Recollections of the Miners' Strike by Hilary Cave www.manifestopress.coop

Reviewed by Peter Latham

Forty years ago this spring, the miners returned to work after their heroic battle with the Thatcher government. It was a sad occasion. Emotions were high after the delegate conference took the decision to go back, after a year without pay or strike pay. It was hard for all. Yet there was immense pride, and rightly so, amongst the miners in what they had done. The mighty British state had been challenged in a new way and on a new scale. Pits and jobs were not saved but an immense well of sympathetic support had been tapped, not just in Britain but around the world too.  

Once the National Union of Mineworkers had been defeated, successive governments reordered the economy to manage with less industry, less public service, less public ownership and a smaller social wage. Bigger and more numerous corporations exploited the working class, gaining higher profits. Much of this went to the City and finance generally. This change should be understood in order to work out how to proceed today – so it is fitting to have this useful, readable and enjoyable book to mark the occasion.   

BRINGING THE STRIKE TO LIFE

Hilary Cave worked at the NUM from May 1983 to April 1988 as Education Officer and once the strike commenced at the South Yorkshire pit of Cortonwood, she was fully occupied in fighting the biggest class battle of recent times. A woman in a man's world, she brings a fresh perspective, plainly explained, and the book is of great interest. The many and varied incidents described are brought vividly to life using dialogue to recreate conversations as if they had taken place yesterday. These can be funny, uplifting, questionable or worrying, and they illustrate what it was like at the time to work for the NUM in a crisis, showing how the course of events often depended on quick thinking as well as on principled consideration.

The issue of principle is strong in the book. The author challenges the notion that the NUM was a one man show run by its President. She shows rather how the three national leaders, President Arthur Scargill, General Secretary Peter Heathfield and Vice-President Mick McGahey, acted collectively and worked through the union's democratic procedures to discuss the many questions that arose, ensuring that the miners’ elected delegates took good decisions as far as possible. This approach helped keep people together. Many active shop stewards will know the value of consulting their members regularly, informing them, educating them and encouraging them to act together when it counts. This applies at all levels of the labour movement. The examples of such practice quoted in the book are most telling.

Of course, not everything went as well as it might. The author makes clear her views in such cases from a principled standpoint of her own. The avoidance of rancour makes her points more valid, not less. There are lessons here for activists to heed.

Mention should be made of the Special Delegate Conference in Sheffield on 19 April 1984, when it was decided not to hold a national ballot on strike action to save the pits, but to support the strikes against closures already in progress, and to urge all NUM members to join in. This is what the miners already on strike wanted. The author's role was to organise the traditional miners' rally outside the meeting in the City Hall (a huge task in itself), at which she spoke to the miners, introducing speakers. The delegate meeting was an example of working class democracy in practice, in a battle for livelihoods and publicly owned industry. Had the miners been truly united, had the Nottinghamshire leadership not acted against the strike, and had the workers in the power stations refused to use coal, then the outcome of the strike might have been different. This is made clear in telling the tale.

The list of characters is long.  Many names are well known: Roger Windsor, George Bolton, Ken Capstick, Frank Watters, Trevor Cave, Henry Richardson, Roy Lynk, Mick Clapham, Barry Johnson, Blanche Flannery, Ray Buckton, Jimmy Knapp and many more. That the author worked with so many people over so long a struggle is notable in itself. Then there are those she met whose names are less well known but acted locally, either in the NUM or in solidarity. This is the nature of a big strike, something we should all remember. Truly touching are the author's dealings with people who felt as she did, comrades in spirit who could not do enough to help.

THE ROLE OF THE STATE

There are chapters explaining Thatcher's Law, such as the difficulty in travelling around Nottinghamshire and North Derbyshire without being turned back at police road blocks. On one occasion the author was on her way to a legitimate meeting in Mansfield. She stood her ground expecting to be arrested, but was let through. There is also a description of the Ridley Report, explaining the ruling class strategy to wreck trade union power in a nationalised industry, part of which was published in The Economist in the late 1970's; and the role of Ian MacGregor. MacGregor was a union buster brought from the USA to be the new Chairman of the National Coal Board. He turned the Area Managements against the strike using all kinds of manoeuvres and sackings to undermine it. Previously local management had been from mining backgrounds and understood the realities. Under MacGregor, local managers communicated directly with miners instead of going through the NUM, the usual way of doing it, and started using threats and intimidation to get their way. He boasted in the Sunday Telegraph: “People are now discovering the price of insubordination and insurrection.”

Other chapters cover marches and rallies, state power used against the miners especially at Orgreave, the upsurge of solidarity efforts including women’s groups, and the split in Nottinghamshire, with the formation of a rival union after the strike. The author's role as a union woman, including as a union representative for staff employed by the NUM adds another dimension. She was not easily intimidated when dealing with the breakaway union leadership.

AFTER THE STRIKE

The author uses the name “The Lamp Cabin” for her role as an educator amongst the miners. Just as miners carry a lamp underground to see their way, so trade union education was needed to help miners see through the complexities of acting together under capitalism. Before the strike she found that attendance at national NUM schools was more a reward for long service than preparation for action. This she was able to change, with the support of Scargill and Heathfield.

After the strike, the NUM used the issues of Peace and Anti-Apartheid to help bring their members together in the Miners United campaign. The author wrote the union’s pamphlet on Peace, arguing against the cold war and nuclear weapons. For Anti-Apartheid, the NUM Branch Secretary at Bentley pit helped her by arranging a photograph of two miners who were best mates, one black and one white. The picture was made into an NUM poster that she treasures to this day.

The book benefits from being a diligent study of the author’s own records, checked with other contemporary sources. It deserves to be widely read.