WWhen Anne Woolford moved into her home in Great Houghton, South Yorkshire, in 2000, she could see from her back window the black mounds of slag from a former coal mine. The mountain is now covered with grass, and her vision is dominated by the Asos warehouse built on top of a former coal mine. She says the change is emblematic of how employment has evolved locally since the collapse of the industry.
This week, the UK marks 40 years since the start of the miners’ strike in 1984. At least 142,000 miners They withdrew their workforce in an attempt to prevent the coal mines from closing. Despite historic industrial conflicts, their eventual closure changed the face of these regions. Former coalfield areas are more likely to be stripped today and low trust in politics.
But even though 40 years have passed, the memories of that era remain strong for many who lived through it. Communities were divided between striking miners and those who crossed picket lines, and their way of life was lost after the mines were shut down by the Conservative government.
Mr Woolford, whose father and two grandfathers were coal miners, said he felt he had “saw the opportunities for young people disintegrate” that had benefited him in the 1960s and 1970s. It wasn’t a golden age, she says, and coal mining was a brutal industry, she recalls. Her father was injured on the job when she was seven years old, and then worked in a ground control room. “It wasn’t a glamorous job,” Woolford said. “But they had safety, camaraderie, and community.” “These things now feel like relics of the past,” she says.
Mr Woolford feels the anniversary highlights what the miners were fighting for. “They weren’t just fighting to protect their jobs. They were fighting for their communities,” she said.
Later this month, families of former miners from Armthorpe will parade through the village from the mine shaft to the community centre, with bands, speeches and banners. As preparations are made to mark the 40th anniversary of the strike, Armthorpe Parish Council chairman Chris Broadhurst-Brown said the village was not just looking back to the days before the pit closure. We are also looking to the future.
“Although our village was destroyed by the strike and subsequent closure, it is a proud, community-spirited village and a popular place to live,” said Broadhurst-Brown, 65. Ta. “Thatcher tried to crush us, but she couldn’t. Mining families form the backbone of our community spirit.”
Broadhurst-Brown, 65, whose grandfather, father and first husband were all miners, said working in the mines gave a sense of social cohesion to the village and housing estate of Armthorpe where she grew up.
Part of that sense of unity stems from the dangers of mining work, she said. “My first husband, I would never send him off to work because of name calling or arguments, because there was a real chance he wouldn’t come back. One of our neighbors was killed. It was a very real thing, we were desperately trying to look out for each other. Men and families relied on each other.”
The closure of the pit in 1992 brought “a real darkness” that “torn the heart of the village”, she said. But Mr Broadhurst-Brown said Mr Armthorpe was doing relatively well. “We are regenerating well economically and there is a lot of new housing construction going on. New people will keep the village going and it will grow. The situation is not perfect, but relatively the village is prosperous. “It’s a great place,” she said, adding that there are families working for low wages and some poverty. Ms Broadhurst-Brown said the village benefits from its location on a main road, which she explained gives it good access to shops, modern businesses and logistics.
Mr Broadhurst-Brown said Armthorpe had changed but its spirit remained. “Many pubs and clubs are gone, and so are all the good, proud but dangerous mining jobs. Change is happening everywhere in this country, and it’s not just us. We’re just there. “It’s not just sitting there looking at pieces of coal and pit lamps and thinking about how things used to be,” she said. “While we look back with pride, we also look forward with hope.”
Garry McKay, 59, from Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, was 18 when the miners’ strike began and has watched his city change over the past 40 years.
McKay became a social worker in 1994 and currently manages adult social care and health services in the Mansfield and Ashfield areas. He said the job gave him a front-row seat to local poverty issues such as health problems, poor housing, poverty, addiction and loneliness. “People’s lives have suffered because the mines have closed, they probably never recovered economically, and now they’re taking a huge toll on health,” he says. “It’s dark.”
His family had been coal miners since the 1850s, but he said his father crossed the picket line in 1984-1985. “I was embarrassed for him,” McKay recalls, “and I was embarrassed for him.” [but] I never took it home. ” Nottinghamshire’s coal mines were believed to be safe from a government shutdown, as they often remained open and helped the National Coal Board win the dispute. However, Mansfield closed in his 1988, and a few years later McKay’s father passed away.
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Over the next few decades, the town’s fortunes declined. After the pit closure and subsequent job losses, many of the town’s breweries and pubs closed, homes went into foreclosure, and jobs in the local textile industry declined. “For several years in the early 1990s, I was unemployed. There really wasn’t any work,” McKay said. He remembers a strange week when he attended a week-long course at Doll Office and sat with depressed, unemployed older men solving crosswords.
In the intervening decades, efforts were made to revitalize it. But Mr McKay feels the cuts of the 2010s have hampered any recovery. “What wasn’t eliminated by the pit closures was brought about by austerity.” [David] Cameron did his job very well 14 years ago. ”
Sue Lawson, 64, believes the mine was closed without adequate long-term economic planning. Lawson, who works for the Hetton Town Trust, a charity set up from former miners’ welfare groups, has lived near the former mining village of Hetton-le-Hole in County Durham since 1999. ““The pit closure was bad enough,” she said. But the real problem was “the way it was done without any hindsight,” especially for the younger generation, who “would have naturally followed their fathers into the hole.”
Lawson was 24 years old, newly married and living in Consett, County Durham, a former steel town, when the strike began. Lawson’s husband, Peter, works as an engineer for a company that supplies equipment for coal mining, which has caused her to worry about their future. “We were in a pretty tough situation at the time, but we did everything we could to support the miners,” she said.
In October 1992, John Major’s government announced plans to close 31 mines in the UK, resulting in the loss of around 31,000 jobs. In the Lawson area, some of the mining-related job losses were offset by the opening of the Nissan factory in 1986, which now employs about 6,000 people. Sunderland City, the local authority that includes Hetton-le-Hole, is currently the 23rd most underpaid. According to the ONSout of 316 local authorities in England.
“As with many mining towns, the center is rundown and has a few vacant storefronts. New housing developments are being built on the outskirts, but there aren’t many good-paying jobs locally. A lot of people commute to Durham, Peterlee and Newcastle,” Mr Lawson said.
Mr Lawson believes Labour’s 2019 manifesto contained “very good policies that will benefit regions like ours”. But she now feels people are losing faith that either the Conservatives or Labor can change things. Lawson said she feared that if Labor wins the next general election, Keir Starmer’s “hands will almost be tied” by the Treasury’s poor finances.
“Let’s hope that [Labour] You can participate, but you’re starting from a very low base, so don’t expect much. Because you wonder how much worse things will get by the time you start turning the corner. ”
