Miners’ Strike 40 years on: 12 months that changed Britain- and why it is a chapter of history we can’t forget

In 1987, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously said that there was no such thing as society. She spoke about this in a way that suggested the government shouldn’t be there to help people with their problems, and the individual should deal with themselves first and foremost. 

She said this two years after the end of the longest trade union strike the UK had ever seen. For just shy of 12 months, The National Union of Mineworkers had seen its members go on strike in protest of job security and planned colliery closures. 

During the 12 months, which included a harsh winter, mining communities across the country stood firm. The key word being ‘community’, and over this time striking miners and their families were supported by donations and soup kitchens set up in towns and villages. This was the ‘society’ that Margaret Thatcher would one day say doesn’t exist, and many argue the demise of the coal mining industry helped to bring her famous quote into reality. 

A miners strike had led to the downfall of the Edward Heath Tory Government in 1974, and Thatcher was determined to not fall to the same outcome. She appointed Ian MacGregor as chair of the National Coal Board and he set about making the NCB more productive by planning job cuts and closing ‘unprofitable pits’. This appointment would play a key role in the bitterness which followed over the year-long strike.  

The start of industrial action

On March 6 1984, The National Coal Board (NCB) announced intentions to close 20 collieries. Localised strikes had started up as a result of this, particularly in Yorkshire, but it was on March 12 when NUM leader Arthur Scargill united the individual strikes into one national effort that the size of the action was realised. 

Scargill did so without calling a national ballot, a key factor in how the support within the union would develop. 160,000 miners went out on strike for their jobs, community and industries, and the following 12 months would see them endure hardship and financial hits. 

The Battle of Orgreave

The summer of the Miners Strike would see perhaps its most infamous moment. On June 18, The NUM rallied members to take part in a mass picket outside the Orgreave Coking plant, about eight miles outside Sheffield. The aim was to disrupt  the supply of coke from Orgreave to Scunthorpe. 

Around 5,000 miners and 6,000 police officers met on the fields outside of the plant, and the police first accommodated the picketers, allowing them onto the ‘topside’, which was a field to the south of the plant. After some low-key efforts to push against the police lines, chiefs ordered officers to make mounted charges at the miners. Heavy handed tactics using shields and batons resulted in dozens of injuries. Those miners who could or wanted to get away were forced over a railway bridge into the village of Orgreave. The media coverage of Orgreave made an effort to vilify the miners whilst sympathising with the police officers at the scene. 

Almost 100 miners were arrested under charges of ‘rioting’ or the less serious ‘unlawful gathering’, with 15 going to court. However, this would not be until May 1985, almost a year after the events of June 18 1984. 

The years that have followed has seen the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign which has long called for an official government inquiry into Orgreave to take place. Full details of their campaign can be found on the OTJC website.  

The Enemy Within 

On July 19 1984, Margaret Thatcher made a reference to the striking miners that has lived long in the memory of her supporters and critics ever since. The prime minister described the miners and their leaders as ‘the enemy within’ and described them as more dangerous to ‘liberty’ than the Argentinian army the UK had defeated in the Falklands in 1982. 

In this speech, the prime minister said: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty."  

Thatcher’s attitude to militant striking miners was rarely made a secret. She had planned to lean into the ‘enemy within’ title far more at the Conservative Party Conference in October 1984, including Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock and his party in the ‘enemy within’ for failing to condemn the miners’ actions.  

A Return to Work

The 12-month struggle officially came to an end on March 3 1985. A national majority was decided by the NUM executive, and miners had been drifting back to work through the early months of the year. 

The government’s stockpiling of coal meant that during the winter of 1984-85, the strike didn’t have its desired effect. With miners forced to return to work to support their families, the strike came to an end. Many miners returned to work with heads held high, but with an uncertain future ahead.  

Legacy of the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike 

NUM leader Scargill made a grim prediction during the strike, that pit villages would become places of unemployment and economic turmoil if they lost their collieries. In 1984, there were over 170 coal mines in the UK - by 1994 this number was just 15. 

Coal mining was a way of life for generations of people across the country, and it was brought to a brutal and bitter end in a matter of years. Many miners’ involved in the strike will never forgive what happened to them, with a popular viewpoint being the planned closures and job cuts was the country declaring war on the industry. 

Coal has little to no use as a fossil fuel source in the UK of 2024, and the nation wanted to move on from it back in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the systematic dismantling of the industry had devastating effects on mining communities- an impact that many are still struggling to recover from. 

The last deep coal mine in the UK closed in 2015, officially bringing to an end a centuries-old industry. The scars of the strike run deep for many people, for most of these they are scars that will never heal.