Dispute that tore communities apart

Eighteen months later, after countless families and communities had been torn apart by the bitterest industrial dispute in a generation, the general secretary’s warning looked like a masterpiece of understatement.

By the time the overtime ban came in, both sides of the coal industry and their ideologically-driven leaders seemed locked on a collision course. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979, with an agenda of taking on the unions and bringing private sector efficiency to state-run industries. Two years later, firebrand Arthur Scargill was elected president of the NUM on a platform of fighting all pit closures. Compromise did not come naturally to either.

The miners believed that incoming Conservative Government was determined to avenge the defeat inflicted on Ted Heath in 1974 and the Tories had, while in opposition, drawn up a secret six-point plan to win any future coal dispute, which including the building up of stocks.

The threat of strike action had been enough to halt a pit closure programme announced by what was still a fledgling Conservative Government in 1981 but, by the winter of 1983-84, coal stocks had been tripled to 54m tonnes, roughly half the industry’s annual output.

In September 1983, the Government appointed Ian McGregor, later Sir Ian, as the new chairman of the National Coal Board. In two years, the tough-talking Canadian had turned around British Steel from one of the least efficient steel-makers in Europe to the verge of profitability by halving the workforce, including the devastating closure of Consett steelworks. Both sides of the coming dispute were confident he would bring the same ruthlessness to the coal industry.

The tinderbox mood in the coalfield was demonstrated when the elderly Mr McGregor was jostled to the ground by an angry crowd during a visit to Ellington colliery in Northumberland in February.

In his programme notes before the 1983 centenary Durham Miners’ Gala, Tom Callan wrote: “We cannot blame young men who shirk strike action because of mortgage commitments or family concern, or older men who would rather take redundancy than work in conditions which they dislike. We know that pits will close: the real question is when?”

The answer came on March 1, 1984 when the NCB announced the closure of Cortonwood leading within days to a strike vote by miners at the South Yorkshire pit. Five days after the initial announcement, the Board announced that it was looking to slash annual capacity by four million tonnes, equivalent to the closure of 20 pits and 20,000 jobs, and that five pits, including Herrington, would go within weeks under an accelerated closure programme.

Using the obscure Rule 41, individual areas of the fairly federal National Union of Mineworkers called local strikes without a ballot, starting in Yorkshire and spreading across the coalfields, backed by the national executive.

On March 9, the executive of Durham NUM passed a resolution calling for strike action and the following day a mass meeting of 1,000 union members at Easington Colliery became the first in the North-East to vote for a walkout from the 12th.

The subsequent solidarity shown during the early months of the strike masks the divisions within the coalfield at its outset. On the Monday after the executive vote, 13,500 men in Northumberland and Durham were out on strike, but 9,500 continued to work. Effective leadership of the NUM in the region had passed to a new breed of younger, more Left-wing union officials, such as Alan Cummings at Easington, David Hopper at Wearmouth and Billy Stobbs, Durham’s area delegate to the national executive. With Tom Callan warning that working pits would be “picketed out”, union men from Easington persuaded Vane Tempest and Dawdon to join the strike.

The battle lines were being drawn in the North-East and across the country. On March 10, Mr Scargill told a rally at the Barbary Coast Club, near Wearmouth pit, in Sunderland: “In five years’ time, you will be able to say we not only saved our pit, we not only saved our job, but we restored our dignity and our faith as human beings”. But, during a visit to Gateshead on March 12, the day the NUM declared the dispute to be a national strike despite the lack of a ballot, Mr McGregor upped the stakes by warning: “Prolonged strike action could probably accelerate the programme of pit closures.” By March 14, not a single miner was working in the 12 pits in the Durham coalfield or the six in Northumberland.

Across the country, the picture was far less clear cut. Two weeks into the dispute, 123 of the country’s 174 pits were idle, while most miners in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Leicestershire defied the pickets.

With the North-East pits at a standstill, the union leadership adopted a twin strategy: sending flying pickets across the country to force working miners out on strike and also attempting to halt the movements of coal within the region.

Striking miners flooded into Notts, where, amid escalating violence, the police drafted in an extra 8,000 officers from around the country and set up blockades to prevent pickets getting into the county. Recently-elected Sedgefield MP Tony Blair complained after he was prevented from entering Nottinghamshire at a police roadblock, while coaches carrying 200 Durham miners were stopped on the borders of Staffordshire.

Strikers from County Durham bolstered picket lines at Ravenscraig, in Scotland, at Orgreave Coke Works, in Yorkshire, while in August Supt Bill Longmore of Staffordshire Police claimed that hit squads of Durham pickets were bringing “terror and intimidation” to working miners in the county - an accusation rubbished by the Durham men.

Back at home, pickets attempted to halt the movements of coal in and out of key sites throughout the summer. Redcar steelworks and Fishburn Coke Works saw sporadic picketing; a Kelloe miner suffered a fractured skull during protests outside Steetley Quarry, in West Cornforth; twice in 10 days up to 700 strikers forced the closure of the NCB workshops and stores at Philidephia, near Houghton-le-Spring; while 32 pickets were arrested on July 26 during what police described as “running battles” after miners padlocked the NCB’s administration offices at Whitburn, Sunderland.

But the bitterest scenes came at the privately-owned Inkerman coal screening site, near Tow Law, where up to 800 pickets-a-day tried to halt the lorries from getting in and out. In the first month of what became known as The Siege of Inkerman, 77 pickets were arrested during the daily push and shove, including Sunderland MP Bob Clay, and at least nine police officers injured. Tom Callan complained about police brutality, saying: “Some of our lads were kicked and punched just for standing on the picket line,” an accusation fiercely denied by Durham Chief Constable Eldred Booth who said: “My officers have a job to do and this they do without fear or favour.”

Much media attention focused on the picket lines but, hinting at hidden divisions within the union membership, David Archibald, Northeast director for the NCB, said: “It should not be forgotten that the activists appearing on the picket lines number only 1,000 compared to the 21,000 who are staying quietly at home.”

The worst of the violence was centred on Yorkshire. Two striking miners died on the picket lines and images of baton charges by mounted police and stone-throwing strikers at what became known as the Battles of Orgreave were flashed around the world.

As with every aspect of the dispute, there were two sides to the story. At Orgreave, where he was left bloodied after being knocked to the ground by a police riot shield, Arthur Scargill said: “There have been scenes of almost unbelievable brutality reminiscent of a Latin American police state,” while Margaret Thatcher replied: “What we have got is an attempt to substitute the rule of the mob for the rule of law and it must not succeed.” In July, the Prime Minister went further, telling Conservative backbenchers: “We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. Now we are fighting the enemy within.”

Away from the front line, secret and not-so-secret peace talks started in May but both sides were poles apart and, after 11 weeks of the dispute, the first talks collapsed in less than an hour.

By now, the vexed issue of the ballot was becoming the dividing line between working and striking miners. On March 21, the Durham NUM executive had called for a national ballot, but reversed their policy within two weeks and on April 12 were with the majority on the national executive in agreeing that the strike continue without a vote.

However, the divisive decision was to have dramatic repercussions on the outcome of the dispute when two Nottinghamshire miners took the union to court to have the lack of a ballot declared unlawful. The action eventually led to a High Court fine, the union’s assets being seized and Scargill being found in contempt but, more importantly, was seized upon by the union’s enemies and opened fissures within the membership itself.

Already, the union was troubled by the lukewarm support from within the Labour movement. Before the end of March, unions representing railwaymen and lorry drivers were refusing to move coal and dock workers briefly staged a national strike in support of the miners, but key unions such as the steelworkers continued to work. While the TUC backed the miners, its support fell a long way short of the General Strike which Scargill demanded.

Twice - once in April and again in October - pit deputies union Nacods came within a whisker of going on strike, industrial action which would have withdrawn safety cover and brought every pit in the country to a standstill - but twice it pulled back from the brink after the offer of concessions.

Similarly, the Labour Party was torn between its traditional ties to the miners and the demands of electoral popularity.

Deputy leader Roy Hattersley told a May Day rally in Seaham: “We are with you all the way. The Labour Party cannot disassociate itself from the miners. We are them and they are us.”

In July, Neil Kinnock addressed a 15,000 crowd at the rally in Durham which replaced the traditional Miners’ Gala. While making clear his opposition to picket-line violence, he said that Mrs Thatcher: “can break families and she can break hearts but there is one thing she should understand and that is she will never break the mining people.” He added: “Sometime, somewhere, this spirit of submission has got to stop and it’s stopped in this mining industry.” Arthur Scargill told the same crowd: “This is no longer purely a miners’ dispute. The issue involves the whole of the British Labour movement and they recognise that if the miners were to be defeated then the face of trade unionism would be dramatically altered for at least a generation and that is why we will stand together.”

Locally, the miners’ won support from the local authorities - Durham County Council handed over £25,000 of taxpayers to the families of strikers to the fury of the opposition, who tried to have the donation declared illegal, and made school kitchens available for meals to miners’ children; Easington District Council found £10,000 and the then Tyne and Wear County Council handed over £100,000.

But for all the words of support and the goodwill of councillors, the harsh realities of the prolonged strike were beginning to bite in the pit villages of the North-East. Soup kitchens were organised by the growing network of women’s support groups, while Durham witnessed the extraordinary sight of food aid for miners’ families being brought in from the Soviet Union.

Through the first six months of the strike, the worst of the trouble had centred on Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, while there was a comparative calm in the North-East.

Everything changed on August 20.

Power loader Paul Wilkinson was an outsider. He lived in Bowburn, outside the tight-knit mining villages of East Durham, and had few friends at Easington, having transferred less a year earlier when the pit at Kelloe closed.

On Monday, August 20, the 28-year-old turned up for work at Easington colliery - the symbolic heart of trade unionism in the Durham coalfield. He later told the Northern Echo: “There was a principle at stake. There should have been a ballot - its as simple as that.”

Pickets mounted a barricade at the gates of the pit and the coach carrying him was turned back. Over the next four days, there was a tense stand-off between growing numbers of pickets and police in the village until finally, on Friday, August 24, Paul Wilkinson reached the pit and became the first working miner in County Durham.

Within minutes, there was trouble on the streets of Easington. Bricks were thrown and cars overturned and police in full riot gear were seen on the streets of the North-East for the first time in history. Five policemen and three miners needed hospital treatment.

That night, a full-scale riot broke out in the nearby village of Murton when a petrol station, a derelict pub and a car were set on fire as 150 police officers faced striking miners in the streets.

For three days the following week, Easington was under a state of virtual siege with mounted police stationed in the village, extra officers drafted in from Wales and Northampton, and a atmosphere of constant tension.

Calm was eventually restored, but the atmosphere in the North-East was never the same again.

Paul Wilkinson’s decision to return to work did not open the floodgates and only a trickle of men followed him across the picket lines that summer, but it was a symbolically important in the history of the dispute.

Increasingly, those branded “scabs” by the strikers were targeted both at work and at home: windows were smashed, paint thrown at doors, some were even assaulted in the street. One who defied the pickets to go into Hawthorn coke works told The Northern Echo: “The more intimidation I get, the more determined I will be to stand up to them.”.

With peace talks stalled, it was clear that the strike was to be a war of attrition. At the end of April, Scargill made what was to prove a wildly inaccurate claim that the nation’s power stations had only eight or nine weeks supply left and that the union was ready to stay out until December if necessary.

If, they reasoned, the strikers could maintain solidarity into the winter, dwindling coal stocks would turn the outcome of the dispute in their favour. But, with every day that passed, the loyalty of even the most ardent union supporters was being tested by increasing debts, dwindling savings, troubled marriages, mounting mortgage arrears and the prospect of a poverty-stricken Christmas.

The stakes were raised even higher on October 30, when Scargill released leaked NCB documents, which appeared to show that, by 1995, the board expected only four pits to be open in the North-East - Easington, Wearmouth, Westoe and Ellington. Tom Callan told the media: “We know now that this is a fight to the finish and a battle we cannot afford to lose. If we do, it will mean the destruction of our industry and our communities.”

Despite the dire warning, the tipping point came just days later. As late as November 1 - almost eight months into the strike - only 89 miners out of 22,800 in the North-East were at work. There were two working out of 2,400 at Easington, two out of 1,600 at Murton, while at Herrington, Bearpark, Dawdon, Horden, Sacriston and Ellington not a single miner had crossed the picket lines. Across the country, some miners had turned up for work at 60 pits, although not all were producing coal, while 114 were still at a complete standstill.

The following day, the NCB announced a £650 Christmas bonus for anyone returning to work. Around 900 men across the country took up the offer in the first week, more in the days to follow.

On November 7, six men went into Murton and Vane Tempest; burning barricades were strewn across the road outside the pit gates Whittle Colliery, near Amble in Northumberland to halt a bus packed with 28 strike-breakers while the first miner went back to work at closure-threatened Cortonwood, where the entire dispute had all started. Sons shouted “Scab” as their own father went into work at Ellington.

By the end of the month, there were still only 300 miners working in the North-East - prompting Tom Callan to say: “You can hardly call this a flood back to work. The strike is still solid” - but the momentum was now with the NCB.

At the start of November, 52,000 miners were at work at 101 pits, by the end of the month there were 68,000 at 146 pits, by the end of December it was 70,000 at 148 pits.

The change led to desperation and criminal recklessness in the coalfield as the strikers took greater risks with their own lives and the lives of others. On the day David Wilkie was killed in South Wales when concrete block was dropped onto his taxi as he drove two men to work, a concrete slab was dropped onto a minibus in Whitburn, Sunderland, taking 12 men to work, one of whom was knocked unconscious.

Two weeks earlier, Ashington miner Frederick Taylor had died when he was hit by a fall of stone as he dug for coal on a cliff face. On December 10, a 19-year-old from Seaham had a lucky escape after tunnelling for coal under the Hawthorn rail line in East Durham. At Consett Magistrates Court, a striking miner was reduced to tears when he was fined £100 with £20 costs for stealing a bag of coal worth £1.80 to keep his family warm.

The miners had had enough. on January 7, the first day back after the Christmas holidays, an extra 1,200 men reported for work and the trickle became a flood.

By mid February, by which time 59 per cent of miners in Northumberland and 29 per cent in Durham had defied the strike, the NCB offered a tax-free £760 to anyone returning to work the following Monday and on February 27 the Board was able to declare that, for the first time in almost a year, the majority of miners were now at work.

It was all over bar the shouting. On the afternoon of Sunday, March 3, a 20-year-old Peterlee miner was buried alive under five tons of rubble as he dug for coal at Horden pit heap. As the rescuers struggled to reach him, the national executive of the NUM were meeting at TUC headquarters, in London.

Hardliners led by Yorkshire, wanted to continue until they had won amnesties for the 700 men sacked during the dispute, others wanted an immediate return. The executive was deadlocked at 11-11 and the decision went to a card vote which voted by a narrow majority, 98-91, to return to work, carried by the 20 votes of Northumberland and Durham.

The Times quoted Durham executive member Billy Stobbs as saying: “It is unreasonable, on humanitarian grounds, to call upon the membership to endure still further personal pain and sacrifice to themselves and their families in their loyalty to the union.”

On Tuesday, March 5, 1985, after almost 12 months on strike, the miners marched back into work behind their banners.

The economic and human cost of the strike had been immense. The North-East’s pits made a £244m loss during the course of the dispute, while the North-East Electricity Board estimated it had cost it £65m and the region’s four police forces estimated it had cost them £21m.

Across the country, 11,000 arrests were made in connection with the strike, 490 of them in County Durham of which 380 ended with miners receiving criminal convictions. More than 230 miners were sacked after being convicted of offences, although 140 were reinstated on appeal.

But the wounds opened up by the strike were the most long-lasting. Dave Hopper, now leader of the NUM in Durham, said two years after the end of the dispute: “The bitterness towards those who did break the strike will stay with me for the rest of my life.

By the end of 1985, the coalfield’s last three inland pits - Herrington, Sacriston and Bearpark - were gone. In November 1993, the closure of Wearmouth brought an end to coal mining in the Durham coalfield.

At his retirement six months after the end of the strike, Tom Callan said: “It is unfortunate that the timing was not of our choosing, but was imposed on us by the Coal Board and the Government.

“But their determination to get rid of 25 pits and 25,000 jobs had to be faced.

“We had to fight.”