley. I had been at a huge meeting of the Militant Tendency, a socialist formation inside the British Labor Party. I think it was at Wembley, but maybe it was Alexandra Palace; I can't remember now. When we got to Barnsley, I stayed with a Miner and his wife. She was a teacher. His name was Chapman.

 

The first night I went to a pub where a young Yorkshire miner was giving an introduction on Chile and the Assassination of its elected leader Salvadore Allende by a US backed thug regime led by Augusto Pinochet. If you have never heard Yorkshire accents you can’t image the struggle I had and English is my first language. 

I was so impressed as the person giving the introduction was a young miner, younger than me for sure. During great upheavals like the Miner’s Strike which was a civil war in Britain, some 18,000 police on the picket lines I believe, our minds are a little more open to working class history and politics. The young miner was Gary Ironmonger and I visited him again in the 1990’s when he was living in Wombwell.

 

I have written about this part of my lifer before but there are a few things I consider one of the greatest and most influential times in my life and this was one of them; it had a profound effect on me.  

The next morning I went to a picket line. It was pretty early and we were walking up this narrow country road toward the pit and the pithead. I am only guessing at this point but it seemed like there were hundreds, maybe a couple of thousand of us. 

 

As we got closer to the pit I looked to my left and in the adjacent field I see a line of police on horseback. It was misty and half-light and was an eerie scene indeed. I began to feel a little nervous but I kept camera in hand and took some shots. As the pithead came within sight I managed to jump up and down a bit to see ahead of me and saw miners and cops fighting up ahead. The police were determined to let scabs in. 

There were very few that crossed the line as these communities are tight, I even heard that there was only one and that they were unable to get him in so they helicoptered him in there. That might have been just a rumour. Thatcher talked of a person’s right to work but what could the scabs do in there? Nothing. So the real issue is to demoralize the workers on strike and impose some small defeat on them. 

Then they started to drive us back and involved in the pushback were cops on horses and the workers told me later that they had marbles they used as a defense against horses as they can’t walk on them, and certainly can’t charge. 

 

As the police drove us back we spilled over in to the field on my right and I kept taking pictures as I walked back. I glanced to my right I remember and I saw a pitchfork lying a few yards away. I felt unease about that and hoped no worker would pick it up and use it against the police. If this was the US I thought to myself, it couldn’t be ruled out that some gun violence would occur.

 

After this event, it might have been the same day, I went with some miners to a soup kitchen. One thing that really impressed me was the solidarity everywhere. In the stores and the pubs, the support for the strike was strong and the strikers respected. Small businesses knew also that without miners their own economic interests were threatened. 

 

Anyway, this sort of history, working class history is not taught in a serious way. If you leave it to Hollywood, you’d think that the mafia built the unions. They co-opt our history just like Black History month that is pushed so fervently. The struggles of the Black working class is hidden and inventors, artists, entrepreneurs are forefront.

 

As you can see, it came to light over time that the miners were set up. Thatcher and the British government with support from the US were out to break the National Union of Miners from the outset. I heard that there were police brought over from Northern Ireland to bolster picket lines.  Mind you, had the TUC, the British equivalent of the AFL-CIO brought its weight to bare and called for a general strike, that would have changed the balance of class forces.

 

But we all know how that goes.

Here's a few items I came back to the US with as well as the brass miners lamp.