IN 2022, the Miners’ Strike (Pardons) Act came into force in Scotland.
It provided a collective (and in some cases posthumous) pardon to all Scottish miners and their family members who were convicted for minor offences such as breach of the peace during the 1984/85 miners’ strike.
The strike, and the determination of former miners who never wavered in defending the moral justification for their actions, is the subject of a new book by Jim Phillips, a professor of economic and social history at the University of Glasgow.
“I wrote a book about ten years ago on the strike from a workplace point of view,” he told The Sunday National ahead of the publication of Coalfield Justice: The 1984-85 Miners' Strike in Scotland next month.
“I thought it was a valuable corrective to what I still feel is an unhelpful focus on top-level personalities.
“Viewing the strike as Margaret Thatcher versus Arthur Scargill overlooks the considerations of what sustained the strike for a year.
“In these interviews, which go back 14 years, former miners spoke to me about their workplaces and communities, but they also spoke about something else I didn’t pay a great deal of attention to at the time.
“That was the level of victimisation faced by strike activists and the role of the police in coercively disrupting the strike”.
The value of a union
For many workers today making a wage from zero hours contracts or working in isolation from their own home, it’s difficult to imagine the social cohesion fostered by the strength of mining unions in Scotland back in the 1980s.
“Nicky Wilson, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers and in the 1980s a strike leader and activist in Lanarkshire, puts it this way,” said Phillips.
“‘The job of the trade union didn’t end at the gate of the mine’”.
In the book, Phillips details how embedded trade union members were in their local communities and the kind of support they provided – including standing for office in local councils.
The most famous of these was Willie Clarke,” said Phillips.
“He was the last Communist councillor in Scotland, an advocate for independence in 2014, a miner, a trade unionist and described by the people he helped as a great statesman.
“He was involved in all aspects of every day life looking after families.
“When people were sick or injured, he was there. He encouraged young miners to get involved in politics.
“And in the unions in general there was a great emphasis on education and intergenerational learning.
“The old could teach the young but the young could also inform the old. They were all in dialogue to improve their understanding of the world.”
The strikes
Such a backdrop makes the reality of the strikes even more punishing.
The Tory government of the time led by Margaret Thatcher estimated that their covert plans to wind down the coal industry would result in around 35% of mine workers in Scotland losing their jobs and acknowledged it “would not be possible” to redeploy them anywhere else.
Phillips added: “In fact, by the end of the 1980s it more like 70%.”
While many mine workers and their families struggled to make ends meet during the strikes, the police officers arresting them received pay increase over the same period.
Indeed, the role of the police is a central concern of Phillips’ book.
“They were definitely more assertive in the arrest of strike activists than in other parts of the UK, “he said.
“A striking miner in Scotland was twice as likely to be arrested than a striking miner in England and Wales.”
He details how the police sought to maintain access to mines for strike breakers, even when there was little prospect of mining work being done with such low staff levels.
“It meant introducing conflict in mining communities,” said Phillips. “It was provocative and part of government strategy.”
The same concerns about the role of the police in protecting the political interests of the UK Government can be still seen today.
As reported by The National, a Palestinian solidarity protest outside the Thales arms factory in Govan resulted in a reporter being threatened and numerous protesters requiring hospital treatment after allegedly being hit with batons.
“It’s interesting that protecting power and authority is still presented by the police as a neutral act,” said Phillips.
“Preserving what currently exists is still a political act in that it prevents agents of change.
“But in the 1980s it was also a refusal to acknowledge the moral arguments of the strikers who were defending public resources.
“The people’s coal, the people’s energy, that conception offered an alternative model for the economic and social organisation of society rather than the maximisation of individual wealth, ownership and profit.”
The pardon
Phillips believes that the pardon of Scottish miners was a “triumph” for the Scottish Parliament, although expressed disappointment that they were not offered compensation.
“I thought it was slightly mean-spirited,” he said.
Yet the pardon speaks to another great theme in the book: how people can be punished by the state for standing up for cause, years later, is found to be entirely just.
In the wake of numerous Just Stop Oil climate activists being sentenced to up to five years in prison for their attempts to stop traffic on a motorway, the miners may appear as a somewhat ironic parallel.
“There’s no question about the justice of their campaign and the injustice of their treatment,” said Phillips.
“I think it very likely that the miners’ story will be seen as a forerunner to other stories of injustice.
“I also think there’s something in there about how society treats its youth.
“Just like climate activists, miners were young people who wanted the future they required to be protected.”
Coalfield Justice: The 1984-85 Miners' Strike in Scotland will be published by Edinburgh University Press on August 31.
The National readers can receive a 30% discount on the book with the code CJNATIONAL by ordering through the Edinburgh University Press website.
