20 Years After the Miners' Strike
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The 1984/5 miners' strike was the biggest confrontation between the trade union movement and the British state since the 1926 general strike. Why was it defeated and what are the lessons of that defeat for socialists resisting the advance of new realism today?
Twenty years after the start of the great miners' strike of 1984/5 the trade union movement in Britain still lives in the shadow its defeat. The anti-trade union laws consolidated by the defeat of the strike are still there. While the unions have begun to regenerate with the arrival of the ''awkward squad'' who are challenging new realism and social partnership ideas, much of the damage done to the movement has yet to be repaired. The question of who bares the responsibility for the defeat the miners therefore remains an important discussion if lessons are to be learned for the future.
The strike still evokes powerful memories: the naked class hatred of the Tories who wanted revenge for their defeat at the hands of the miners in 1974; the tenacity and courage of the 160,000 miners out on strike for a year; the massive confrontations and mass pickets; the police trap and the burning barricades at Orgreave.
During the strike 7,500 miners were arrested and 40 imprisoned. The latter included two young miners from South Wales jailed for life and Terry French from Kent jailed for five years. Davey Jones was killed whilst picketing out scabs at Ollerton in Nottinghamshire. Thousands marched behind the coffin of Joe Green, killed while on picket duty at the Ferrybridge power station in Yorkshire. The state took Joe's home (he was single with his own house) and refused to pay his funeral expenses out of the proceeds.
The strike is remembered, too, for the tremendous class struggle leadership by Arthur Scargill and Peter Heathfield of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the historic Women Against Pit Closures movement which mobilised 10,000 women from the pit villages to march through London in June 1984.
The strike was triggered by the announcement of the closure of the Corton Wood colliery in Yorkshire and spread spontaneously through the bulk of the coalfields. Only Nottinghamshire spilt off and became a scab area. Although the right wing argued that there should have been a ballot, this would simply have headed off the spontaneous momentum of the strike, giving the advantage to a hostile media, and probably ensuring that the strike never took place. Miners voted with their feet, by far the most effective response. It was clear to them that Corton Wood was the test case for the whole industry - a message that Arthur Scargill put forward with great force.
By the mid-1990s it was already clear how right Scargill had been when he said that the strike was a battle for the existence of the industry, for there was no coal industry left and only remnants of the NUM in a few private pits.
At the time of the strike the NUM had 210,000 members in 170 pits. Then came the privatisation of power generation, the dash for gas, and the rigging of the market. These developments meant that the NUM suffered the fastest decline of any union in the history of the British labour movement. This was the union that was rightly seen as the movement's praetorian guard, having shaken British capitalism to its foundations in two great strikes over wages in 1972 and 1974.
In 1972 when the miners took strike action it was a long time since the pits had been a major centre of militancy. They displayed a formidable solidarity and after a face-saving inquiry the government caved in and they won their full demands. 1974 was no less spectacular. As the country came to a standstill, Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath famously called a general election with the slogan 'Who runs Britain?' and received the equally famous answer. The strikes were a powerful force in generating militancy across the trade union movement in the early 1970s.
The defeat of the 1984/5 strike - in the biggest confrontation between the trade union movement and the British state since the general strike of 1926 - was a huge blow to the whole trade union movement. Twenty years on the movement has been reduced to half its size, and much of Britain's productive industry closed down.
The government of Margaret Thatcher had come to power following a massive upsurge in trade union struggle that culminated in the winter of discontent in 1978/9. Twenty eight million working days were lost in strike action that year. Labour failed to hold on to office because it was attacking the wages of those whose votes it expected to win.
New Year 1980 saw the start of the 15-week national strike by 100,000 steel workers over wage rates and jobs. It was a precursor of the miners strike in that it deployed mass pickets as part of the struggle but even though the steel workers won a big wage increase they were unable to stop closures in the industry.
The Tories, meanwhile, were developing a plan of action known as the 'Ridley Plan'. This involved making unlimited sums of money available to defeat strikes and to use the police as effectively a paramilitary force. The plan also involved a decision not to take on the miners straight way, but to confront other sectors first in order to ensure that the miners would have to fight in isolation.
The attack on the miners was therefore preceded by an attack on the printers and their union the NGA. The centrepiece of this bitter dispute was the NGA's battle of Warrington - a major confrontation between the police and union pickets. The dispute ended with the betrayal of the NGA by the TUC which failed dismally to maintain its stance against the anti-union laws brought in two years earlier. These events were followed by the defeat of other militant defensive actions such as the Wapping printers' fight against de-unionisation and the seafarers' strike. Still, the defeat of the miners was by far the most important victory for the Tories during the 1980s.
The smashing of the mining industry and the defeat of the NUM were far from inevitable, not withstanding the preparations the Tories had made. In fact the line was only just held by the government despite the strike-breaking operation in Nottinghamshire mounted by the scab NUM. Even Thatcher thought she might lose, particularly when the pit deputies' union NACODS voted to join the strike. If NACODS had stuck to its guns, the scab pits in Nottinghamshire could have been closed down.
Arthur Scargill was the most determined leader the British trade union movement had ever produced. The strike itself, however, faced a serious and potentially fatal danger from the outset, being left in isolation by the rest of the official trade union movement. The trade union leaders had moved to the right since the high point of struggle in 1979 and new realism - the idea that strikes were a bad thing because they prejudiced Labour's chances at the ballot box - was gaining an increasing hold. The danger from this was never adequately recognised by the leadership of the NUM.
In fact the unspoken but unmistakable strategy of the Scargill leadership was to follow the model of the 1972 and 1974 strikes when the miners were able win by their own strength through solidarity and mass picketing. In these strikes the lights went out after a few weeks and the government was forced to negotiate.
The striking miners in 1984, of course, showed no lack of solidarity and determination but now it was far more difficult for them. Not only was there a scab coalfield producing coal in Nottinghamshire but government was better prepared and coal stocks were high.
This time the key to the strike was solidarity with the miners - breaking their growing isolation. The opening of a second front was needed: other unions coming into struggle alongside the miners, not necessarily in direct solidarity with them (which was possible but difficult) but by unions pursuing their own claims or defending their own jobs alongside the miners. This was exactly what the government was out to avoid. The mass picketing was important, in fact in many ways it was the life-blood of the strike, but it was not in itself an adequate strategy for the conditions the miners faced in the spring of 1984.
Opening a second front was also a viable and achievable strategy, given the level of strikes and militancy of the working class at that time.
The first stage of the strike presented numerous opportunities for other unions to join the miners in action through pursuing their own wage claims. Yet not a single union stood firm and compromise after compromise was reached. The government was acutely aware of the danger of a second front and intervened to broker a compromise in the rail industry that was grabbed by the leadership of the NUR. Some union leaders even argued that it would be a bad tactic to go on strike at the same time as the miners.
Later two national dock strikes erupted over the movement of coal through unregistered ports - offering the chance to break the isolation of the miners through the opening of a second front. The dockers were fighting for their jobs and their industry and Tory ministers were making it clear that they intended to abolish the National Dock Labour Scheme.
It was clearly in the interests of both groups of workers to fight alongside each other and conversely very difficult for either group to win on its own. Nonetheless the dock strike was called off with no settlement just as the government was beginning to panic. In fact the dockers were defeated soon after the miners.
Arthur Scargill was the inspiration of the strike. He fought until the bitter end, and his defence of the militant members of his union against media vilification was exemplary. When faced by reporters complaining about the battles on the picket line he would say: "I will never condemn brave young miners whose only crime is to defend their jobs.'' His weakness, however, was in his dealings with the TUC and the other trade union leaders who held the key to the success of the strike. He never fought for their support. In fact at times he seemed to want to keep them out of it.
The funds and assets of the South Wales area of the NUM were sequestrated under the anti-unions laws five months into the strike and just before the 1985 TUC Congress, when demands for solidarity with the NUM were at their strongest. It was the moment both to oppose the anti-union laws and support the miners.
The NUM had put a resolution on the agenda of the Congress calling for strike action in support of the miners. However the night before, Arthur Scargill agreed to withdraw it in favour of a policy of boycotting scab coal going into the power stations - a very difficult policy to implement even given the will to do so. He would no doubt argue that he did not trust the union leaders to carry out a TUC strike recommendation, but the withdrawal of the resolution cut the miners off from the support of the movement.
The effect of the miners' defeat on the British trade union movement was massive and it determined the political and industrial situation for the next two decades. What crushed the strike was the rise of new realism in the unions backed by the Neil Kinnock leadership of the Labour Party who attacked the strike, particularly over the issue of the lack of a ballot.
The Tories recognised that the defeat of the miners would open the door to wave after wave of anti-union laws, and these were duly introduced without the TUC lifting a finger. The laws were by far the most draconian in Western Europe, becoming a model for other EU member states to follow.
An NUM victory, of course, would have meant a rise in the left in the unions and would have consolidated the left movement led by Scargill and Tony Benn inside the Labour Party. As it was, the defeat provided the political basis for the rise of New Labour in the mid 1990s and for the social partnership in the unions.
The left and militant trade unionism have had to battle to regain lost ground. The fight has certainly begun but still has some way to go.