International Backing

The strike brought union representation and support from all over the world, including France, Spain, Italy, Hungary, East Germany, South Africa, and, in particular, Ireland; and I was pleased about that because I am half-Irish. But I will never forget the French Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), the International Miners’ Organisation, and my comrade Alain Simon coming across the Channel into the coalfields in Christmas 1984, driving lorryloads of food, provisions, and gifts for all the families and our children at the time when they really needed it. Some people say it was a terrible time. Most women I’ve talked to say it was the greatest Christmas they’ve ever had.

Thousands of other trade unions internationally continued to support us. Their reason for doing so was simple: forty years ago, the Tory government led by Margaret Thatcher declared war on the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). I have a confession to make — I never met her. I have met every prime minister — or heckled them — from 1945. But I met her daughter. She interviewed me for LBC Radio; she’d been well briefed. She said, ‘What does it feel like to be the most hated person in Britain?’ I said, ‘I have no idea, my name’s not Thatcher.’

In country after country, they talk about the miners who were on strike and the WAPC. I was amazed to be talking in China to people I would have thought would never understand, but who understood perfectly, because they actually read what was taking place.

Gearing Up

The Tories had been preparing for a showdown with us ever since the 1979 election. They couldn’t forget the victorious miners’ strike in 1969, the strikes in 1972 and 1974. And no, I haven’t made a mistake. In 1969, Britain’s miners came out on an unofficial strike. We went on strike in order that surface workers should be paid the same wage and the same hours as people who worked underground — no discrimination.

In spring 1982, I was handed a copy of a secret document drawn up by the government and the National Coal Board (NCB). At the present time, I’m not prepared to say which person it was, but I will eventually. It was prepared primarily by Coal Board chiefs earmarking ninety-five pits for closure with a loss of over 100,000 jobs. It became clear that the union would have to take action.

What do you do when you’re being threatened with closure of your unit, the loss of your job? Do you just accept it, accept a handout? Or do you stand up and fight back? I can’t spell the word compromise; I never have.

A special conference took place on 21 October 1983. An overtime ban was unanimously adopted. For four months, it had a devastating effect. Coal stocks went down. The Coal Board was in trouble, and the government in even more trouble. The conference voted unanimously —including all those areas in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire and the Midlands — to take that unofficial action and make it official in line with the rules of the union. It cut coal stocks to the same level that it had been during the unofficial strike in 1981.

On 1 March 1984, NCB directors in four areas announced the immediate closure of five pits — Cortonwood and Bullcliffe Wood in Yorkshire, Harrington in Durham, Snowdown in Kent, and Polmaise in Scotland. In the same week, the chairman, Ian McGregor, confirmed that a further twenty would be closed during the coming year, with the loss of 20,000 jobs.

At the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting on 8 March, we had to do something. Scotland and Yorkshire applied for permission to take strike action. The rules of the union were clear: under Rule 41, if an area is faced with a threat or if they go on strike or take an overtime ban, they have to seek permission from the NEC. If they do that, it’s in order; it’s in accordance with the law and in accordance with the United Nations and ILO statutes. Within a week of adopting Rule 41, in those areas, 180,000 miners were out on strike. On 12 March, the area strikes began.

I’m fed up of reading about and listening to criticism that we picked the wrong time of the year for a strike, of industrial action starting at that time. We didn’t — the action started in November the previous year, and it was because it was successful that we decided to go on the attack. It was the same reason why we responded and went on the defence and attack. No time could’ve been better than November 1983, but still there had to be a special conference because some areas did not want to have a strike.

So we had a conference on 19 April 1984 in Sheffield. We had at that time 80 percent of Britain’s miners already on strike. The issue was: would other areas join, or would they reject it? And more importantly, would they vote for a ballot? Time and time again, the media said Arthur Scargill would refuse to call a ballot.

As far as I was concerned, the people who should have been balloted were the NCB and the government. They should have been asked: ‘Do you agree to take action to save our pits?’ They didn’t take a ballot. They took a decision. Well, we didn’t. We took a decision based upon rule and the decision was clear.

Direct Targets

Once that strike started, the miners were not only involved in bitter dispute throughout the coalfield. I argued at that time that we should select direct targets. I wanted to focus on steel plants, and there’s a reason for that. They were saying they’d got power station stocks for eight months. But I knew that the stocks of coal that they had in power stations dwarfed compared with the stocks in the steel plant. They’d got only three weeks’ supply.

It was the obvious target. If you’re going into a battle like that, you go for the weakest point of the enemy. I argued that the Scunthorpe power plant in Yorkshire, the Ravenscraig plant in Scotland, and Port Talbot in South Wales should be the targets. For weeks, the executive wouldn’t agree with my view, but eventually, when British Steel broke an arrangement to have coke to just keep the ovens warm and broke into full-scale traffic of coke and production of steel, the obvious was there — to either stand and fight on that or walk away.

Why were the three weeks important? Because we could have won the strike if we’d have taken strike action on 10 or 12 March. Don’t believe me — I don’t advise you to buy the books written by Margaret Thatcher or the energy secretary, Peter Walker, but they state that they had to protect the steel plant at all costs, and if that meant bringing in the army, they’d do so.

Faced with that, we took a decision to have a mass picket. And for the record, it wasn’t on 18 June. The strike at Scunthorpe — Orgreave — took place on 23 May and developed on 24 May into a major dispute. And on 30 May loads of people were arrested, including me.

Following that decision and that action, we knew that the thing to do was to have a mass organisation, a mass picket. We’d seen what could happen in Saltley in Birmingham. I’ll never forget it: we fought for four days and were being battered. And after speaking in Birmingham, I told them — we don’t want your pound notes or your votes of sympathy. We want you out on strike, like trade unionists should. Join with us. To their eternal credit, the chairman said, ‘Brother, what time do you want us there?’ I told them on the Thursday.

On that Thursday, I had never seen anything like it in my life — 20,000 workers from the engineering and transport unions marching to that plant. It was a coking plant, like Orgreave, and they stopped it. We won the battle — and not only the battle, but we won the strike. We could’ve done the same at Orgreave.

The Battle

I’m fed up to my back teeth of listening to historians, the media, and unfortunately some of our own members saying that on 18 June — the Battle of Orgreave — the police welcomed the pickets and directed them towards the plant. It’s a lie. The pickets who turned up on 18 June were planned weeks in advance and publicly announced. I purchased, on behalf of the union, walkie-talkies from an old shop and distributed them to strike leaders from different areas. We kept in touch, and we were effective. For example, when they say we couldn’t get near the plant or we were welcomed — it’s absolute nonsense. What happened was on the record. When we approached that picket line, we decided we had to take that further action.

There were pickets from the Doncaster area who actually occupied the Orgreave plant. They took it over. We had the walkie- talkies going, and it took them nearly two hours to detect these old-fashioned walkie-talkies with all their super-duper equipment. Of course, they keep saying in propaganda we were taken on that day like sheep to the slaughter. Nothing could be further from the truth. Anyone who was at Orgreave knows what happened. The pickets were battered, beaten by a paramilitary police force. It was a state force that we were opposing. If there was one weakness, it was the failure of the trade union movement to come to our aid.

We had 10,000 pickets and they had 8,500 police, armed to the teeth — dogs, horses, staves, truncheons. You’ve seen on television what happened, and those who were there experienced it. This paramilitary force went berserk, and people had to take action. I recall that day very clearly because I got knocked out by a shield — they keep denying that I was hit by a police officer; a man from a local pit had taken a photograph, and it was a photograph of the police actually striking me on the back of the head with a shield and knocking me unconscious. But they were the doing the same to others as well. They kept me in hospital, and they were bringing them in to Rotherham hospital in droves.

What is missing from all the propaganda is what happened on that day. Because there was something that happened that’s never referred to, isn’t really known. But I’m going to tell you, and it’s the truth. On 18 June 1984, we closed Orgreave. How do I know? Nick Jones, the BBC correspondent, later gave me a telex from Robert Haslam, the chairman of British Steel, saying that the plant was closed. Not only that, but Dave Douglass also wrote that the pit was closed, and miners had heard on the radio that the plant was closed.

Now, whether or not miners took the view that it had been closed permanently, I don’t know. But I put phone calls out from the hospital to all the areas and said, ‘Tomorrow and onwards, get more pickets, not less. If we build more picketing, as we did in 1972 in Saltley Gate, we’ll win this battle.’ All I can say is that we learned a lesson.

Sold Out

Had Orgreave stayed closed, Scunthorpe steelworks would have been faced with immediate closure. I’ve been accused of refusing to negotiate. What a load of tripe. We met with the Coal Board time and time again, and settled on five different occasions an agreement with the Coal Board — the dates were 8 June, 8 July, 18 July, 10 September, and 12 October — only to have the hand of the government — and of David Hart, organising the UDM breakaway ‘union’ — interfere.

We were sold out. The matter went to a hearing at the Advisory, Conciliation, and Arbitration Service (Acas) on 12 October 1984. The officials of the pit deputies’ union, the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies, and Shotfirers (NACODS), were in one room, the NUM in another, the Coal Board in another, and Acas officials in the fourth. We reached a point where somebody had to make a move. After futile discussions, we had to do something. NACODS had had a ballot — 82 percent had voted to come out and strike with us.

I wrote in my handwriting a proposal to put to NACODS so that we could both join together. That would have been absolutely vital. I’ll tell you what it was: a word that the Coal Board withdraw its pit closure plan; give an undertaking that the five collieries earmarked for immediate closure would be kept open; and guarantees that no pit would be closed unless by joint agreement. It was emphasised that if the Coal Board did not accept a proposal which was acceptable to Acas, the strike would go ahead.

On the eve of the second meeting to impose that decision, all of a sudden something had changed. I learned that the NACODS leadership had inexplicably reneged on that agreement. For the first time in living memory, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) leadership urged NACODS to go on strike. They ignored it, and, as a result, signed an arrangement that led to the decimation of the mining industry.

Back to Work

But in the area that mattered, we, as the NUM, continued to fight. We determined our position on 21 February 1985 that we would continue the strike until the government gave way and reached an agreement. Inexplicably, by 28 February — one week later — five areas wrote to the NUM general secretary Peter Heathfield asking for a recall conference to agree an immediate return to work without a settlement.

That conference took place on 3 March 1985. The NEC position was clear: I made it absolutely clear that the NEC was bound by the decision of the members at the conference on 21 February that the strike should continue. The conference itself asked us to adjourn and reconsider. In the NEC meeting, a vote was taken: twelve delegates voted to end the strike and twelve areas, including Yorkshire, opposed it and said we should continue the strike.

I’ve been asked time and time again why I didn’t cast a vote. I’ll tell you why — because I’m not bloody daft. They wanted me to cast a vote. If I had cast a vote in favour of the Welsh area to call off the strike, I could never have lived with myself. And if I’d have passed a vote in favour of the Yorkshire resolution, I would have been defeated in the conference, and the headlines would have been ‘Scargill Defeated’.

So, I made it clear that the areas who wanted to move a resolution should move their own. The areas that did moved a return to work for South Wales, supported by Durham and the other ten. The rest of us were against. For the record, Mick McGahey, Peter Heathfield, and Arthur Scargill made clear that we were in favour of continuing the strike until we won. If the WAPC had a vote, its members would still be out.

A Monument

At the centenary of the 1893 Featherstone Massacre, I did the oration and unveiled the monument to that terrible massacre. Those men were shot in the back — one man died instantly in Featherstone, and one man in Wakefield the day after, which meant there were two inquests. At the inquest in Wakefield, the judge said that they were ‘justifiable homicides’ — in other words, the South Derbyshire Regiment was justified in shooting.

The members of the second inquest of Featherstone were recommended by the judge to find a similar decision. To their eternal credit, they didn’t. They recorded a verdict of murder against those men, and they’ve gone down in history as heroes of our class. Recently, I went to Featherstone to pay homage to those lads who lie in that cemetery. The people who called the ‘riot squad’ — the people who called out the regiment who shot them — lie unattended, unrecognised, forgotten. But these two brave men who gave their lives, together with dozens of others who were injured, are remembered today as heroes of the working class.

James Connolly and Jim Larkin are real heroes of mine. I don’t know how many people know that Larkin spoke at the graveside of the legendary Joe Hill, the American trade unionist who was framed on a murder charge. Larkin said, ‘Build no monument — he doesn’t need one. His life, his commitment, his principle in itself is a monument.’ I’m now 86 years of age; and from the age of 16, I have never swerved one inch from my commitment to my class, to socialism, and to the trade union movement.