We Work The Black Seam

Today marks the 30th anniversary of Arthur Scargill declaring that the walkouts at Cortonwood and Bullcliffe Wood collieries in Yorkshire should be considered the beginning of a nationwide strike against pit closures by all members of the National Union of Mineworkers. The NUM claimed that the plan of the National Coal Board was to close over 70 collieries in three years. The government heaped scorn on this allegation, and wrote a personal letter to every union member denying the claim, insisting only 20 pits were to be closed, and branding Scargill a liar. This year, Cabinet papers released under the Official Secrets Act confirm that the target for closures within a three-year period was indeed 75. This revelation comes on top of the admission in 2001 that MI5 carried out phone-tapping surveillance on union leaders during the strike, and that media smear campaigns claiming the NUM was receiving funds from Colonel Gaddafi's Libya were wholly concocted. Nevertheless, these tactics were a success for the government, persuading a British public with deeply ingrained tendencies to trust those in authority that the union members were indeed all Marxist thugs out to destroy democracy. Government stockpiles of coal saw power stations well-supplied throughout the winter of 1984, and in spring 1985 the NUM voted to end strike action due to the desperate poverty members were now facing. Thus came the Loyalty Parades, miners marching back to work heralded by brass bands, with wives handing out carnations at colliery gates; gates which, in most cases, would be permanently closed within the next ten years.

Time proved the miners right in all of their allegations about the government's duplicity, but surely it was to no avail? With only three deep-pit mines remaining in the United Kingdom, NUM membership down to 1,855 members in 2011, and unions seemingly emasculated in the 21st century, what possible victory can be claimed? I'd argue that the lesson to be learned from the events of 1984 lies in just how far people with power will go to demonise those who stand in the way of their ideology, and how easy it is for a misinformed majority to be gulled into a protracted Two Minutes Hate if they're not careful (and this includes supposedly "left-leaning" news sources such as the Mirror and the Guardian, which both cravenly turned against the strike in accordance with public opinion). 1984 was just one battle in a war that will continue for as long as those who rule attack the powerless, and those with courage resist. Those of us who refuse to let others do our thinking for us; those of us who, when we're told what we should be doing, ask "why?"; those of us who refuse to give up hope in even the deepest and blackest of pits; we work the black seam together.