The Miners' Strike

Britain.

CHAPTER ONE

The Beginning

1947–1974

On 1 January 1947 Britain’s coal mines were taken into public ownership. The vast majority of Britain’s 690,000 miners had high expectations that state ownership would provide safe, secure, decently paid jobs for generations to come.

Coal was the prime source for 90% of the UK’s energy needs and the Fuel and Power Minister Emanuel Shinwell, Labour MP for Seaham in County Durham, said: You are public servants upon whose efforts will depend our future as a powerful industrial country. Amidst celebrations, the blue-and-white flag of the National Coal Board (NCB) was unfurled at the highest point of each colliery.

At each pit entrance a notice board marked the changes: THIS COLLIERY IS NOW MANAGED BY THE NATIONAL COAL BOARD ON BEHALF OF THE PEOPLE.

The NUM general secretary Arthur Horner said: Our members’ interests lie in establishing a highly productive industry.

Not every miners’ lodge celebrated the changes however. At St Hilda’s Colliery, South Shields the lodge said: Nationalisation is just a different play with the same actors.

Critics also warned that the private owners – who had for many years failed to invest in new technology in order to remain competitive – were walking away with a small fortune in compensation. As a further sweetener, the coal owners were handed government stock in the form of annuities that guaranteed them payments until the year 2000!

The new board refused to grant ‘The Miners Charter’, which had been drawn up by the NUM to give miners a national standard wage, a second week’s paid holiday, compensation for industrial diseases and a seven-hour shift.

The hated coal owners may have been moved aside but it was apparent that after 1 January 1947 there would still be struggles ahead.

The 1950s were, though, to see significant investment in bigger pits across many coalfields. However as cheap oil flooded into Britain in the 1960s the industry, under the chairmanship of Lord Robens, was allowed to shrink by around half; one pit a week was closed between 1965 and 1969. Those who remained in mining were offered a government commitment to restrict cheap coal imports that threatened investment and the long term future of the whole industry.

Martin Jenkinson, working at Yorkshire Miner’s Gala, Rotherham. June 1985

1 January 1947 and Britain’s coal mines are taken into public ownership.

Such principles were consolidated in The Plan for Coal of 1974, which was endorsed by the newly elected Labour Government of Harold Wilson, the NCB, the NUM and other mining unions.

Wilson had returned as Prime Minister on the back of the 1974 Miners’ national pay strike, the second in a little over two years. On 9 January 1972, all 289 pits were closed as 280,000 mineworkers took national action for the first time since the ill-fated 1926 General Strike.

In 1948 miners were earning 29 per cent above the national average wage for manufacturing. 24 years later this had fallen to 3.1 below the national average. Some miners were even earning less than in the 1960s. A ballot for strike action had secured a 59 per cent majority on an 85 per cent turnout.

Having just defeated striking postal workers the Tory government of Edward Heath, intent on reducing pay settlements, may have welcomed the chance to take on the miners. However it was guilty of poor planning as it failed to ensure coal stocks were maintained at power stations after miners cut production through imposing an overtime ban in October 1971.

With three-quarters of the electricity used in the United Kingdom coming from coal-burning power stations this meant that within days schools were closed. Miners, often against the wishes of their national and area union leaderships, responded by sending flying pickets right across the country to power stations, steelworks, ports and coal depots.

In defiance of the NUM hierarchy, rank and file strikers also prevented National Association of Colliery, Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS) members from entering collieries to carry out safety work. NCB office workers were also picketed out. Labour Research magazine estimated that an average of 40,000 miners went picketing each day and the then NUM general secretary, Lawrence Daly, believed the figure was 50% higher at 60,000.

Effective picketing required the support of other trade unionists. Both the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) issued instructions to their members that supported miners’ demands not to carry ‘coal and other fuel’ which could damage their struggle. The Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) general secretary, Jack Jones, spoke for the union’s road haulage members when he said: Clearly no picket lines will be crossed. In the vast majority of cases this was what happened.

Joe Gormley, the NUM president told reporters: We shall put pickets wherever necessary - within the law - to make sure that this strike is a success, even if it means picketing power stations.

Widespread hostility to the Government’s pay and employment policy, combined with anger at its anti-union legislation, had resulted in widespread solidarity with the miners’ cause. Four weeks into the strike the Saltley Gate Coke works in Birmingham was the last major coke distributing point still supplying industry and the national grid.

The deployment of large numbers of police meant that miners – led by the relatively unknown Yorkshire activist Arthur Scargill – had found it impossible to force its closure until he won support from the powerful shop stewards’ movement at the huge manufacturing factories in Birmingham.

On 10 February 1972 over forty thousand workers – many from the engineering and automotive manufacturing industries, but also building workers – walked out right across Birmingham to support the miners, who, reinforced on the picket line by at least 10,000 of the local strikers, overwhelmed the police who closed down the coke works.

A delighted Scargill, who within a year was elected president of the Yorkshire area of the NUM, said later: there was absolute delirium and I told the crowd it was the greatest victory of the working class, certainly in my lifetime … here was living proof that the working class had only to flex its muscles and it could bring governments, employers and society to a total standstill. Labour Research called it one of the finest days in British trade union history. The miners had often rallied to other workers’ calls for support (and continued to do so over the following years) and had now been repaid in great style.

Within days the NCB and Edward Heath had granted, through the hastily assembled Wilberforce Inquiry, which reported in less than a week, major concessions on pay and shift bonuses. The Trades Union Congress’s (TUC) role in the 1926 General Strike, in which they called the strike off after nine days, meant they were excluded from the negotiations. The successful miners returned to work.

Rampant inflation meant that within two years the miners had dropped from top spot in the industrial wages league to eighteenth. An overtime ban in November 1973 in support of a substantial wage increase threatened to increase the pressure on a government facing serious difficulties after the Arab oil exporting nations (OPEC) introduced an oil embargo in protest at the United States’ support for Israeli military upgrades. As a result the price of crude oil had rocketed and the stock market had collapsed.

Edward Heath responded to the miners’ actions by declaring a State of Emergency. A three-day working week was announced in mid-December and, after attempts to reach a settlement had failed, the NUM called a ballot for strike action in which 80.99% of its members voted in favour. Heath called a general election and went to the country saying: Do you want a strong Government … or do you want them to abandon the struggle against rising prices under pressure from one particularly powerful group of workers … This time of strife has got to stop. Only you can stop it. It’s time for you to speak – with your vote.

After all the votes were counted Labour emerged with the most seats: 301, with the Tories on 296. With Heath unable to persuade the Liberal Party to join him in a coalition government it was left to Labour to lead a minority administration; one of its first actions was to grant the miners their full pay claim, including a further week’s holiday in future years.

Photographed here at Sheffield Wednesday football ground, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. She radically changed the face of British politics.

CHAPTER TWO

New Tory Thinking

Labour subsequently strengthened their hold on Parliamentary power by winning a second general election in October 1974 in which they emerged with a small overall majority. A defeated Tory Party responded by backing Heath’s former Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher – who had wanted the Prime Minister to put off calling the February 1974 election in order to fight the miners – when she challenged for the leadership of the party in 1975.

This was also a year in which newly