Words: Mack Young (he/him)
we will not be divided; we shall not be moved
On the 8th of April 2013, Margaret Thatcher was found dead in her hotel bedroom. The news broke early in the evening and was accompanied by a booming cheer from my father. His teeth were clenched in vitriol, and he punched the air with joy as the radio crackled. I watched him, intrigued about how a man – a postman at the time of the 1984 miners’ strike – could feel such joy at the passing of a withered old has-been?
In the years since, I have come to understand what my father felt that day. Though Thatcher evaded her comeuppance in this life, her death represented a chance for her to face it in the next. My father had never seen the darkness of the pit himself, but he had seen the picket lines. These shows of solidarity, whether it be in County Durham or Wakefield, marked him with an identity he would wear on his sleeve like a badge of honour. He was, and will always be, a proudly working-class man, and an even prouder trade unionist.
My father’s story is emblematic of how the Miner’s Strike of 1984–85 united people from all walks of life in the face of a seemingly all-powerful enemy: Thatcher. Fuelled by insidious neoliberal ideology, the Conservatives were hell-bent on destroying mining communities’ sense of working-class solidarity through across-the-board pit closures. Thatcher had seen the previous Tory government defeated in disputes against the miners in 1972 and 1974, and entered government with the aim of annihilating their strength for good. Seumus Milne estimates in The Enemy Within that Thatcher’s war on the miners cost the economy £57 billion in today’s money and has kept ex-mining towns struggling with disproportionate levels of unemployment and poverty ever since.
The survival of neoliberalism depended on capital and state being able to work freely together without any disputes from organised labour. Therefore, it was essential that Thatcher forced the labour movement back into its ‘rightful’ place and destroyed the decades of progress made by trade unions like the NUM (National Union of Minerworkers). Thatcher saw Arthur Scargill’s NUM, the largest trade union in Britain, as the beating heart of organised labour. In crushing the miners, Thatcher wanted to set an example to the rest of the labour force.
What followed was 11 gruelling months of strike action that tore brother from brother and pushed communities to their limits. Entire towns looked to a consistently underfunded welfare state for help, but ultimately found they could only rely on one another. It’s a common misconception that this dispute was solely about jobs. This is not the case. The dispute was about much more than that; it was about identity. Nowhere is this profound sense of this identity more obvious than on mining banners. Lines such as “Coal Not Dole” and “Victory to the Miners” were lovingly sewn by communities onto vibrant red backgrounds, then strung high above picket lines. More threatening slogans, including “We Won’t Forget Scabs”, were etched into placards. This laid out the state of play for those considering crossing the picket line.
For as long as mining has existed as a profession in the United Kingdom, it has been accompanied by a profound sense of tradition and pageantry. Mining communities once funded local football clubs, community centres, and family trips via weekly subsidies from their wages. The Durham Miner’s Gala, in all its brass-band glory, still provides mining communities with an opportunity to march with their banners through the heart of one of the biggest mining hubs in the world. For me, it is the banners that best communicate the pride that mining folk took in their identity. It is these banners that proved so pivotal as the strike stretched on through the winter months.
The bravery of the miners to stand defiant under their flags, even in the face of brutal police oppression, inspired other marginalised communities to join the fight. LGSM – Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners – stood on London’s street corners collecting money for suffering miners of South Wales, even though they were worlds away from the capital. Afro-Caribbean poet Linton Kwesi-Johnson ran a benefit night to support the NUM’s strike fund. Banners inspired by those of the miners appeared on trade union marches across the country, representing groups with their own struggles to fight.
Mining banners sent a clear message: we will not be divided; we shall not be moved. By hoisting their message, tall and proud, the miners invited other groups to weave themselves into their struggle. The dedication and commitment of the miners allowed everyday Brits to form a defiant, interwoven, and united front against Thatcher’s conservatism. We should look to them for inspiration and remember that when facing a further onslaught of neoliberalism, we must find where our identities interweave.
