1984 – It was a cold wet, wet, grey March morning in Porthcawl when delegates from all the NUM Lodges of the South Wales Coalfield gathered for a conference on the escalating industrial action initiated by other areas of the NUM over the closures of collieries in Scotland and Yorkshire. Most of the delegates listened in stunned disbelief as the area president, Emlyn Williams, reported that a few hours earlier the area executive council had:
- considered the situation in the other coalfields.
- deliberated on Ian Macgregor’s statement on pit closures.
- listened to the president’s report of the National Executive Council’s recommendations.
- decided to support the NEC’s resolution to permit areas to take individual strike action under Rule 43.
Furthermore to recommend to this conference that there will be no work in the South Wales Coalfield from Monday 12th March 1984. There was to be no ballot, the men were not even going to be asked to vote in general meetings, and there was to be no unified national strike; each area of the NUM was at liberty to decide whether to take industrial action or not.
After a hesitant start, the debate started with lodges such as Penallta, Bedwas, Blaenserchan, Garw and Celynen South expressing concern about the lack of consultation with their members, then George Rees, the area general secretary and executive council members rallied support and most lodges who then spoke, such as Celynen North, Tower, St. John’s, Lady Windsor. Mardy, Blaenserchan, Taff Merthyr, Cwm, Oakdale, Betws, Nantgarw, Merthyr Vale, Markham, Bargoed, Penrhiwceiber and Treforgan supported the call for strike action. The recommendation was overwhelmingly carried with only five lodges voting against it. The South Wales Area of the National Union of Mineworkers was out on strike action without consulting its members.
Despite the president’s ruling against the lodges voting on this issue, many did at general meetings held throughout the Coalfield during that week-end with thirty-five of them deciding to work as normal on Monday, many men were angry over there being no ballot, and others were angry that the national president, Arthur Scargill had not supported the south Wales miners when they took action over the closure of Lewis Merthyr Colliery. There is no doubt in my mind that if a ballot of the South Wales miners had been taken over that week-end the majority would have voted against strike action. On the Monday and Tuesday, the lodges that turned up for work were picketed out by those that had taken strike action.
Most of the Gwent and Rhymney Valley lodges were now of the opinion that a recall conference should take place, and in that conference and a call for a ballot should be made in that conference, but they hadn’t reckoned on the oratorical powers of George Rees, the area general secretary. On that Thursday evening a meeting of all the lodges in the Gwent and Rhymney Valley Districts was called and George Rees made a rallying call, to what was viewed as the weak link in the solidarity of the strike. The muted pleas for a ballot were drowned by the sheer personality of George Rees, and that alone kept the miners of Gwent from returning to work.
The strike was now solid in South Wales and the men with their stubbornness against adversity, which had been passed on through the generations, and engendered by the nature of their work, settled down for a long hard slog. Many knew that they could not win but pride would not let them surrender without one hell of a fight. At the national level, the NUM was fragmented, major areas in the midlands of England notably Nottingham and Leicestershire had decided to continue working, and no amount of picketing by the areas that had taken strike action was to bring them out. The national executive committee of the NUM appeared bereft of ideas on how to conduct the strike and produced no cohesive strategy. The national president of the NUM, Arthur Scargill, with his belligerent rhetoric and uncompromising stance, alienated potential allies amongst the broader trade union movement. Also the Labour Party and the public at large whose only formula for victory, was the bully-boy tactic of mass picketing which was a consummate failure, not only tactically, but also in the battle for ‘hearts and minds’ which is so essential in a democratic society. On the other side, the Government had prepared the ground well, had chosen the time for the confrontation, and appeared determined to destroy the NUM forever, as part of their wider strategy to emasculate the whole trades union movement. They had a leader in Margaret Thatcher, who was as uncompromising as Scargill in her determination to promote her dogma. She presided over rising unemployment and the creation of an underclass, with a contemptuous disregard for all who were not of her ilk. She chose a ruthless Canadian millionaire, Ian Macgregor, as chairman of the National Coal Board, brought in the most stringent anti-trades union legislation in Western Europe, gave the police forces pay rises way above pay rises given to other public sector workers and underwrote all police overtime due to the dispute. She was prepared to meet any financial cost to destroy the miners (some say the total cost came to over £4 billion), which was many times over more than the cost of any subsidy to keep loss-making pits open. She decisively won the propaganda war with most of the press supporting her and had a glut of coal and other power sources available for distribution.
Throughout the Spring and Summer of 1984 the strike remained solid in South Wales, mass picketing was carried out at Port Talbot and Llanwern Steelworks in an attempt to stop the importing of coal, other industrial sites, power stations and wharves were picketed as well as the working pits in the English midlands, all with little success. The men and their families began to encounter financial hardships, there was no strike pay, and no DHSS payments for the men, if families were lucky they would perhaps receive £15 per week, for those men who went picketing, the expenses paid amounted to £4 per day for out of the area, and £2 per day for local picketing. This paltry sum was further reduced as the NUM funds were sequestrated. Food became short, children relied on hand-me-down clothes, mortgages and rents fell into arrears, food collections began throughout the country and generally met with a sympathetic response from the public. The Gwent Food Fund alone collected £750,000 during the period of the strike. In the Autumn of 1984, a change came over the coalfields. The bloody-mindedness of the Government, and the inept leadership of the NUM, had created an air of despondency and all bar the most fanatic of the strikers, could see that it was going nowhere. With all mediation and pleas for a compromise settlement by external parties have failed. In the first week of November, a few men returned to work at Cynheidre Colliery in west Wales, which in itself was insignificant, but it did start a chain reaction throughout the Coalfield. Through the coming months, men returned to work in dribs and drabs, and then in larger amounts at collieries such as Six Bells and Marine. The onus of picketing now changed to the defensive from the offensive, and mass picketing was carried out at the pits where a return to work occurred; the most violent of these confrontations happened at the Celynen South Colliery in Abercarn. When nineteen men returned to work in the second week of November, about five hundred pickets faced around two hundred police armed with riot shields, batons and dogs. The pit top was occupied by the strikers and fighting erupted until the police managed to clear the pit around four hours later – It was the first time in history that police in Gwent had used full riot gear.
Hopes of a settlement to the strike were raised around Christmas time when the official’s union, NACODS, threatened to go on strike however the NCB were quick to resolve that dispute, and the fractured NUM continued alone. January turned to February and the strike dragged on, now without purpose and hope of victory. Throughout the coalfields, men started to return to work in droves until over half of the UK’s miners were back in work, yet in south Wales over 95% of the men remained loyal to their union, an astonishing figure considering the controversial start to the strike, and that there was absolutely no hope of a victory, and that in the rest of the country the strike was virtually over. Finally, on the Third of March 1985, a delegate conference of the South Wales Miners decided on a return to work with no settlement in an attempt to save their union from extinction. The South Wales miners returned to work with their heads held high and conscious that no other group in the world, past or present could have exhibited the character that they had shown.
Sadly for all intents and purposes, the South Wales Coalfield died that day, only the postscript remained.
Information supplied by Ray Lawrence and used here with his permission.
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