The Secret Life of Us, Writing History From Below in The Miners' Strike 1984 - 85

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The secret life of us: 1984, the miners'

strike and the place of biography in
writing history from below
Daryl Leeworthy
Department of History & Classics , Swansea University , UK

Published online: 16 Oct 2012.
To cite this article: Daryl Leeworthy (2012) The secret life of us: 1984, the miners' strike and the
place of biography in writing history from below, European Review of History: Revue europenne
d'histoire, 19:5, 825-846, DOI: 10.1080/13507486.2012.719009
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European Review of HistoryRevue europeenne dhistoire

Vol. 19, No. 5, October 2012, 825846
The secret life of us: 1984, the miners strike and the place of biography
in writing history from below
Daryl Leeworthy*
Department of History & Classics, Swansea University, UK
Downloaded by [KU Leuven University Library] at 05:27 04 February 2015
(Received 5 November 2011; final version received 23 May 2012)

This article adds to the growing literature on 1980s Britain and the 1984 5 miners
strike. Its purpose is to demonstrate the role of oral history and biography in the writing
of more personalised narratives about national events. Throughout the oral testimony
that underpins the article, speakers made conscious connections with the past whether
through folk memories of earlier industrial action or by building links between their
own lives and those of their parents and grandparents during the 1926 miners lockout.
Respondents saw themselves as part of the collective story of both their own family and
the community in which they lived. Their sense of biography provided a means of
understanding and relating the events that had engulfed their lives for over a year and
which, for that generation of people, still defines their life story today.
Keywords: miners strike; biography; oral history; Wales; community
Introduction
By 1984, wrote the historian Gwyn Alf Williams, the South Wales miners were fighting a
struggle as hard and dedicated as any in their history.1 Over the course of a year, between
4 March 1984 and 5 March 1985, thousands of miners and their families endured bitter
hardship and all-too-real poverty in an effort to keep their jobs and an industry that for
many families had been the principal employer for generations. The strike and its effects
thus appear as a crisis moment in the collective biographies of entire communities and
the individual biographies of the men, women and children involved: for them all it was a
turning point.
The place of biography in the writing of history has never been so popular: compared
to other forms of historical writing, it fills more shelves in bookshops than almost any
other category save the ubiquitous military history. Accessible and commercially
successful, the biography provides an entry point into the many worlds of the past with a
ready guide along for the journey. At the same time, however, academic historians have
shied away from the form to the extent that, as David Nasaw has observed: Biography
remains the professions unloved stepchild.2
For labour historians (in Britain and elsewhere) this form of writing has been
central.3 Series such as Lives of the Left published by Manchester University Press in
the late-1980s and early 1990s highlighted the benefits of understanding key individuals
including Ramsay MacDonald, James Maxton and A.J. Cook in the context of their own
upbringing, working lives and subsequent political lives. Biography provided the best
*Email: daryl.leeworthy@oriel.oxon.org
ISSN 1350-7486 print/ISSN 1469-8293 online
q 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2012.719009
http://www.tandfonline.com
826
D. Leeworthy
means of interpreting the leadership qualities of these individuals and their impact on the
wider movement. Writing of Cook, the Communist journalist and historian Robin Page
Arnot concluded: Today his faults are forgotten or forgiven amongst the older miners who
tell the younger men their recollection of the old days; and still, in every colliery village,
there abides the memory of a great name.4
In the late-1950s and early 1960s, when the essence of labour history in Britain was
being formed, questions of methodology, style and technique were perhaps of greater
significance than they are two or three generations on. Writing in 1960, E.P. Thompson
questioned whether the techniques of the political or constitutional [historian are]
adequate to deal with the tensions and lines of growth in movements. His Homage to
Tom Maguire would form the basis of much subsequent labour-history writing in Britain
and still provides a perfect example of biography used to explain much more besides the
life story of one subject. The importance of local activists and local circumstances,
Thompson argued, was necessary to counteract the curiously distorted views of the
national historian.5 At a time when history remained largely a medium that transmitted
the actions and views of great men, the significance of grassroots biographies could not
be underestimated.
The flowering of social history and labour history in the wake of Thompsons The
Making of the English Working Class, which was first published in 1963, saw much new
work being undertaken on those whose lives and actions had traditionally been neglected
by posterity. The following year, Eric Hobsbawms Labouring Men emerged and by 1966
so too had the first flowerings of an independently minded Welsh labour historiography
with the publication of Merthyr Politics: The Making of a Working-Class Tradition.6 The
book and the four essays included in it are now recognised as being the basis upon which
the subsequent generation of social, cultural and labour historians in Wales built their
school of thought/interpretation. A number of us who were interested in the application
of those new techniques of social history to Wales, writes Dai Smith, responded as a
generation to that book.7 What followed was the foundation of Llafur: the Society for the
Study of Welsh Labour History in 1970; a major conference held at Swansea University
in April 1971 (papers were published in the pages of the Welsh History Review in 1973);
and a rescue project designed to salvage the fast disappearing contents of miners
institutes and their libraries.8 By 1972, the government-funded research project into the
history of the coal-mining industry in South Wales, which launched in August 1971, had
expanded to include oral history and the taped autobiographies, memoirs and
reminiscences of those activists, miners leaders, politicians and wives who had
grown up and come to prominence in the first half of the twentieth century were recorded
for posterity. Biography would, as a consequence, lie at the heart of the new Welsh
history.9
Since the 1970s, oral history has remained a vital source for the writing of labour
history in and about Wales even as the field has moved towards more traditional
empiricism elsewhere in Britain.10 Key published texts on Welsh International Brigaders
and on the role of women in the 1926 Strike, as well as several significant doctoral theses
have been written with oral history as their foundation rather than written primary-source
material.11 For topics extending before the Second World War, would-be oral historians
are working at the limits: knowledge and memory being that of children rather than, for
example, politically active adults.12 Nevertheless, such oral sources provide insights that
would otherwise be hidden from history. Their narrative quality linked, as Alessandro
Portelli wrote a generation ago, to the tradition of folk narrative lends itself to an
understanding of how particular events fit into an individuals own life-story.13 Historians
European Review of History Revue europeene dhistoire
827
may record the negotiations between trades-union leaders and employers or the places of
picket lines; the oral testimony of a young child may record the absent father and being
given a special hot meal in school. Both are necessary to fully understand the impact of
events and institutions on communities.
Amongst the clearest benefits of integrating oral history into studies of twentiethcentury working-class experiences is the imparting of personal meaning. When the
interviewee tells a story of a particular event, the oral nature of the interview enables the
historian to engage with emotion and vocal rhythm as well as insight into historical
happenings. Personality and sense-of-self is, therefore, a vital factor in oral-history sources
and biography an essential foundation of any writing that makes use of them. We know
now that when a respondent tells us a story about an event or an experience, writes Lynn
Abrams, they are likely telling us something about themselves and about how they
position themselves in the social world. It is for us to work out how that story fits into the
larger schema.14 Biography (through the medium of oral testimony) can therefore inform
the work of historians working from all perspectives but it is perhaps most valuable in
circumstances where written testimony is scant: working-class experience generally, and
that of women, children and groups in society who are otherwise hidden from those
histories which privilege written source material. In the words of Paul Thompson: History
becomes, to put it simply, more democratic.15
Despite the fruitfulness of oral testimony, historians have tended to be far more
reflexive in making use of it than they are with other forms of source material: searching
for balance which is much less forthcoming than when relying on, for example,
newspapers. Drawing generality out from the individual experiences of the interviewee is
indeed fraught with difficulty and methodological questions, but these make oral history
controversial, exciting, and endlessly promising.16 It is not the intention of this article to
reflect meaningfully on the theoretical implications and problems of oral history; instead,
it suffices to say that by integrating oral history into the writing of history, particularly
history from below, historians are actively merging personal biography (as relayed
through reminiscence) with the aims and purposes of more general social history. As such,
whilst not entirely in keeping with prosopographical methods (that is, collective
biography), the place and role of biography in the writing of history from below is
significant without it, labour history in particular would not exist in the form it does
today.
This article draws primarily on part of an archive of oral history held at the South
Wales Miners Library in Swansea as well as discussions conducted by the author either
deliberately arranged or held in passing at conferences and later documented. The
background of the collections at the Miners Library is worth relaying since this provides
insight into the nature of the evidence which will be relied upon in the second half of the
essay that follows. The first interview conducted as part of the South Wales Coalfield
History Project took place on 6 September 1972. The interviewee was Max Goldberg,
who spoke of, amongst other things, his experiences as a Communist during the 1920s
and 1930s and the 1926 Strike. Following from Goldberg were interviews with founder
members of the South Wales Miners Federation such as Abel Morgan and William
Morgan Davies. In this first wave of interviews, the researchers concentrated on the
period before 1945, on active members of the Union, and several community-based
studies including Maerdy and Abercrave. Little attention was given to women until,
towards the end of the project, the intervention of one miners wife during an interview
prompted reconsideration and subsequently the recording of memoirs from women
as well.17
828
D. Leeworthy
The first wave of oral-history interviews came to an end in 1974. From that date until
the establishment of the second coalfield-history project in 1979, the burden of oral-history
recording fell on the South Wales Miners Library, which was itself established in 1974.
Only a small number of interviews were conducted in this period but these ensured that the
momentum created between 1972 and 1974 was not extinguished by the end of the original
project. The aims of the second project were somewhat different from that of the first: its
chronology was focused on the post-1945 period and its scope had widened to include
nationally significant figures and more of the decision makers than had been the case in
the more localised 1972 4 project. The second coalfield-history programme ended in
1982, but as events unfolded in the following years, it was decided to record as many
voices as possible, particularly during the strike and its aftermath. The result is a collection
of nearly 100 interviews encompassing individual accounts, video recordings taken in pit
villages, and discussion groups.18
These later programmes of recording provide a wide range of experiences and have
allowed subsequent historians to draw upon the opinions of ordinary men and women. By
ensuring that the interviews were recorded in the heat of the moment it is possible for
generations who did not live through the strike to hear (and to understand) the emotions of
those whose lives were turned upside down by what was going on. Significantly, this also
means that those perspectives had not been tempered by the calming waves of distance and
time. Contemporary history has, as one of its benefits as well as drawbacks, a wealth of
material upon which to draw: in this case from the edited newspaper articles and television
news bulletin to the raw quality of a tape recorder left on record during an organic
discussion. By understanding the context in which this audio-visual material was created,
it is possible to draw out of it the different biographical narratives and memories
(individual and collective) that are present.
What follows draws explicitly on questions of memory a particularly important
aspect of biographical and autobiographical writing and how contemporary events
shape (and can be shaped by) popular dissemination of the past in its managed, written
form: history. Biographies, of course, come in many different forms and serve many
different purposes: at one level, biography presents a narrative of an individuals life
their childhood, their coming of age, and the rise to the height of their powers; at another
level, however, it stands as an interpretative form. The many different indicative prefixes
such as political biography or literary biography point very clearly to the potential of
biography as a form of writing which enables understanding not just of the individual
concerned but also of their society, circumstance and cultural surroundings. What follows
is conceived in two parts: the first explores the contemporary context and lays out the
turbulent history of the South Wales miners in the 1970s and 1980s. The second part,
which occupies the bulk of the article, examines the role of history and memory in the
construction of meaning and understanding of the 1984 miners strike.
This article adds to the growing literature on 1980s Britain and the 1984 5 miners
strike.19 Its purpose is to demonstrate the role of oral history (and thereby biography) in the
writing of more personalised narratives about national events. Throughout the oral
testimony that underpins what follows, speakers made conscious connections with the past
whether through folk memories of earlier industrial action or by building links between
their own lives during the 1984 5 strike and those of their parents and grandparents during
the 1926 strike. Respondents saw themselves as part of the collective story of both their
own family and the community in which they lived. Their sense of biography provided a
means of understanding and relating the events that had engulfed their lives for over a year
and which, for that generation of people, still defines their life story today.
829
The turning point

It has become almost a cliche of British history in the last quarter of the twentieth century
that The Miners Strike understood as the 1984 5 clash between the National Union of
Mineworkers (NUM) led by Arthur Scargill and the National Coal Board (NCB) and its
allies in the Thatcher government marked the major turning point in the history of the
labour movement in Britain. As the largest and most significant of the trades unions in
Britain, the NUM stood at the apex of the British trades-union movement and was widely
held responsible (in both Labour and Conservative circles) for the fall of the Conservative
government of Ted Heath in 1974. Miners leaders, and particularly Scargill himself,
were branded by Margaret Thatcher as the enemy within in a speech to the influential
backbench 1922 committee in July 1984 (some four months into the strike). Linked
consciously to external threats such as the Soviet Union and, just two years after the
Falklands War, to Argentina, the striking miners were conceptualised by Thatcher as a
direct antagonism to British democracy and to the British way of life.20
The strike began in Yorkshire with a walkout in protest at the planned closure of the
Cortonwood colliery near Barnsley. Between the evening of 5 March and 10 March 1984,
miners from across coalfields in Yorkshire, Kent and central Scotland had gone out on
strike in solidarity with workers at Cortonwood.21 In the traditionally militant South Wales
Coalfield, support for the all-out strike was mixed and in the ballot taken on 11 March, 18
of the 28 collieries voted against joining in the action. Pro-government newspapers such as
the Times splashed the news across their front pages the following morning. Describing the
vote as a Welsh Revolt, the ballot astonished miners leaders and commentators across
Britain who widely expected South Wales to participate. The area president, Emlyn
Williams, observed: [I have] never before encountered a rejection like this.22 The
rejection of solidarity by the rank-and-file reflected the failure of other coalfields to
support action by the South Wales miners to save the Lewis Merthyr Colliery in the
Rhondda the previous year. The bitter hangover from 1983 came through in the union
meetings held on 9 10 March when sentiments such as Yorkshire owes us a fortnight,
make them sweat earned much initial applause.23
Reputation and folk memory, however, soon provided an antidote of reality to the
previously prevailing sense of betrayal: South Wales miners had a duty to uphold the
legacy of solidarity inherited from previous generations. Call it what you like, recalled
Des Dutfield (the South Wales Area president from 1986), its always been a fact of life as
far as Ive known the industry: fathers, grandfathers before me and now my son.24
His predecessor, Emlyn Williams, had expressed much the same sentiment in 1983:
Our reputation as political leaders in the British coalfields [ . . . ] is at stake.25 The strength
of this tradition and the folk memory of it, as much as anything else, ensured the
transformation in attitudes in the South Wales Coalfield within the space of a week. By 14
March, every miner in the coalfield had struck.
The oft-neglected North Wales Coalfield provides an entirely different story.26 Here,
folk narratives emphasised pragmatism and a more cautious approach to industrial
relations in part reflective of the more scattered settlement patterns in the region; in
contrast to the pit villages of coalfields such as Durham and South Wales, the North Wales
collieries drew workers from towns and villages throughout Deeside. The ballot of the two
collieries in North Wales provided confirmation of the regions historical reputation with
barely a third of miners voting in favour of solidarity with the miners in Yorkshire and
elsewhere. North Wales joined with similar smaller coalfields such as neighbouring
Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and in Derbyshire in staying in work. The fragile unity of the
830
D. Leeworthy
NUM maintained after the successes of the 1970s had been shattered and would never be
restored.
Pickets from South Wales arrived at the two collieries in North Wales Bersham and
Point of Ayr soon after the strike began. This split local miners with some respecting the
pickets and others ignoring them. Those who respected the pickets criticised their
colleagues for being unable to see the bigger picture: They wouldnt look far outside their
own pit and in north Wales there was always a reluctance to look outside their own area.27
By 20 March, however, a good part of the North Wales coalfield had been picketed out
despite the disunity amongst local miners. The disunity was made clear a few days later
when the miners lodge at Bersham Colliery decided to honour the strike after all.28 Point
of Ayr lodge, by contrast, refused to join in and its members were encouraged to break the
picket line. As a result, even at its height, only around 35% of the 1000 miners in North
Wales had struck; by March 1985 this had collapsed to just 10%.29
By the summer of 1984, the strike had settled into yet another hot, angry season akin
to the unrealities of jazz bands and carnivals that took place during the 1926 lockout:
miners from South Wales picketing power stations in North Wales could be found,
stripped to the waist because of the beaming sunshine, playing cricket outside the gates.30
A significant feature in this unreality was the sharing of platforms by the entire spectrum
of the political Left in Wales: Labour, Plaid Cymru, the Community Party, and small leftwing groups which had been attacking each other throughout the 1970s came together to
promote a united front with the miners. As Charlie Swain, the secretary of the Cardiff
Miners Support Co-ordination Committee, put it in April 1985: Peoples of goodwill
from many backgrounds came together and worked, without bitterness or rancour, for
our common cause.31 However much it plastered over the all-too-real cracks, one of the
leading narratives of much strike literature was that of a united Wales standing against an
external foe.
In the autumn and particularly in the winter of 1984, this unity was crucial to the
survival of the strike in what remained the most solid coalfield in the country. Despite
letters from church leaders urging reconciliation between the miners and the government,
the resolution of both sides remained strong. The death of taxi driver David Wilkie, killed
by a concrete block dropped from a bridge over the A470 as he was transporting a strikebreaker to work at Merthyr Vale, on the morning of 30 November 1984 could have
unravelled the strike there and then. It did not, however, because it was such an
aberration.32 With Christmas just a few weeks away and little sign of a resolution,
attention of the miners turned with respectful calm to surviving the holiday period and
providing a little normality for their children. Its not the kids strike, its our fight,
observed one miners wife from Beddau, the kids are going to have the world when they
go back to work.33 By this point, the resolve of the miners had begun to break, scabs had
returned to their jobs because they were desperate.34 The daughter was sitting there,
discovered one union official, her friend was having a birthday party and she had no
clothes to go [ . . . ] there was hardly any food in the house at all.35
When the strike finally broke in March 1985, nearly 95% of the miners in South
Wales had remained out. Returning to work marching behind the brightly coloured lodge
banners that proclaimed such ideals as workers of the world, unite, they knew that
they had been defeated and that, perhaps even before the decade was out, the world of
coal mining would be extinct and the industrial way of life that had existed in the South
Wales Valleys for nearly 200 years gone as well. Seeking to lift the mood, lodge
chairmen such as Tony Ciano of Cynheidre Colliery, spoke out into the darkness on the
first morning back:
831
I am delighted that over 800 of you marched in united behind the lodge banner this
morning. I am proud that you did this because although many of you went back to work in the
last few weeks you were driven back through despair and suffering and not through any lack
of loyalty to the union or its struggles. Youre not scabs. The only scabs in this colliery are
those who broke the strike early on and it is their treachery which led to the prolonging of our
suffering and that of our families.36
Cynheidre closed in 1989 with the loss of over 1000 jobs. The very last pit in South Wales
to be closed by British Coal was Tower Colliery in April 1994. Convinced that it was not
yet exhausted and entirely profitable as a business, the workers of Tower bought it using
loans and their collected redundancy money. Reopening in January 1995, it was mined
until 2008 when the final seams were exhausted. In retrospect, Tower proved the viability
of the coalfield and its remaining collieries but by then it was too late and the deep mining
of coal had ceased.37 Only history ensured that deep mining of coal continued to have a
presence in South Wales (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Marking the end of mining in the Rhondda. Crown Copyright: Royal Commission on the
Ancient & Historical Monuments of Wales, John Cornwell Collection, NA/GEN/90/047e.
832
D. Leeworthy
In historys mind
The modern Welsh miner will better assess the value of his trade union by knowing what
tremendous tasks it has performed in the past.38 These words, written by the journalist
(and later MP for Caerphilly) Ness Edwards in 1938, serve to encapsulate the role of
history in the events of 1984 5. From the role of the union in its society to the continued
taint of certain families as scabs because of the actions of earlier generations, the past
played a significant role not only in convincing miners to go out on strike in March 1984 or
sustaining the pit villages through the harsh realities of economic deprivation, but also
providing the foundations for individual understanding of what had happened over the
course of the year. Furthermore, the longevity of the strike the longest in British history
and the return of food parcels to mining villages (something not seen since the 1930s)
encouraged a juxtaposition of the present and events in the past such as the Great
Depression and the 1926 General Strike and Miners Lockout. In a letter sent to families
across Wales in January 1985, the Welsh Council for Civil and Politic Liberties observed
in this vein that the struggles of the Welsh mining communities today can only be
compared with the desperate days of 1926.39
The juxtaposition of experiences during the 1926 Miners Lockout and the 1984 5
miners strike emerged during the latter event and has continued to shape an understanding
of both actions. Explicitly comparative work such as the introduction to David Gilberts
Class, Community, and Collective Action (1992) or Jaclyn Gier-Viskovatoff and Abigail
Porters 1998 article Women of the British Coalfields on Strike in 1926 and 1984, make
clear connections between the two events.40 During the 1984 5 miners strike, writes
Gilbert, there were many times when history seemed to be repeating itself; not first as
tragedy, then again as farce, but as tragedy twice over.41 Equally, the publication of history
books focused on the labour history of South Wales, the republication of classic proletarian
literature and poetry from the 1930s, and television documentaries which brought to life the
miners lockout of 1926 and the stay-down strikes of the 1930s, ensured that public
consumption and knowledge of the industrial battles of the past was fresh and strong. Even
if, as Gier-Viskovatoff and Porter point out, the miners wives and girlfriends who formed
the womens support groups in 1984 had no knowledge of the long tradition of mining
womens activism, the presence of the past was still tangible. Indeed, as they ultimately
observe, the strike presented itself as a unique opportunity for the older generations of
women [ . . . ] to share their knowledge and experiences with the younger generation.42
Central to the list of works which emerged between 1975 and 1985 was The Fed: A
History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century published in 1980 and written
by Hywel Francis and Dai Smith. Consciously (and officially) a continuation of the earlier
histories of the union written by Robin Page Arnot in the 1960s and 1970s, which had
taken the story to the fateful year of 1926, The Fed brought together and built upon the
wealth of archival material that had been rescued to carry the history of the miners of
South Wales through from 1926 to the events of the 1970s. It also followed Arnots
approach to writing the history of the South Wales Miners Federation by closely
integrating oral testimony and, in common with Ness Edwards, the book had a clear
objective beyond simply relaying the history of miners and their union in the twentieth
century, namely to serve as a link for those younger members and their families with their
own past.43
Following the publication of The Fed were the ground-breaking television
documentaries Wales! Wales? (BBC Wales, 1984), which was written and presented by
Dai Smith, and The Dragon Has Two Tongues: A History of the Welsh (HTV, 1985), which
833
was presented as a dialectical battle between Professor Gwyn Alf Williams and the
wartime radio broadcaster Wynford Vaughan-Thomas and remains something of a
benchmark in Welsh historical documentary.44 Broadcast amidst the industrial strife and
the immediate aftermath of the miners strike, these documentaries provided further
insight into the turbulent past of the Welsh nation. In the opening foray of The Dragon Has
Two Tongues, the life-long Marxist and Cardiff history professor, Gwyn Alf Williams, can
be seen hurtling down to the pit bottom at the Big Pit mining museum in Blaenavon. He
states his case baldly:
I want to begin this history of Wales with this particular journey into a Welsh past at
Blaenavon Big Pit in Gwent. For years, one Welshman in every four made this journey every
day of his working life and thousands of Welsh women worked alongside them. Sixty years
ago, nearly half the population of Wales lived from this hard and dangerous work
underground. [ . . . ] Today it looks to me as if the Welsh people have been declared redundant,
as redundant as this pit which after two hundred years is now a museum. This is a museum.
Wales is being turned into a land of museums! Now what is shovelling us into these folk
museums? History they say. History! Whats this History?45
This episode was first broadcast on 9 January 1985 in the depths of the winter, which had
seen increasing numbers of men return to work. The very last episode, entitled The Death
of Wales?, was broadcast on 4 April 1985 and as an epilogue featured the march back to
work by the miners of Mardy Colliery in the Rhondda. The strained voices of the gathered
wives and children can be heard singing a varied verse of the hymn Cwm Rhondda. The
lyrics hungry miners, hungry miners, well support you ever more reflected the very
strength of the community in the last pit village, the last Little Moscow, of what had been
the central hub of the South Wales Coalfield since the 1860s.46 Gwyns words and these
final, poignant images almost certainly resonated with viewers given events of the previous
year and the series is remembered as having captured the zeitgeist of mid-1980s Wales.
Similarly, Dai Smiths Wales! Wales?, which was shown between February and March
1984 against the backdrop of the beginning of the strike, provided histories of the
Tonypandy Riots of 1910 and the effects of the Great Depression on the Welsh working
class. Smiths favourite episode, broadcast on 18 March 1984, dealt with the events of the
1926 General Strike and used readings from the miner-poet Idris Davies to provide a
contemporary voice.47 Peter Davalle, a television critic for The Times, observed that
weekend that whether in the 1920s or in the 1980s, they [the miners] have occupied
centre-stage position in our national industrial drama, so the topicality [ . . . ] needs no
underlining.48 History, that attempt to make sense of the chaos of the past, was alive and
well throughout the long months of 1984.
The significance of this, especially in the early days of the strike, cannot be
underestimated even if, as Smith observed, events overtook the television schedules.49
In March 1984, as was noted above, much was made of the historical nature of solidarity in
the mining valleys of South Wales. As such, the decline of the industry (not to mention its
potential death) was understood as a direct threat to an entire way of life. The conflict was
therefore framed by the tension of keeping the status quo of jobs in the coal-mining
industry and all the social and cultural facets that flowed from its institutions, and the death
of both. For the last forty years, explained one leaflet distributed in the Llynfi Valley,
there has been a constant and continual decline a decay of decline eating its way into
the social fabric of the valleys.50 Most obviously this was felt in the strain on community
and communalism. Hywel Francis observed, in a paper delivered at a conference in Paris
in November 1986, that miners across pit villages in South Wales felt [the] industry is no
longer our industry [ . . . ] the old personal, perhaps paternal, but certainly consultative,
834
D. Leeworthy
atmosphere is no more.51 If the strike began out of a sense of solidarity and duty to stand
shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow workers, it ended with families over-burdened with large
debts and thus seeking individualistic solutions to problems considered entirely personal.
Taking redundancy payments, an anathema at the height of the strike, eventually became
commonplace in the years that followed.52
Fighting for the future
The most emotionally powerful of the narrative threads that emerge throughout the oral
testimony both from men and women is the focus on the future prospects of their children
and young people generally. When asked by an BBC journalist how many of his friends
were out of work, one striking miner, then aged just 26, explained: Eighty percent of them
are unemployed, theyve worked, then get laid off, get a job and work a month, then get
laid off [ . . . ] its ridiculous [ . . . ] Im twenty-six years old and this is my third pit Ive
worked.53 The desire for a job amongst young people in the South Wales Valleys in the
early 1980s was extremely high, but with nearly 3.5 million people drawing the dole, few
opportunities existed in the peripheries of Britain. In an interview with a journalist for ITN
in November 1984, Barbara Williams, a miners wife in Maerdy, was blunt:
If you were to go along the road and say to those young boys, what would you rather do, would
you rather go and sign the dole or would you rather go to work at the colliery? Theyll answer
you: Id rather go to work at the colliery. I know of boys that have walked up to that colliery to
put their names down, begging to be taken on.54
The plea from miners wives and mothers was simple: Give us employment for our
youngsters to have a life.55 This voice is echoed in many of the oral testimonies and
speeches given by women throughout 1984 and 1985. Kath Evans, who was Secretary of
the South Wales Womens Support Group during the strike, explained in a speech to the
London-Wales Congress in Support of Mining Communities in March 1985 that the
women knew that if the pits closed their children would either have to leave the valleys or
be condemned to the dole queues.56 Attitudes such as these were clearly motivated by an
entire generation of parents looking towards to a time when coal mining and the stable
income that it had provided for generations would be gone in its entirety.
Despite remaining a working coalfield, Nottinghamshire was not immune from these
fears either. Ive got a lad of 19 and another of 16, explained one miners wife from the
area. Its no good getting some flaming job at the pit when in five years time theyre
going to be made redundant, is there? It alters lives and you just cant sit back and let
that happen.57 Her reflections, which merit quoting in full, continue with a focus on the
reasons why younger men might feel isolated from and yet tied to both the communalism
of pit culture and pit village society and their own family history:
My sons name is Billy Graham. His dads name is Billy Graham and his Grandfathers name
is Billy Graham. And there they were before that, Billy Graham. I bet nobody can go back four
or five generations with the same name and all working in the same job! Its like fishermen, I
think, miners. Youre in the pits therefore your son goes in the pits therefore his son goes in the
pits. Its families, families following on, one after the other. Now if they keep closing the pits
down then how are the kids to follow on, one after the other?
Worse, from the point of view of mothers, was the growing apathy amongst young people
and even children. A group of women in Mardy Strike Centre, which was housed at
Maerdy Workmens Hall, reflected that children as young as 12 refused to study for exams
in school because they saw no purpose to and few opportunities arising from education.
To pick up from an interview with Barbara Williams for the BBC:
835
If youve got children and theyre willing to stay in school, get an education, you keep them in
school and you know damn well at the end theres nothing for them. Thats hellish hard to
take.58
In the succeeding generation, apathy has resolved itself into far greater social disintegration:
amidst the decaying houses and derelict chapels are issues including soaring teenage
pregnancy rates and extremes of poverty. Today, as Peter Stead observed during events to
mark the twentieth anniversary of the strike, the South Wales Valleys are the poorest part of
Western Europe with an ageing population which clings on desperately to the NHS and its
mythology and a new underclass of young people who are just drinking and taking drugs.59
The fears apparent in the oral testimony captured in 1984 have indeed been realised.60
Mams, supporters, organisers
From a biographical point of view, the miners strike and the interviews undertaken during
and after it provide a fascinating insight into changing attitudes and expectations
particularly amongst women.61 If the emphasis on the plight of children reflected what was
considered to be the traditional role of mam, that is to say, the homemaker confined to the
house and its immediate environs, then the tangible sense of liberation which followed
from heavy involvement in strike activity reveals a different character of the women of
the South Wales Valleys. Margaret Donovan, of Ynyswen in the Rhondda, reflected in
this vein that when I had the children, my life centred around [them], centred around
playgroups, school, [I] certainly didnt go out at all.62 As the strike developed and the
boundaries of what had been a predominantly masculine and paternalistic world began to
blur, this changed and one of the clearest narratives in the oral testimony is that of a sense
of liberation. I didnt really get to know anybody, Margaret Donovan explains of her life
before the strike, but since the strike, I know a terrific amount, and we are all good friends
now. Thats one good thing about it really: got me out of the house.63 For those who were
activated by the strike, it would prove a turning point and life would never be the same
again. Theres no way, insisted one woman from Treherbert, no way Im going to sit
down in the house after all this is over, after being so active.64 Historians of women and
the womens movement recognise the 1984 5 strike as a key turning point in the
development of greater recognition for the role of and equality for women in society.
Women, writes Deirdre Beddoe, organised as never before.65
Across the coalfield, women formed support groups which existed in parallel with the
trade-union branches for the men. We realised there was a fight on, recalled Barbara
Williams in 2004, we thought wed need to give out food parcels, so a couple of women
went round with trolleys, going round to shops and door-to-door [ . . . ] we were weighing
potatoes, counting tea bags sugar was like gold dust.66 In Newbridge, women organised
a soup kitchen in the miners institute. They asked us if we would make pasties for the
men that were going away picketing and it developed from there, explains Dot Phillips.
We started doing breakfast. It grew so big and so fast that we didnt realise what was
happening [ . . . ] we found that we were having tonnes and tonnes of baked beans and
corned beef. All Sunday Id be making corned beef pie which developed into making
dinners for the men.67 For Williams, it all evoked the past and particularly 1926. In 1926
those people were starved, she says, lets be quite honest about this, in 1984 we wont
starve [ . . . but] where are you going to find a job.68 For some families, the strain of
ensuring they did not starve was extremely great. Pam, a miners wife from Maerdy,
confessed to living on just 6.50 family allowance per week.69 The bitter realities of that
earlier strike were very apparent in the South Wales of the 1980s.
836
D. Leeworthy
The actualities of womens organisation in 1926 was relatively little known at the time
but subsequently historians have turned to the literature written by women in the aftermath
of the lockout and uncovered striking similarities. Marion Phillips, who was the chief
womens officer for the Labour Party in the 1920s and was instrumental in the
development of its womens section, wrote in 1927 that the role of women in the miners
lockout the previous year was the greatest effort ever known by the womens section of
the labour movement [ . . . ] this wonderful effort: the collection of money, clothes, boots,
and their distribution to the worst areas, the arranging of choirs, bands, concerts, sales,
meets etc., was a colossal task [ . . . ] It is the women who made the great sacrifice.70 In
Wales, a local committee for womens relief was organised and women travelled across
the country to speak in support of the miners.71 Without changing anything other than the
dates, the same passages could stand for events in 1984 5.
Yet, as the strike began to unravel towards the end of 1984, it was also recognised that
women could also be a weak point in the solidarity of pit villages. One miners wife
recalled, during a discussion class held in Blaengwynfi in November 1985, Christmas
dinner held the previous year in Clydach (near Swansea):
The scabs wife was the first to serve dinner. There she was in the middle of the photograph
her husband was back at work at this stage no one has said anything to them. [ . . . You]
couldnt help thinking there but for the grace of God go I, my husband could be next.72
Picking up on this story, another of the activists who had been present at a similar dinner
in Blaengwynfi interjected: I knew there was miners wives going out of that meeting
and asking their husbands to go back. Her comments provoke raw emotion from the first
speaker who continues her own narrative:
I knew they were [going home and asking their husbands to go back] and Ill tell you this
much now: I felt as sad as I could be; in fact, I cried my bloody eyes out, I couldnt stop
because I knew they were going there never mind what we done together; like collecting
money etc., and they did go back and ask their husbands to go back. Their husbands stopped
them: the men said no.73
That was the saddest day, she concludes, one of the saddest Ive ever experienced.
From this point, the discussion the women are having veers towards thinking about how
their role related to efforts and experiences of women during the 1926 miners lockout.
Unlike later historians who have turned to published accounts, these women had access
only to the folk memories that had been disseminated through the generations.74
Im thinking of what I was told by my parents after the 1926 strike, begins one of the
discussants:
our picture of that 1926 strike as weve been thinking about it now as if they were all together
in it [ . . . ] Ill tell you what after 1926 right through to the 30s what, what kind of um upsurge
in the Labour Party was there really in these valleys? What did it produce in people? I know
that when I joined the Labour Party in the 50s there was no deep socialist convictions. The
socialists were the poorest of the poor in the Labour Party, keeping together because if they
didnt they couldnt afford, the poor had to keep together in order to survive.75
Despite this uncertainty at the effects of the strike on political consciousness and the
general unity behind the scenes, the strike did give this group of women a tangible sense
that community had been restored and that they and their children had been relinked to the
aims and aspirations of their parents and grandparents. Whatever the miners strike have
done, observed one resident of Blaengwynfi, it have shown people can stay out, can stick
together, and I think it have taught these kids something. As she concluded: Theyre
not stories theyve heard when theyre looking back, theyve seen some of it.76 In other
837
words, the strike would serve as a key event not just in the biography of the individuals
who went out onto picket lines or who collected money to provide food parcels for hungry
families, but also those who were children at the time.77
The awakening of political consciousness may well not have been universal and
a number of women involved in the strike may well have understood their roles in a
traditional manner that of the supporting housewife but for a number of women, the
miners strike offered a clear sense not just of community but of politics in practice. My
attitudes have changed through the strike, explained one woman from the Dulais Valley.
I thought I was a socialist before, now I know what socialism is its a whole way of life,
and were living it in our valley right now.78 The men, it seems, agreed. The women, they
were brilliant. Brilliant! exclaimed Allan Stevenson. She [his wife] kept my bloody
hopes up during the strike. She was bloody tremendous. And a lot of other people will tell
you the same thing about the women.79 I think the involvement of women in the strike
has strengthened the strike and raised peoples consciousness, explained Howard, a miner
from Newbridge. I dont think the strike would have lasted this long without the womens
support groups.80
For industry, job and union
Men interviewed reveal a different focus to that contained in the oral biographies of female
activists. For the men, it was, first and foremost and understandably an institutional
question, and oral testimony also reveals the prominence of trade-union language
compared to how women framed their responses.81 Miners spoke of the state and of union
rules, regulations and resolutions ahead of their concerns about the future of themselves
and their children. When asked to give a reason for the failure of the strike, one miner
explained that the state had learned from the 1974 strike [ . . . ] there was a deliberate policy
to create unemployment to weaken solidarity. The unions [are] afraid of going on the dole.
Another miner agreed whilst offering the opinion that the main difference [between 1974
and 1984 was] total use of the state against us rather than just the employer.82
The focus on the union and its fight gave the men strength, a sense of purpose, and a
sense of continuity with the battles of earlier generations. One striking miner from Maerdy
in the Rhondda, in an interview broadcast on BBC 2 in July 1984, put it in these terms:
Well, how can I say, its strengthened me towards the strike [ . . . ] and the longer its gone on,
the stronger I feel about the strike. Our fathers and grandfathers fought for a lot in this industry
and were not letting it slip for nobody. Im not letting slip what my grandfathers fought for.83
The miners had a very clear sense of why they were fighting and against whom they were
fighting. Regarding the latter, as the same striking miner explains at the end of the
programme: We are just men fighting for the right to work [ . . . ] nothing else, the right
to work. As for their enemy, that was the hostile state personified in the forms of Ian
McGregor, the Scottish-born American chairman of the National Coal Board, and
Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Prime Minister. Alun Jones, who was vice-president
of Maerdy Lodge in the Rhondda, observed in 1986 that we knew that we were against
one of the hardest governments that possibly anyone has ever seen even those that lived
through the 1930s and the 1926ers, theyd not seen as much hard-line attitude towards the
working class as Thatcher.84 At the local level, anger was more readily directed towards
the police whose heavy-handed tactics caused not just friction but widespread
disenchantment as well. Its going to take them [the police] a lot of years for them to
get the respect of the local people now, observed one miner from Abertillery.85 Such
comments, along with many others hostile to the actions of the police, were readily
838
D. Leeworthy
repeated by miners interviewed across South Wales in 1984 and subsequently. His voice
was certainly not alone.86
The hostility of miners and their families towards the police reflected the manner in
which policing was carried out during the strike.87 The appearance of militarised tactics
and approaches at first startled strikers and later angered them. One policeman on
horseback went up the road chasing miners shouting come on you bastards, observed
one miner from the Garw Valley: He looked as if he was in a Western. For another:
I was looking for the Zulu warriors coming over the hills when they were banging their
shields.88 The images these men provide are bound up with popular culture and
representations of peoples under threat: on the one hand, there is the miner as the Indian
of a John Wayne film, and on the other, the miners as the small band of soldiers at Rorkes
Drift in South Africa.89 Given the imagery, the latter almost certainly draws upon Stanley
Bakers production Zulu, which was released in 1964 and remains an extremely popular
film, especially in Wales.90 Yet, this was hardly nostalgia and drawing on imagery from
films merely underscored the impact that the police had had.
The day-to-day experiences of men on the picket lines are captured in a remarkable
diary kept through the early months of the strike by Alun Jones. Transcribed by Paul
Mackney into a more general diary kept by the latter in Birmingham, the Maerdy entries
reveal the more intimate details of mens experiences which are rarely captured in
interviews. On 16 March 1984, the diary begins to take its form as something greater than
a chronicle of where Jones was on a given day. Weather, he writes, very cold. Sleeping
in the backs of transit vans uncomfortable, 12 men to each van; not to worry we will
overcome.91 Not unsurprisingly, striking miners regarded the twelve months as a life
experience beyond anything they had encountered before. They didnt teach things
like this in school, remarked Alan Stevenson of Maesteg in terms echoed by Alun Jones.
The twelve month strike educated not only me but a damn sight more people.92
One aspect of this education was the encounter with black communities. For the most
part, race relations in the peripheral regions of Britain were framed not by experience but
by ingrained cultural prejudice.93 Aside from the docklands areas of Cardiff, Barry and
Newport, the numbers of black men, women and children were extremely small, and,
for most people living and working in the South Wales Valleys, the influx of migrants
from the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s had passed them by (at least in terms of direct
contact). Some of the boys had not been in contact with coloured people, observed one
striking miner from Maesteg. They knew they were going to a coloured community and
they were making racist remarks.94 This echoes the perceptions made by Kenneth Little
in the 1940s. It is important to realise that so far as something like 95 percent of English
people are concerned, he writes, they [racial attitudes] are based entirely on some
stereotyped idea rather than on first-hand personal knowledge of coloured people.95
Arriving in Birmingham in the summer of 1984, miners made direct contact with racial
and ethnic minorities and attitudes soon began to change. Realising that attacks made by
the media and the police had a similar basis to attacks on black and Asian communities, the
miners became fervent anti-racists. To this day, concludes Potts, those boys they never
make any racist remarks [ . . . ] it seemed as if the two different causes the two colours
had joined together.96 Just as working-class male attitudes to women lost the more casual,
stereotyped features of its paternalism, so too did it lose its racism.
Back on the picket lines, the resolve and decorum of the striking miners was tested
very nearly to its limits. The combination of the cold weather, the pressures of being away
from home for long periods, and jostling from scabbing workers placed significant strain.
Nevertheless, as Alun Jones recorded in his diary, all the pickets are in good spirit with all
839
the hardships that have to endure. To keep up their spirits, Welsh miners leant on and
borrowed from aspects of their own popular culture such as the singing of rugby songs and
hymns and the use of the Welsh language irrespective of the hostility from antagonists on
the streets or their own fluency. Outside Sainsburys, recalled one miner, if they gave us
a bit of jip wed start battering on in Welsh. We didnt understand a word of Welsh really
but we were just singing words of songs that wed heard.97
A few days later Jones attention turns towards his family and home. We are still away
from home, he writes on 22 March: Never mind, the cause is just. Then on 31 March:
Going home for a rest. We have been away from home and families for three weeks. Need
to see them.98 The personal hardships that the men endured on the picket lines, especially
pickets that were long bus journeys away from home, are often less apparent in oral
interviews than might be expected. This almost certainly reflects the reluctance, which as
long been recognised, of working-class men to talk openly about their feelings. As many
scholars have observed, this stiff upper lip serves as a lynchpin in the construction of
working-class masculinity.99 Jones diary entries therefore offer a rare insight and enable
greater appreciation of expressions of respect and admiration for the role of women in
supporting the strike. We have to endure all sorts of lies and intimidation, complained
Alun Jones in his diary on 3 April 1984, but we are able to stand and face it by the very
nature of our wives and girlfriends spirits we will win.100
The strike ended on 5 March 1985. In the months and years that followed, journalists,
historians and activists conducted numerous interviews with those who had been involved in
an effort to understand what had happened and its likely effects on the coalfields of Britain.
Miners were, on the whole, reflective. The anger directed towards the government had little
dissipated and in the years that followed, their own fears about the loss of the pits and their
own jobs were realised. Summing up his own experience of the strike, one miner said:
We lived with the strike. It wasnt just on the picket lines, it was in the house [ . . . ] All the
activists, we lived the strike [ . . . ] Nothing was talked about apart from the strike when we was
on strike. My wife said to me: would you ever go back to work, would you be a scab? And my
eldest boy turned and looked. He said: Dad, if you go, Ill never forgive you. Ill never talk to
you again [ . . . ] A scab asked me, what did the strike do? We lost. Clem turned to him and
said: if it did one thing, he said, it made me fucking proud. I fought for my class.
They all agreed with the final sentiment: We was proud to walk back on that day behind
the banner.101
Conclusion
For the generation born after the strike took place, all that remains of the coal-mining
industry are history books, museums, the memories of older generations and the
occasional reminder of the horrors of working underground. In mid-September 2011, an
explosion in the small Gleision Colliery near Swansea and the resulting news of four
trapped miners brought back to the forefront of news bulletins and discussions in the
workplace, bus stop, and at home an industry that had, essentially, disappeared from public
view almost a generation ago. Writing in the Guardian on 16 September, Jan Morris made
the explicit link between the national biography of Wales and coal mining. If you love
Wales you will shed a tear this morning, she writes. Not since the black day of Aberfan,
nearly half a century ago, has a calamity seemed to strike so close to the heart of all that
this small proud country means to us.102 Throughout the press in the days that followed,
articles relived the loss of the industry as contemporary reportage explored the living
nightmare of the families whose fathers, brothers and sons were trapped underground.
840
D. Leeworthy
Journalists observed that the miners working in the Gleision mine had taken
employment there because, following the closure of the industry, their skills had become
redundant and as life-long colliers that was all they knew. Rather than face half a lifetime
on the dole, they took jobs at small and dangerous drift mines in order to make ends
meet. What was apparent in the aftermath of the Gleision disaster was the continuing
strength of mining in the national biography of Wales even as it has faded in the
individual and familial biographies of almost all of its citizens. Much of this can be
related to the miners strike and the nature of the community identities which it evoked
and provoked.
Ultimately, the 1984 5 strike was a failure and hastened the decline of the industry
that the men and women fought long and hard to preserve. Its effects have been far
reaching: from the entrenched apathy of young people and the emergence of a little
understood underclass to the deep-rooted poverty which seems unable to be shaken off,
the generation that has followed the year-long miners strike has been one fraught with
difficulty. A century ago, the South Wales Coalfield was the largest exporting coalfield in
the world; not to be outdone by its entrepot, Cardiff, it holds claim to being the place
where the first 1 million cheque was written. The death of the industry has seen the fears
expressed in the oral testimony from 1984 and 1985 realised. Distance and time have,
therefore, not healed the wounds inflicted in those long months of struggle and hardship.
To conclude on a more positive note: this article has used oral history and other (auto)
biographical source material to provide insight into the personal circumstances of the
1984 5 miners strike in Wales. In doing so, it has hopefully presented a further case for
the significant contribution that oral history continues to make to the understanding of the
past. It is hardly an exaggeration to state that oral history is central to the understanding of
the role of mining history in the national narrative of Wales and the Welsh. Without it,
those individual biographies of miners and miners wives and the collective biographies
of pit villages and the nation as a whole cannot be understood. In writing articles and
monographs, popular books and school textbooks, if we are to retain the spirit and
commitment of earlier generations and provide a history which remains true to their
aspirations, then oral history must remain at the heart of how we write, how we research,
and how we think about the past. And with oral history comes the equally central
importance of biography and emotion and the once quintessential facet of history: a story.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
Williams, When Was Wales?, 298.

Nasaw, Introduction, 573.
Allen and Chase, Britain: 1750 1900, 87.
Arnot, The Miners: Years of Struggle, 541.
Thompson, Homage to Tom Maguire, 276 8.
Williams, ed., Merthyr Politics: The Making of a Working-Class Tradition.
Smith, In the Frame: Memory in Society, Wales 1910 to 2010, 157.
This passage draws on Hopkin, Llafur: Labour History Society and Peoples Remembrancer,
1970 2009, 129 46.
The history of this project is relayed in its final report published in 1974. Williams ed., The
South Wales Coalfield History Research Project: Final Report.
The key text in the field remains Thompson, Voice of the Past: Oral History. For a recent
appraisal of the theoretical questions surrounding the practice of oral-history research see
Abrams, Oral History Theory.
Francis and Smith, The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century;
Francis, Miners Against Fascism: Wales and the Spanish Civil War; Francis, History on our
Side: Wales and the 1984 85 Miners Strike; Bruley, The Women and Men of 1926: A Gender
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
841
and Social History of the General Strike and Miners Lockout in South Wales; McIlroy,
Campbell, and Gildart, eds., Industrial Politics and the 1926 Lockout: The Struggle for
Dignity; Curtis, The South Wales Miners, 1964 1985; Morgan, Stand By Your Man: Women
and the Miners Strike 1984 85 in South Wales.
Bruley, Women and Men, 8.
Portelli, The Peculiarities of Oral History, 99.
Abrams, Oral History Theory, 53.
Thompson, Voice of the Past, 9.
Abrams, Oral History Theory, 1.
A sense of the development of this first wave of oral-history testimony and subsequent
projects can be gleaned from the annual reports of the Miners Library. These are held at the
South Wales Miners Library, Swansea, and I am grateful to the Librarian, Sian Williams, for
making them available to me.
This draws on information provided by Sian Williams and the South Wales Coalfield
Collection Catalogue: http://www.swan.ac.uk/swcc/ [Accessed 16 October 2011].
Much of the history of the 1980s has been written by journalists with a few notable
exceptions. Of the former, the best examples are: Turner, Rejoice, Rejoice! Britain in the
1980s and Beckett and Hencke, Marching to the Fault Line: The Miners Strike and the Battle
for Industrial Britain. For a more academic treatment see Vinen, Thatchers Britain: The
Politics and Social Upheaval of the 1980s. Wales in the 1980s is dealt with in Johnes, Wales
Since 1939. On the challenges of writing contemporary history see Johnes, On Writing
Contemporary History, 20 31.
Thatcher, Speech to 1922 Committee, 19 July 1984. Available online: http://www.
margaretthatcher.org/document/105563 [Accessed 16 October 2011].
Felton, 56,000 Miners to Strike, The Times, 6 March 1984, 1; Felton, Miners Leaders will
back all Areas that Strike, The Times, 9 March 1984, 1.
Clement and Jones, Welsh Revolt over Strike widens Split among Miners, The Times, 12
March 1984, 1.
Francis and Rees, No Surrender in the Valleys: The 1984 85 Miners Strike in South
Wales, 43.
Interview with Des Dutfield 6 March 1986, South Wales Miners Library, Swansea:
AUD/465. The South Wales Miners Library holds 33 such interviews conducted across
South Wales in the aftermath of the strike.
Cited in Francis and Rees, No Surrender, 49.
The wider post-war history of the North Wales coalfield can be found in: Gildart, The North
Wales Miners: A Fragile Unity, 1945 1996. See also Howell, The 1984 85 Miners Strike
in North Wales, 67 98.
Unknown Point of Ayr miner interviewed by David Howell, in Howell, Miners Strike in
North Wales, 76.
Wrexham Leader, 23 March 1984.
BBC Radio Clwyd Documentary on Miners Strike, March 1985, http://www.bbc.co.uk/
wales/northeast/sites/your_films/pages/minersstrike.shtml [Accessed 23 October 2011].
Thompson, ed., Glo: Strike, 19.
Swain, Letter, 18 April 1985. located in Bert Pearce (Welsh Communist Party) Papers: WS
3/15.
Francis and Rees, No Surrender, 63.
Welsh Council of Civil and Politic Liberties & National Union of Mine Workers, Striking
Back, 39.
Scabbing is the subject of a sensitive and pioneering article which tackles head-on the
mythology of the scab. Burge, In Search of Harry Blount: Scabbing between the Wars in one
South Wales Community, 58 69.
Interview with Eric Davies, 17 May 1986, cited in Francis and Rees, No Surrender, 64.
Cited in Francis, First Reflections on the 1984 85 Miners Strike, unpublished paper,
March 1985, located in Bert Pearce Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: WS
3/14, file 2 of 2.
OSullivan, Tower of Strength: The Story of Tyrone OSullivan and Tower Colliery.
Edwards, History of the South Wales Miners Federation: Volume I, vii. The second volume
was never published: it exists, in proofs, at Nuffield College Library in Oxford.
842
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
D. Leeworthy
Letter dated January 1985. Located in Bert Pearce (Welsh Communist Party) Papers,
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: WS 3/15. The emphasis is my own.
Gilbert, Class, Community, and Collective Action: Social Change in Two British Coalfields,
1850 1926; Gier-Viskovatoff and Porter, Women of the British Coalfields on Strike in 1926
and 1984: Documenting Lives Using Oral History and Photography, 199 230.
Gilbert, Class, 1.
Gier-Viskovatoff and Porter, Women of the British Coalfields, 226.
Francis and Smith, The Fed, xv.
On this theme see Thomas, The End of History as We Know It: Gwyn A. Williams as a
Television Historian, 5 20; Smith, Gwyn A. Williams, 1925 1995, 318 26.
The Dragon Has Two Tongues: Where to Begin? Directed by Colin Thomas. Cardiff: HTV, 1985.
The Dragon Has Two Tongues: The Death of Wales? Directed by Colin Thomas. Cardiff:
HTV, 1985. For a sense of Maerdys radical leanings see Macintyre, Little Moscows:
Communism and Working-Class Militancy in Inter-war Britain.
Interview with Dai Smith, 30 March 2010. Notes in Author Possession.
Davalle, Weekend Choice, The Times, 17 March 1984, 6.
Interview with Dai Smith, 30 March 2010.
Keep Mining in Maesteg. Leaflet located in Bert Pearce (Welsh Communist Party) Papers,
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: WS 3/1.
Francis, Coming to Terms with Defeat: Recent Responses to Change in the British Coalfields
with Particular Reference to South Wales, unpublished paper, November 1986, 7. Copy
consulted located in Bert Pearce Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: WS 3/14,
file 1 of 2.
Johnson, How Bleak is my Valley, Manchester Guardian, 5 February 1988, 21.
Steve, Mardy: Last Pit in the Rhondda. Directed Chris Curling. BBC Bristol, 8 July 1984.
News At Ten. ITN for ITV, 15 November 1985.
Pam, Mardy: Last Pit in the Rhondda.
Evans, Speech Delivered to London-Wales Congress in Support of Mining Communities,
March 1985, 3. Located in South Wales Womens Support Groups Papers, National Library
of Wales, Aberystwyth: File 1.
Coal Not Dole: Notts Women Strike Back, 1. Nottingham: privately published, 1985. Copy
consulted located in Bert Pearce Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: WS 3/14,
file 2 of 2. Collections such as this were often based on oral testimony that was later
transcribed.
Barbara, Mardy: Last Pit in the Rhondda.
Peter Stead contribution, The Clash: A Visit to Cwmaman. Written & Presented by Patrick
Hannan, BBC Radio Wales, 30 September 2004.
For a sense of Wales in the last 25 years see Johnes, Wales Since 1939. On the broader issues
of working-class decline in the last generation see Jones, Chavs: The Demonization of the
Working Class; Mason, Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global.
Miller, You Cant Kill the Spirit: Women in a Welsh Mining Valley.
Interview with Margaret Donovan, 5 November 1986, South Wales Miners Library:
AUD/503. This evidence accords with that gathered by Steffan Morgan in the course of his
research. Morgan, Stand By Your Man, 63.
Ibid.
Striking Back, 46.
Beddoe, Out of the Shadows: A History of Women in Twentieth-Century Wales, 164.
Striking Tales: A Miners Wife, BBC Wales, 9 March 2004. Available Online: http://news.
bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/3440845.stm [accessed: 26 October 2011].
Jones, Womens Role in the Miners Strike, 25 Years On, Western Mail, 7 March 2009.
Barbara, Mardy: Last Pit in the Rhondda.
Pam, ibid. 6.50 is the equivalent of around 16 in 2010 prices.
Phillips, Women and the Miners Lockout: The Story of the Womens Committee for the Relief
of the Miners Wives and Children, 11.
Andrews, A Womans Work Is Never Done, 1956.
NUM Discussion Class (Blaengwynfi), 26 November 1985, South Wales Miners Library:
AUD/506.
Ibid.

74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
843
Francis, The Law, Oral Tradition, and the Mining Community, 267 71.
NUM Discussion Class (Blaengwynfi), 26 November 1985.
Ibid.
This can be observed in the interviews conducted by Rebecca Elizabeth Davies during the
course of her PhD research with Leanne Wood, a Plaid Cymru member of the Welsh
Assembly, who was 11 years old at the time of the strike. Davies, Not Supporting But
Leading: The Involvement of the Women of the South Wales Coalfield in the 1984 1985
Miners Strike, 210.
Evans, Hudson, and Smith, Women & the Miners: Its a Whole Way of Life, 14.
Interview with Alan Stevenson, 11 May 1986, Birmingham City Library & Archive,
Birmingham: Paul Mackney Papers, MS1591/D/1/3/7.
Interview with Newbridge Miners: Howard, in Newport West Labour Party Young
Socialists Bulletin, October 1984. Copy consulted: Welsh Political Ephemera Collection Box
116, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: C 3/10.
This is apparent in all-male discussion groups recorded after the strike. See, for example,
NUM Discussion Group, 6 April 1988, South Wales Miners Library: AUD/554; NUM
Discussion Class, 1985, South Wales Miners Library: AUD/498.
NUM Discussion Class, 1985, South Wales Miners Library: AUD/498.
Mardy: Last Pit in the Rhondda. Directed Chris Curling. BBC Bristol, 8 July 1984.
Interview with Alun Jones, 10 August 1986, Birmingham City Library & Archive,
Striking Back, 183.
Interview with Lodge Committee, St Johns Colliery, 6 August 1984, South Wales Miners
Library: AUD/579; Interview with group at Abertillery Miners Institute, 16 August 1984,
South Wales Miners Library: AUD/582; Interview with Maerdy Lodge Committee, 5
August 1984, South Wales Miners Library, AUD/589; Interview with Garw Lodge
Committee, 6 August 1984, South Wales Miners Library: AUD/593; Interview with Phil
White, 11 September 1984, South Wales Miners Library: AUD/608; Interview with Philip
James, 9 December 1985, South Wales Miners Library: AUD/610. The memoirs of former
miner Ian Isaac reflect similarly on this point. Isaac, When We Were Miners, 73 4.
For comparison with earlier strikes see Morgan, Conflict and Order: The Police and Labour
Disputes in England and Wales, 1900 1939, 1987.
Striking Back, 98 102.
For wider discussion of popular culture in the South Wales Valleys see James, Popular
Culture and Working-Class Taste in Britain 193039: A Round of Cheap Diversions?; Rose,
The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes.
Shail, Stanley Baker: A Life in Film.
Diary: Birmingham and the Miners Strike, 1984 85, 16 March 1984 entry, Birmingham
City Library & Archive, Birmingham: Paul Mackney Papers, MS1591/D/1/2.
Interview with Alan Stevenson, 11 May 1986; Interview with Alun Jones, 10 August 1986.
Tabili, Race is a Relationship, and Not a Thing, 125 30; Gilroy, There Aint No Black in the
Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation.
Interview with Bobby Potts, 11 May 1986, Birmingham City Library & Archive,
Little, Negroes in Britain: A Study of Racial Relations in English Society, 218.
Interview with Bobby Potts, 11 May 1986.
Ibid.
Diary: Birmingham and the Miners Strike, 1984 85, 17 March, 22 March, 31 March 1984
entries.
On the theme of working-class masculinity see Beavan, Leisure, Citizenship and WorkingClass Men in Britain, 1850 1945, 2005; Tosh, What Should Historians do with Masculinity?
Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Britain, 179 202; Brooke, Gender and Working-Class
Identity in Britain during the 1950s, 773 95; Cook, Twentieth-Century Masculinities,
127 35.
Diary: Birmingham and the Miners Strike, 1984 85, 3 April entry.
Interview with Rob James, 11 May 1986, Birmingham City Library & Archive,
844
102.
D. Leeworthy
Morris, The Gleision Mine Accident is a particularly Welsh Tragedy, Guardian, 16
September 2011. For a sensitive, academic treatment of Aberfan see McLean and Johnes,
Aberfan: Government and Disasters.
Notes on contributor
Daryl Leeworthy was recently awarded his Ph.D. by Swansea University for a thesis entitled
Workers Fields: Sport, Landscape and the Labour Movement in South Wales, 1858 1958. A
native of the South Wales Valleys, he is committed to peoples history and serves on the executive
committee of Llafur: the Welsh Peoples History Society. Recent publications include Fields of Play:
The Welsh Historic Sporting Environment (Aberystwyth, 2012) and Miners on the Margins:
Characterising South Wales and Cape Breton as an Industrial Frontier, 1880 1920, Llafur 10, no. 2
(2009).
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