Story by Stuart Crosthwaite
It’s 20 years since the year-long Miners’ Strike began. It started as a battle to save pits and miners’ jobs; it soon became all-out war between the Conservative Thatcher government and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The strike changed lives and politics in Britain.
I went to talk to John Wesley, now landlord of The Rock pub and an ex-miner. We sat in the bottom room surrounded by his china plates, pictures and tokens commemorating the strike.
“It gets people talking about it – it brings it back to the fore,” he explained and welcomed more customers adding their own memorabilia. Pride of place goes to a plate from Manton Colliery, near Worksop.
“I worked at Manton and there were 187 of us, out of 700, on strike for a year. We had a tough time.” With 100,000 miners on strike, a minority, particularly in Nottinghamshire, continued to work, helped into the pits by a massive police presence.
“The police were shocking.They used to just walk past and spit at us.There were 3,000 police at one point in Manton village, and a lot of them were army in police uniforms.”
“I went out picketing all the time to Notts… twice a day sometimes”.
John was given £1 per day (expenses!) by the NUM and not allowed to claim any benefits. Like other strikers he had to rely on the support of family, friends, community and the wider trade union movement. What was picketing like?
“I was only 19 at the time. I used to think it were fun – all the lads together. We used to have a fight with the coppers and then come home. That’s how I used to look at it at first. But as it went on you got more political and got your thinking head on.”
Could the strike have won?
“We didn’t get enough support from the labour movement. Well not the movement, but Kinnock (Labour Party leader in 1984). They said they supported us, but…”
Instead, John travelled around the country raising money for the strike, explaining the miners were fighting for all trade unionists, not just their own jobs. In March 1985 the miners went back to work. “You had to swallow it,” remembers John. But he’s unrepentant about their cause:
“A lot of people still say we were wrong. Well I say, there’s no pits now – look what it’s done. A lot of industry has collapsed now because of it… if the miners had won we’d have a lot more power now. People see that now.”