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Socialist Lawyer issue 52

Better to have fought...

Twenty-five years ago, the miners’ strike was in full swing. The strike was declared on 12th March 1984, after the National Coal Board had announced the closure of five pits. Miners in Yorkshire were already on strike. They were rapidly joined by miners from Scotland, Kent, South Wales and Lancashire. The mining communities in Nottinghamshire were split: some went on strike, others remained at work and set up the scab Union of Democratic Miners. The yearlong miners’ strike was one of the most significant, and tragic, events in labour movement and Labour Party history. Its implications remain today.

As Michael Seifert, John Hendy QC and David Hopper describe in these pages, the strike was deliberately provoked by Thatcher’s government, intent on destroying the mighty National Union of Mineworkers. The grassroots labour movement rose to the challenge. Support for the miners dominated the lives of labour movement activists. Every Saturday, in every town in the country, collectors could be seen rattling tins, wearing ‘Coal not Dole’ stickers, raising money, and food, from the public. Arthur Scargill, Peter Heathfield and other miners’ leaders received standing ovations wherever they spoke. But the equivocation of Neil Kinnock, leader of the Labour Party, and Norman Willis, General Secretary of the TUC, meant that the NUM was isolated. The miners needed other trade unions to come out on strike in solidarity. Had they done so, history would have been different.

The strike saw a level of policing, and of media manipulation, that set a precedent for the next 25 years. The ‘battle for Orgreave’ was one of the most bloody encounters: Mike Mansfield QC describes the militarised police operation in June 1984. His description of unidentified police officers (concealing their numbers) in snatch squads, using long and short shields and police dogs to attack a peaceful picket, and to ‘kettle’ the miners, will ring bells with anyone who attended the recent G20 protests. Police roadblocks from 25 years ago will be familiar today to the Fairford protesters, and to protesters outside the DSEi arms fair.

The BBC coverage of Orgreave was shown backwards, so that it appeared as though the miners were attacking the police rather than the other way around, and permitted the Government to portray the miners as mindless thugs. Mike Mansfield writes how independent film-makers at Orgreave recorded the ‘battle’ and their films exposed the BBC’s falsehoods. In 2009, it was only the filming of the police by protesters, independent media and bystanders that revealed that Ian Tomlinson had been brutally attacked by an unidentifiable policeman, tooled up in riot gear.

In the midst of police violence, media hostility and myth-making, a scab union, endless legal wrangling and poverty (striking miners were denied welfare benefits and the NUM’s resources were sequestrated), it is extraordinary that miners and their supporters can look back to 1984-1985 as one of the best years of their lives. David Hopper, secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association and one of the leaders of the strike, says the strike made him a better person. The diversity of support was breathtaking. Women in mining families set up Women Against Pit Closures: the first time a women’s group had been set up in solidarity with their striking husbands and family members (women were prohibited from being miners). Some members of WAPC became national figures, travelling the country and speaking to packed meetings. Pragna Patel describes the solidarity shown by black and Asian communities in Southall and elsewhere. Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners led to the miners subsequently supporting the campaign against the homophobic Clause 28. Until then, the received wisdom was that the stalwarts of the labour movement, particularly manual workers such as the miners, would be hostile to liberation movements involving race, sex or sexuality.

The Government’s strategy to break the strike included trying to tie up the NUM in court, and using the criminal law to criminalise striking miners. As a result, the miners needed lawyers and Haldane Society members rose to the challenge. John Hendy QC is standing counsel to the NUM. He describes the litigation against the NUM: challenges to the decision not to hold a ballot, injunctions against picketing, receivership, sequestration, and the later false accusations that Scargill and Heathfield were personally corrupt. Michael Seifert’s firm was the most high-profile in its support, sending solicitors Louise Christian, Sarah Burton, Jim Nichol, Jane Deighton, Gracia Stephenson, Steve Cottingham and others to Mansfield to provide free representation to miners through a law centre. Plenty of other Haldane Society members were also involved. Courts sat through the night. Despite the tragic circumstances, it was probably the Haldane Society’s finest hour in recent years.

The Haldane Society will pay tribute to our comrades, the striking miners, and to our members who provided representation and solidarity, at our summer party on 23rd July.

Liz Davies, chair, HaldaneSociety lizdavies@riseup.net