The Miners' Strike
By Mark Metcalf, Martin Jenkinson and Mark Harvey
()
About this ebook
Read more from Mark Metcalf
All Shook Up: Bury FC's Amazing Cup Story - FA Cup Winners 1900 & 1903 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Remarkable Story of Fred Spiksley: The First Working-Class Football Hero Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLifting the Cup: The Story of Battling Barnsley, 1910-1912 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Search of the Double: AFC Sunderland 1912-13 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoy Massey: A Life in Football and a Coach to the Stars Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSheffield in the 1980s Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsErling Haaland: Manchester City's Striking Viking Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Miners' Strike
Related ebooks
The Miner's Strike: Day by Day Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTen Days that Changed the Nation: The Making of Modern Britain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Shadow of the Mine: Coal and the End of Industrial Britain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHesitant Comrades: The Irish Revolution and the British Labour Movement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not Just For This Life: Gough Whitlam Remembered Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOutcasts of the Gods?: The Struggle Over Slavery in Maori New Zealand Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe South Wales Miners: 1964-1985 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLittle Book of Irish Boxing Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ned Kelly: Under the Microscope Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStakeknife: Britain's Secret Agents in Ireland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cromwell was Framed: Ireland 1649 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Kingdom to Come: Thoughts on the Union before and after the Scottish Independence Referendum Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Brave Blue Line: 100 Years of Metropolitan Police Gallantry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBelfast to Benghazi Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoyal Navy Versus the Slave Traders: Enforcing Abolition at Sea, 1808–1898 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Breaking peace: Brexit and Northern Ireland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNortherners: A History, from the Ice Age to the Present Day Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Seasick Admiral: Nelson and the Health of the Navy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe English diaspora in North America: Migration, ethnicity and association, 1730s–1950s Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe History of Tasmania (Vol. 1&2): Complete Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlasgow: The Autobiography: The Autobiography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNew Zealand As It Might Have Been 2 Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5John Bercow: Call to Order Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBygone Cumberland and Westmorland Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Illustrated Everton Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhere the White Man Treads - Across the Pathway of the Maori Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Origins of Scottish Nationhood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pirate Killers: The Royal Navy and the African Pirates Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBritish Steam Military Connections: London, Midland and Scottish Railway Steam Locomotives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBritish Concentration Camps: A Brief History from 1900–1975 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Modern History For You
World War 1: A History From Beginning to End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Notebook Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Night to Remember: The Sinking of the Titanic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Mother, a Serial Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Little Red Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The God Delusion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Voices from Chernobyl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/518 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Outlaw Platoon: Heroes, Renegades, Infidels, and the Brotherhood of War in Afghanistan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Miners' Strike
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Miners' Strike - Mark Metcalf
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