The miners’ strike of 1984-5 had a profound impact on Britain’s politics, economy and society. For those on strike, and their families, it felt like an existential struggle to save not only their jobs, but their communities, and the life they knew.
Jonny Owen was just 13 and growing up in Merthyr Tydfil when it began. As it was kicking off, his parents told the family that they were going to give a substantial share of their wages to the striking miners for the duration of the dispute. His father and grandfather had worked underground.
Jonny couldn’t understand how anyone could argue with the decision to strike – after all, they just wanted to keep their jobs.
The miners lost their fight, and today, the South Wales Valleys suffer deep-seated problems – low skills, unemployment, and high sickness rates.
Jonny, a filmmaker, now lives in Nottingham – an area that could not have been more different from South Wales during the strike, with nine out of ten miners going to work throughout the dispute. His friendships cross the divide between the men who went on strike and those who didn’t – and the scars are still deeply felt forty years on.
In this series, he talks to people who were at the heart of the strike – on both sides – as he tries to make sense of what happened and why.
The conflict was bitter, the battle lines were stark, but the old certainties seem to shift like sand beneath his feet. Join him on his journey into the heart of one of the most tumultuous events in 20th-century Britain.
Strike is a Bengo Media Production for BBC Sounds.
Presenter: Jonny Owen Series Producer: Clare Hudson Executive Producer: Steve Austins Assistant Producer: Ffion Clarke Development Producer: Branwen Davies Sound Designer: Meic Parry Sound Editor: Adam Whalley Composer: Richard Llewellyn Series Consultant: Dr Ben Curtis Commissioning Editor: Bridget Curnow
The miners’ strike of 1984-5 had a profound impact on Britain’s politics, economy and society. For those on strike, and their families, it felt like an existential struggle to save not only their jobs, but their communities, and the life they knew.
Jonny Owen was just 13 and growing up in Merthyr Tydfil when it began. As it was kicking off, his parents told the family that they were going to give a substantial share of their wages to the striking miners for the duration of the dispute. His father and grandfather had worked underground.
Jonny couldn’t understand how anyone could argue with the decision to strike – after all, they just wanted to keep their jobs.
The miners lost their fight, and today, the South Wales Valleys suffer deep-seated problems – low skills, unemployment, and high sickness rates.
Jonny, a filmmaker, now lives in Nottingham – an area that could not have been more different from South Wales during the strike, with nine out of ten miners going to work throughout the dispute. His friendships cross the divide between the men who went on strike and those who didn’t – and the scars are still deeply felt forty years on.
In this series, he talks to people who were at the heart of the strike – on both sides – as he tries to make sense of what happened and why.
The conflict was bitter, the battle lines were stark, but the old certainties seem to shift like sand beneath his feet. Join him on his journey into the heart of one of the most tumultuous events in 20th-century Britain.
Strike is a Bengo Media Production for BBC Sounds.
Presenter: Jonny Owen Series Producer: Clare Hudson Executive Producer: Steve Austins Assistant Producer: Ffion Clarke Development Producer: Branwen Davies Sound Designer: Meic Parry Sound Editor: Adam Whalley Composer: Richard Llewellyn Series Consultant: Dr Ben Curtis Commissioning Editor: Bridget Curnow
Jonny Owen reaches the end of his highly personal exploration of the strike and finds out what happened afterwards.
Saddled with debt after a year with no wages, mining families now face the closure of their pits and the end of a whole way of life. Jonny asks whether the NUM was doomed to lose from the very beginning.
He sifts through the arguments about the lack of a national ballot being the union’s Achilles heel, and about the role Arthur Scargill played in it all. And he hears more about how Margaret Thatcher’s confrontation with the miners shaped life in Britain today.
Presenter: Jonny Owen Series Producer: Clare Hudson Executive Producer: Steve Austins Assistant Producer: Ffion Clarke Development Producer: Branwen Davies Sound Designer: Meic Parry Sound Editor: Adam Whalley Composer: Richard Llewellyn Series Consultant: Dr Ben Curtis
Strike is a Bengo Media Production for BBC Sounds
As the miners and their families celebrate Christmas, desperation is setting in. South Wales NUM leaders are seeing some of their members close to cracking up, and they fear the union will collapse if the drift back to work continues across the British coalfields.
They are now barely on speaking terms with their national president, and they begin to manoeuvre behind the scenes to get an organised return to work. They have the moral authority to do that – even in mid-February, 97% of South Wales miners are still on strike. Nowhere else comes close, not even Yorkshire. George Rees, South Wales NUM secretary said later that some of the other smaller English coalfields who still advocated staying out "were willing to fight to the last drop of South Wales' blood". But some of the South Wales women who have put so much into the NUM’s struggle want to carry on and are furious at the leadership for what they see as caving in.
The men go back after voting on a motion proposed by South Wales in early March. Across the coalfield, it’s a bittersweet moment, which is marked in many communities with bands playing and flags flying. In their heart of hearts they know they are beaten, but having fought the good fight means something to many of them.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Peter Walker urges his Conservative cabinet colleagues not to gloat, a plea which falls on deaf ears in some quarters. Prime Minister Thatcher gets a frosty response from South Wales Police to her invitation to a drinks party to celebrate the end of the strike. And Coal Board South Wales boss Philip Weekes is in a dark mood about the future of the industry.
Presenter: Jonny Owen Series Producer: Clare Hudson Executive Producer: Steve Austins Assistant Producer: Ffion Clarke Development Producer: Branwen Davies Sound Designer: Meic Parry Sound Editor: Adam Whalley Composer: Richard Llewellyn Series Consultant: Dr Ben Curtis
Strike is a Bengo Media Production for BBC Sounds
As winter arrives, the striking miners are feeling the pinch. They are getting no strike pay and are surviving on donations of clothing and food. The debts are mounting.
There seems little prospect of a deal with the Coal Board over pit closures, and thousands of miners are throwing in the towel and going back to work, with the prospect of a special bonus before Christmas. In south Wales only a few make this choice and they have to run the gauntlet of angry pickets as they go into work. The atmosphere starts to turn ugly, and there is violence in the air.
This leads to a tragedy: a taxi driver taking a miner to work is killed when a concrete block thrown from a motorway bridge lands on his car. Some believe this is a turning point for the strike, and that support for the miners now ebbs away.
Presenter: Jonny Owen Series Producer: Clare Hudson Executive Producer: Steve Austins Assistant Producer: Ffion Clarke Development Producer: Branwen Davies Sound Designer: Meic Parry Sound Editor: Adam Whalley Composer: Richard Llewellyn Series Consultant: Dr Ben Curtis
Strike is a Bengo Media Production for BBC Sounds
There are efforts behind the scenes to get a deal between the National Union of Mineworkers and the Coal Board to bring the strike to an end. It’s a dark time for Labour leader Neil Kinnock as he tries to persuade both sides to agree on how proposed pit closures should be assessed. He is appalled at Arthur Scargill’s apparent refusal to negotiate.
Meanwhile, the law is being used to weaken the NUM’s ability to run the strike – injunctions are brought by working miners who say the dispute is unofficial because there has not been a ballot. Neil Kinnock is clear that the lack of a ballot is the union’s Achilles heel. But that is not what grassroots members in South Wales say: they remain loyal to their leader Arthur Scargill, who, as they see it, is defending their communities.
David Hunt MP gets a phone call from his Prime Minister – and within hours he goes on television as the new Minister for Coal. He promises there will be no power cuts on his watch.
And there is what looks like some good news: the colliery overseers’ union NACODs has voted to strike which would bring the whole industry to its knees within days. But that is another false dawn for the NUM.
Presenter: Jonny Owen Series Producer: Clare Hudson Executive Producer: Steve Austins Assistant Producer: Ffion Clarke Development Producer: Branwen Davies Sound Designer: Meic Parry Sound Editor: Adam Whalley Composer: Richard Llewellyn Series Consultant: Dr Ben Curtis Commissioning Editor: Bridget Curnow
Nottinghamshire was the flashpoint of the miners' strike – ninety per cent of the men there carried on working, and so their pits carried on mining coal and keeping the lights on across Britain.
For the ten per cent who were out on strike, it was a tough time – seeing friends crossing picket lines and lacking the scale of community support that the miners had in South Wales.
Presenter Jonny Owen was born in the valleys but now lives in Nottingham. He has friends on both sides of the divide, and in this episode, they tell him how they came to the decision they made about joining the strike.
The divisions created by the strike live on. To this day, when Nottingham Forest plays clubs from Yorkshire, their fans are called scabs by the other team’s supporters.
Jonny explores the meaning and resonance of the S word – scab – and remembers his father’s refusal ever to spell it out. His father also told him it was much harder to be a striking miner in Notts than in South Wales. In this episode, we hear how right he was.
Presenter: Jonny Owen Series Producer: Clare Hudson Executive Producer: Steve Austins Assistant Producer: Ffion Clarke Development Producer: Branwen Davies Sound Designer: Meic Parry Sound Editor: Adam Whalley Composer: Richard Llewellyn Series Consultant: Dr Ben Curtis Commissioning Editor: Bridget Curnow
A miner and two photographers remember the violent events of June 18, 1984 at Orgreave. Thousands of police and thousands of miners arrived at the coking works in Rotherham for a set-piece confrontation.
The miners wanted to stop the coke from getting to a steelworks, and they were surprised that the police waved them through rather than, as they normally did, trying to prevent them from forming a picket line. What followed is seared on the memories of those who were there, and left hundreds injured. And the version of what happened on the news that night was wrong: the police attacked the picketers BEFORE they attacked the police.
Scores of men were charged with Riot and Unlawful Assembly, which could have resulted in heavy sentences. But all their cases were later dropped.
We also hear about how roadblocks were used to prevent flying pickets from travelling to pits in Notts, and what the pickets did to try to avoid them. A lawyer - who is now a member of the Welsh Senedd - says this is the closest peacetime Britain ever came to being a police state.
And a former South Wales police chief tells us how he came under pressure from the Home Office to change his low-key approach to policing and be more confrontational. He says in South Wales police and miners were part of the same community and would have to live alongside each other afterwards - and he directed his officers with that in mind. Officers from other forces who were bussed in to deal with picket lines - did not have the same mindset he says.
Strike is a Bengo Media Production for BBC Sounds.
Presenter: Jonny Owen Series Producer: Clare Hudson Executive Producer: Steve Austins Episode Producer: Ffion Clarke Development Producer: Branwen Davies Sound Designer: Meic Parry Sound Editor: Adam Whalley Composer: Richard Llewellyn Series Consultant: Dr Ben Curtis Commissioning Editor: Bridget Curnow
Unofficial picketing brings over 140,000 miners out on strike. Miners families in South Wales know there are tough times ahead but support is solid: within days none of the pits are functioning.
It’s a tougher choice for men like John Maddock in Nottinghamshire, where most miners are crossing picket lines and going to work.
Women start to organise collections to help sustain their families. Presenter Jonny Owen talks to his mother about what she did during the strike, and why she and his father decided to give a chunk of their wages every week to the strikers.
Jonny also meets a member of Margaret Thatcher’s government at the time – Lord David Hunt – who accuses National Union of Mineworkers leader Arthur Scargill of orchestrating a strike to try and bring down the government.
The argument about the NUM’s decision not to hold a national ballot over strike action won’t go away and the union stands accused of being undemocratic. But at grassroots level, Jonny talks to ex-miners who say the ballot issue was irrelevant: they had to make a stand against a devastating programme of pit closures. They knew their whole future was at stake.
Strike is a Bengo Media Production for BBC Sounds.
Presenter: Jonny Owen Series Producer: Clare Hudson Executive Producer: Steve Austins Assistant Producer: Ffion Clarke Development Producer: Branwen Davies Sound Designer: Meic Parry Sound Editor: Adam Whalley Composer: Richard Llewellyn Series Consultant: Dr Ben Curtis Commissioning Editor: Bridget Curnow
The miners’ strike of 1984-5 had a profound impact on Britain’s politics, economy and society. For those on strike, and their families, it felt like an existential struggle to save not only their jobs, but their communities, and the life they knew.
In this episode, Jonny Owen – who was just 13 and living in Merthyr Tydfil at the time – explores the extraordinary heritage that South Wales miners in particular were trying to hang onto. What happened underground helped to shape the society that developed above the surface. He finds that this rich history helps to explain why the South Wales miners were the most solid in support of the strike of any coalfield throughout the year-long dispute.
Jonny talks to former miners, some of them friends of his, about why they still see this difficult and dangerous work as “the best job ever”. And he tracks the root causes of the strike, and why it failed, through the politics of Britain, and the miners union, in the decades that went before.
Strike is a Bengo Media Production for BBC Sounds.
Presenter: Jonny Owen Series Producer: Clare Hudson Executive Producer: Steve Austins Assistant Producer: Ffion Clarke Development Producer: Branwen Davies Sound Designer: Meic Parry Sound Editor: Adam Whalley Composer: Richard Llewellyn Series Consultant: Dr Ben Curtis Commissioning Editor: Bridget Curnow
The 1984-85 miners’ strike was a gamechanger for Britain. For Jonny Owen - who was 13 and growing up in South Wales - it was personal. He seeks to find out what really happened.