The miners' strike 1984-5

Submitted by Anon on 6 March, 2004 - 8:46

We continue our look at the miners' strike by following the events of May 1984 and looking at international solidarity with the British miners.

The events

Beginning of May 1984: series of mass pickets in Notts coalfield. On 2 May police estimate 10,000 at Haworth and on 3 May almost as many at Cotgrave.

14 May: 40,000 march in Mansfield. The strike is now at its peak.

17 May: Leon Brittan admits in Parliament that plain clothes police are operating in the Notts coalfield.

23 May: National Coal Board walks out of talks with NUM and demand pledge of union co-operation in the closing of "uneconomic pits".

25 May: Full-scale picketing at the Orgreave coke works begins. Nottinghamshire scab miners obtain a court order which allows them to continue working, but which declares that those on strike were striking officially.

International solidarity

Workers in many countries showed solidarity with the British miners, by trying to stop extra coal exports to Britain or by contributing to collections. The picture is of French miners on a solidarity visit to Aylesham, Kent.
The Polish workers movement Solidarnosc - at that time repressed by the self-proclaimedly 'socialist' government of Poland - also sent messages of solidarity. The Polish government sent large quantities of coal to help Thatcher defeat the British miners. In the past Arthur Scargill had opposed Solidarnosc (calling it "anti-socialist") and had maintained link with the state-run official unions of countries like Poland. The experience during 1984, however, moved him to declare on 5 June "I think I owe Lech Walesa an apology".

The message from Solidarnosc

For four months the British miners have been on strike… The government has rejected compromise solutions and has resorted to severe police methods against the strikers. Thousands of miners have been arrested: hundreds have been hospitalised and one has been killed.

The government of the Polish People's Republic, despite hypocritical condemnations of the activities of the British police in the columns of the regime's press, is profiting from the export of coal to Britain. It sells dirt cheap coal which has been mined in scandalously neglected working conditions and with reckless exploitation of the labour force and the coal field. The slave labour of the Polish miner serves to break the resistance of the British miner.

In the prevailing conditions of terror, the Polish workers' movement is at present not in a position to undertake protest actions. But you may be certaain that you are supported and we are in solidarity with you.

June 1984

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