Catalogue Number
NMLH.2024.69.2
Object Name
badge
Title
'Support the Miners Oct '92'
People
National Union of Mineworkers (NUM)
Events
Miners' Strike, 1992 Miners' Strike
Description
A white, round badge with a picture of a coal miner wearing a pit lamp helmet. Black text says 'Support the Miners Oct '92'.
The October 1992 Miners' Strike protested the announcement of a second round of closures of 31 coal mines in the UK by the Conservative government, following the closures that came about after the more widely known 1984-1985 Miners' Strike. Arthur Scargill, who was president of the National Union of Mineworkers, called the thirty one thousand redundancies a "savage, brutal act of vandalism". Two mass protests were held in London within 2 weeks, with organisers estimating that the larger, TUC organised march attracted a quarter of a million people. Women Against Pit Closures also set up protest camps occupying space outside some of the pits marked for closure - many of the women participating had become activists during the 1984-85 strike.
The closure of British coal mines included pits which were still producing viable amounts of coal, and was part of an extensive phase of deindustrialisation across the UK enacted by the Conservative government during the 1980s and early 1990s. This led to mass unemployment of skilled workers who had previously had what they considered jobs for life in the affected industries. As villages and towns often grew around coal mines as a central industry for the area, these closures sometimes led to whole communities facing redundancy.
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