Catalogue Number
NMLH.2025.5.9
Object Name
letter
Place
Wigan, Lancashire, England, UK
People
National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), National Coal Board, Kirkless Workshops
Events
1984-85 Miners' Strike
Description
This is a typed letter from the Kirkless Workshops Manager J.A. Stacey on behalf of the National Coal Board (NCB) to striker Lenny Jones, dated 27 November 1984. The letter encourages Mr Jones to return to work and strikebreak, claiming that 2100 workers in the region ad 14,500 men nationally had done so and that all 16 regional pits were operating.
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. In this case, the main tactic is an offer of a "substantial package of holiday pay arrears and service bonus" to tempt strikers who are struggling financially as the government had seized the strike funds unions would usually give strikers to sustain themselves - this may have been particularly targeted at strikers with children, as many miners oral histories discuss stress and shame about their inability to afford a normal Christmas for their children during the strike. The letter also focuses on the number of workers crossing picket lines or 'scabbing', trying to normalise the behaviour. 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 NUM's 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.
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