Never mind elections, wars, revolutions, scandals and deaths, this week marks the 40th anniversary of probably the most gripping news story I have ever worked on as a journalist.
Gripping because there were vital economic, political and social issues at stake in this country.
Gripping because two powerful and exceptionally talented political leaders, Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill, faced off.
Gripping because, in their own way, both sides were right.
Gripping that everyone in the country was caught up in the 1984-1985 miners’ strike and conflicted about it.
Gripping above all, for me as a journalist at the start of my career, because the strike reshaped this nation for the future.
On 5 March 1984, 6,000 miners walked out in South Yorkshire at collieries in Cortonwood and Bullcliffe Wood. That day the National Coal Board (NCB) announced there would be “accelerated closure” of 20 pits.
More from UK
On 12 March 1984, Arthur Scargill, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), called a nationwide strike.
It became the biggest industrial dispute since the general strike in 1926, with 26 million working days lost. It did not come to an official end until a year later, on 3 March 1985.
Advertisement
The NUM and the NCB came into existence after the Second World War. They were part of the consensus, shared by both Labour and the Conservatives, that took much of heavy industry into public ownership.
Image: Arthur Scargill in 1984. Pic: PA
Scargill was a radical left winger who believed a perfect socialist society had never been achieved. Even so, he was right that defeat for the miners would lead to the end of a whole way of life in which the state supported workers and their families, regardless of market forces.
Before the strike he had likened the Thatcher government to “the Nazis” and called for “extra parliamentary action” against “this totally undemocratic government”.
Prime minister Thatcher was right that the deep mine coal industry was uneconomic and subsidised by taxpayers and had been declining in Britain, Europe and North America for decades.
In Britain there were around a quarter of a million coal miners in 1984 compared to a million in 1922. The number of working collieries was down from over 1,000 to 173. Britain was already switching away from coal as the primary source of energy to natural gas and nuclear. Thatcher was subsequently one of the first leaders to recognise the danger of global warming through hydrocarbon emissions but this was not a principle issue at the time of the strike.
Image: Margaret Thatcher visiting Wistow colliery in 1980. Pic: PA
It was a febrile time in British politics. The previous summer, in the wake of military victory in the Falklands conflict, the Conservatives won a massive majority in the general election.
By the summer of 1984, Mrs Thatcher was calling the NUM “the enemy within”. She intended to elaborate on this theme in her party conference speech in Brighton in October, but it was disrupted by the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel.
Thatcher was committed to confronting trade union power.
She was well aware that a miners’ strike in the early 1970s had effectively destroyed Ted Heath’s Conservative government. During the three-day week in the winter of 1974 there were daily power cuts around the country. Ministers appealed to the public to wash in two inches of shared bath water. Mr Heath lost the 1974 General Election on the question “Who governs Britain?”.
Image: Sheffield in 1984. Pic: PA
In the popular memory the 1984-1985 strike has been sentimentalised almost exclusively in favour of the strikers and their families. (James Graham’s recent TV series Sherwood is an exception).
During the strike the musician Billy Bragg and the filmmaker Ken Loach challenged audiences with the documentary Which Side Are You On?
Popular films since then, such as Billy Elliott, Brassed Off and Pride have centred on the solidarity of the mining communities and the aid they got from other anti-Thatcher movements including Women Against Pit ClosuresandLesbians And Gays Support The Miners. The depth of the lingering passions is encapsulated in the Billy Elliot The Musical song Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher: “We celebrate today/ ‘Cause it’s one day closer to your death”.
In reality the miners were not united and the country was not united behind them.
Image: Police and strikers at Orgreave Coking Plant near Rotherham in June 1984. Pic: PA
Scargill made the mistake of not holding a national ballot to strike. This meant that the Labour Party, then led by Neil Kinnock, a South Wales miner’s son, did not support the strike.
There was widespread public sympathy for the miners, who faced losing their livelihoods. But opinion polls during the strike showed greater, and strengthening, support for the employers over the strikers. Asked in December 1984 what they thought about the methods being used by the NUM and Scargill, 88% disapproved and 5% didn’t know.
There was near-unanimous backing for the strike in South Wales, Scotland, the North East, Yorkshire and Kent, where many of the richest seams were worked out. Other mining areas, especially Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in the Midlands, did not go out on strike officially.
Communities were divided. Many angry confrontations took place as local strikers, joined by flying pickets, confronted police protecting those who drove or were bussed into work.
Spreaker
This content is provided by Spreaker, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Spreaker cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Spreaker cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow Spreaker cookies for this session only.
In Yorkshire, violence between thousands of police and pickets shocked the nation in the so-called “Battle of Orgreave” outside a coking plant. A miner died in a similar confrontation in nearby Maltby. Official statistics record that 51 miners and 72 police were injured at Orgreave.
It was impossible not to get caught in the existential drama.
A Sky Newscolleague recalls: “I remember my uncle being on strike when I was a kid and I stayed awake in the nights worrying that he wouldn’t be able to buy any dinner and that he’d starve.
“He’s since told me that he had a great time on the buses to London to protest and they had plenty of beer. He had a police officer pal who asked to stand opposite him during the riots so they wouldn’t kick each other too hard.”
Scargill had also miscalculated by calling the strike in the spring when demand for energy was going down. The government had learnt its lesson from previous strikes and ensured stockpiling for at least six months. Scargill liked to say that the visible mounds of coal were like the hair in his combover – piled high around the edges and bald in the middle. He was wrong.
Image: Miners return to work at Betteshanger Colliery after the strike. Pic: PA
Later coal supplies resumed as more desperate miners went back to work, and their overseers in the separate NACODS union did not join the strike.
The government also tightened the law, including a squeeze on welfare payments to families, to make striking more difficult.
A breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers was formed. Working miners, encouraged by David Hart, a shadowy Thatcher advisor, went to court to successfully “sequester” the NUM’s assets, which prevented the union from funding the strike.
Meanwhile journalists exposed NUM officials were seeking financial support from the Soviet Union and Libya, although it is denied that any money was ever received.
The NUM was discredited. A return to work by defeated and desperate strikers became inevitable. Union power was decisively broken in de-industrialising Britain.
Image: Scargill in Barnsley earlier this month. Pic: PA
Today all Britain’s coal pits are closed, although there is still some open cast mining in the reprivatised industry. Active NUM membership in 2022 was just 82.
To the shame of successive governments there is a legacy of social deprivation in many former mining areas. In a spirit of protest, those left behind there voted strongly for Brexit and then made up much of the “red wall” which switched from Labour to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in 2019.
The Conservatives were elected twice more immediately after the strike, in 1987 and 1992.
At Westminster an early day motion has been tabled marking this anniversary, paying tribute to the men and women of the strike and demanding an inquiry into its policing. It has attracted the signatures of just 27 MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn and Ian Lavery, who succeeded Scargill as an NUM president.
Scargill is now president of the Socialist Labour Partyand the International Miners’ Organisation. Aged 86 he is still making speeches, he supported Brexit and recently demanded solidarity with the Palestinians, according to The Socialist Worker.
For me there could have been no more useful education than reporting on, and seeing how others reported on, the personalities, the events and the issues of the great strike which divided the nation.
Sir Keir Starmer has said US-UK trade talks are “well advanced” ahead of tariffs expected to be imposed by Donald Trump on the UK this week – but rejected a “knee-jerk” response.
Speaking to Sky News political editor Beth Rigby, the prime minister said the UK is “working hard on an economic deal” with the US and said “rapid progress” has been made on it ahead of tariffs expected to be imposed on Wednesday.
But, he admitted: “Look, the likelihood is there will be tariffs. Nobody welcomes that, nobody wants a trade war.
“But I have to act in the national interest and that means all options have to remain on the table.”
Sir Keir added: “We are discussing economic deals. We’re well advanced.
“These would normally take months or years, and in a matter of weeks, we’ve got well advanced in those discussions, so I think that a calm approach, a collected approach, not a knee-jerk approach, is what’s needed in the best interests of our country.”
More on Donald Trump
Related Topics:
Downing Street said on Monday the UK is expecting to be hit by new US tariffs on Wednesday – branded “liberation day” by the US president – as a deal to exempt British goods would not be reached in time.
A 25% levy on car and car parts had already been announced but the new tariffs are expected to cover all exports to the US.
Jonathan Reynolds, the business and trade secretary, earlier told Sky News he is “hopeful” the tariffs can be reversed soon.
But he warned: “The longer we don’t have a potential resolution, the more we will have to consider our own position in relation to [tariffs], precluding retaliatory tariffs.”
He added the government was taking a “calm-headed” approach in the hope a deal can be agreed but said it is only “reasonable” retaliatory tariffs are an option, echoing Sir Keir’s sentiments over the weekend.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:28
‘Everything on table over US tariffs’
Mr Trump will unveil his tariff plan on Wednesday afternoon at the first Rose Garden news conference of his second term, the White House press secretary said.
“Wednesday, it will be Liberation Day in America, as President Trump has so proudly dubbed it,” Karoline Leavitt said.
“The president will be announcing a tariff plan that will roll back the unfair trade practices that have been ripping off our country for decades. He’s doing this in the best interest of the American worker.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
3:09
Trump’s tariffs: What can we expect?
Tariffs would cut UK economy by 1%
UK government forecaster the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said a 20 percentage point increase in tariffs on UK goods and services would cut the size of the British economy by 1% and force tax rises this autumn.
Global markets remained flat or down on Monday in anticipation of the tariffs, with the FTSE 100 stock exchange trading about 1.3% lower on Monday, closing with a 0.9% loss.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose 0.6% after a volatile day which saw it down as much as 1.7% in the morning.
However, the FTSE 100 is expected to open about 0.4% higher on Tuesday, while Asian markets also steadied, with Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 broadly unchanged after a 4% slump yesterday.
Kristin Smith, CEO of the US-based Blockchain Association, will be leaving the cryptocurrency advocacy group for the recently launched Solana Policy Institute.
In an April 1 notice, the Blockchain Association (BA) said Smith would be stepping down from her role as CEO on May 16. According to the association, the soon-to-be former CEO will become president of the Solana Policy Institute on May 19.
The association’s notice did not provide an apparent reason for the move to the Solana advocacy organization nor say who would lead the group after Smith’s departure. Cointelegraph reached out to the Blockchain Association for comment but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith’s April 1 announcement. Source: LinkedIn
Smith, who has worked at the BA since 2018 and was deputy chief of staff for former Montana Representative Denny Rehberg, will follow DeFi Education Fund CEO Miller Whitehouse-Levine, leaving his position to join the Solana Policy Institute as CEO. According to Whitehouse-Levine, the organization plans to educate US policymakers on Solana.
With members from the crypto industry, including Coinbase, Ripple Labs, and Chainlink Labs, the BA has filed a lawsuit against the US Internal Revenue Service, challenging regulations requiring brokers to report crypto transactions. The group often criticized the US Securities and Exchange Commission under former chair Gary Gensler for its “regulation by enforcement” approach to crypto, resulting in steep legal fees for many companies.
Less than 48 hours after the Solana Policy Institute’s launch, it’s unclear what the group’s immediate goals may be for engaging with US lawmakers and advocating for the industry. The organization described itself as a non-partisan nonprofit group.
The most senior and long-serving civil servants could be offered a maximum of £95,000 to quit their jobs as part of a government efficiency drive.
Sky News reported last week that several government departments had started voluntary exit schemes for staff in a bid to make savings, including the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs, the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office.
The Department for Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government have yet to start schemes but it is expected they will, with the former already set to lose staff following the abolition of NHS England that was announced earlier this month.
Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, confirmed in last week’s spring statement that the government was setting aside £150m to fund the voluntary exit schemes, which differ from voluntary redundancy in that they offer departments more flexibility around the terms offered to departing staff.
Ms Reeves said the funding would enable departments to reduce staffing numbers over the next two years, creating “significant savings” on staff employment costs.
A maximum limit for departing staff is usually set at one month per year of service capped at 21 months of pay or £95,000.
More from Politics
Whitehall sources stressed the figure was “very much the maximum that could be offered” given that the average civil service salary is just over £30,000 per year.
Whitehall departments will need to bid for the money provided at the spring statement and match the £150m from their own budgets, bringing the total funding to £300m.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
5:04
Spring statement 2025 key takeaways
The Cabinet Office is understood to be targeting 400 employees in a scheme that was announced last year and will continue to run over this year.
A spokesman said each application to the scheme would be examined on a case-by-case basis to ensure “we retain critical skills and experience”.
It is up to each government department to decide how they operate their scheme.
The voluntary exit schemes form part of the government’s ambition to reduce bureaucracy and make the state more efficient amid a gloomy economic backdrop.
The move could result in 10,000 civil service jobs being axed after numbers ballooned during the pandemic.
Ms Reeves hopes the cuts, which she said will be to “back office jobs” rather than frontline services, but civil service unions have raised concerns that government departments will inevitably lose skilled and experienced staff.
The cuts form part of a wider government agenda to streamline the civil service and the size of the British state, which Sir Keir Starmer criticised as “weaker than it has ever been”.
During the same speech, he announced that NHS England, the administrative body that runs the NHS, would also be scrapped to eliminate duplication and cut costs.