Catalogue Number
NMLH.2025.5.5
Object Name
newsletter
Title
Kirkless Reporter
Place
Lancashire, England, UK
People
National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), Lancashire Working Miners' Committee, Kirkless Reporter
Events
1984-85 Miners' Strike
Description
This is a typed newsletter produced by the management of the Kirkless Workshops, part of the coal industry, dated 19 October 1984. The newsletter acted as a way for the employers to urge those on strike to return to work. They praise those who are not on strike an promise to find alternative employment for pitmen who lose their jobs to pit closures, but also make clear that they are withholding owed pay from strikers unless they return to work for at least a month, which is a clear pressure tactic.
While the public's main view of a strike is that of picket lines and news reporting, internal organisation letters like this give important insight into the ways mines and unions worked behind the scenes to strengthen strikers resolve, or in the case of the employers and strikebreakers, attempt to undermine it entirely. Crossing picket lines or 'scabbing' on a strike is viewed as a serious betrayal by striking workers, with serious social consequences - oral histories from the Strike discuss mining families where people who crossed picket lines were shunned for life.
The 1984-85 Miners' Strike was called after the government announced plans to close 20 pits, at a cost of twenty thousand miners jobs, which the miners accurately saw as the beginning of the closure of all the pits in the UK. The strike lasted for over a year before ending unsuccessfully in March 1985. The miners' speculation was correct, and a second round of closures in 1992 was announced, closing almost all the mines in the UK, leaving former pit towns with extremely high rates of unemployment and deprivation that last to this day. It is interesting to note that this newsletter accurately predicts that the strike 'would not be resolved in a matter of weeks' due to coal stockpiling. The success of strikes often relies on creating scarcity, something which the Thatcher government pre-empted by stockpiling coal before announcing the planned closures, taking away some of the miners' leverage and bargaining power.
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