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The secret life of us: 1984, the miners'strike and the place of biography inwriting history from belowDaryl Leeworthy aa Department of History & Classics , Swansea University , UKPublished online: 16 Oct 2012.

To cite this article: Daryl Leeworthy (2012) The secret life of us: 1984, the miners' strike and theplace of biography in writing history from below, European Review of History: Revue europenned'histoire, 19:5, 825-846, DOI: 10.1080/13507486.2012.719009

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The secret life of us: 1984, the miners strike and the place of biographyin writing history from below

Daryl Leeworthy*

Department of History & Classics, Swansea University, UK

(Received 5 November 2011; final version received 23 May 2012)

This article adds to the growing literature on 1980s Britain and the 19845 minersstrike. Its purpose is to demonstrate the role of oral history and biography in the writingof more personalised narratives about national events. Throughout the oral testimonythat underpins the article, speakers made conscious connections with the past whetherthrough folk memories of earlier industrial action or by building links between theirown lives and those of their parents and grandparents during the 1926 miners lockout.Respondents saw themselves as part of the collective story of both their own family andthe community in which they lived. Their sense of biography provided a means ofunderstanding and relating the events that had engulfed their lives for over a year andwhich, for that generation of people, still defines their life story today.

Keywords: miners strike; biography; oral history; Wales; community

Introduction

By 1984, wrote the historian Gwyn Alf Williams, the South Wales miners were fighting a

struggle as hard and dedicated as any in their history.1 Over the course of a year, between

4 March 1984 and 5 March 1985, thousands of miners and their families endured bitter

hardship and all-too-real poverty in an effort to keep their jobs and an industry that for

many families had been the principal employer for generations. The strike and its effects

thus appear as a crisis moment in the collective biographies of entire communities and

the individual biographies of the men, women and children involved: for them all it was a

turning point.

The place of biography in the writing of history has never been so popular: compared

to other forms of historical writing, it fills more shelves in bookshops than almost any

other category save the ubiquitous military history. Accessible and commercially

successful, the biography provides an entry point into the many worlds of the past with a

ready guide along for the journey. At the same time, however, academic historians have

shied away from the form to the extent that, as David Nasaw has observed: Biography

remains the professions unloved stepchild.2

For labour historians (in Britain and elsewhere) this form of writing has been

central.3 Series such as Lives of the Left published by Manchester University Press in

the late-1980s and early 1990s highlighted the benefits of understanding key individuals

including Ramsay MacDonald, James Maxton and A.J. Cook in the context of their own

upbringing, working lives and subsequent political lives. Biography provided the best

ISSN 1350-7486 print/ISSN 1469-8293 online

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*Email: daryl.leeworthy@oriel.oxon.org

European Review of HistoryRevue europeenne dhistoire

Vol. 19, No. 5, October 2012, 825846

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means of interpreting the leadership qualities of these individuals and their impact on the

wider movement. Writing of Cook, the Communist journalist and historian Robin Page

Arnot concluded: Today his faults are forgotten or forgiven amongst the older miners who

tell the younger men their recollection of the old days; and still, in every colliery village,

there abides the memory of a great name.4

In the late-1950s and early 1960s, when the essence of labour history in Britain was

being formed, questions of methodology, style and technique were perhaps of greater

significance than they are two or three generations on. Writing in 1960, E.P. Thompson

questioned whether the techniques of the political or constitutional [historian are]

adequate to deal with the tensions and lines of growth in movements. His Homage to

Tom Maguire would form the basis of much subsequent labour-history writing in Britain

and still provides a perfect example of biography used to explain much more besides the

life story of one subject. The importance of local activists and local circumstances,

Thompson argued, was necessary to counteract the curiously distorted views of the

national historian.5 At a time when history remained largely a medium that transmitted

the actions and views of great men, the significance of grassroots biographies could not

be underestimated.

The flowering of social history and labour history in the wake of Thompsons The

Making of the English Working Class, which was first published in 1963, saw much new

work being undertaken on those whose lives and actions had traditionally been neglected

by posterity. The following year, Eric Hobsbawms Labouring Men emerged and by 1966

so too had the first flowerings of an independently minded Welsh labour historiography

with the publication of Merthyr Politics: The Making of a Working-Class Tradition.6 The

book and the four essays included in it are now recognised as being the basis upon which

the subsequent generation of social, cultural and labour historians in Wales built their

school of thought/interpretation. A number of us who were interested in the application

of those new techniques of social history to Wales, writes Dai Smith, responded as a

generation to that book.7 What followed was the foundation of Llafur: the Society for the

Study of Welsh Labour History in 1970; a major conference held at Swansea University

in April 1971 (papers were published in the pages of the Welsh History Review in 1973);

and a rescue project designed to salvage the fast disappearing contents of miners

institutes and their libraries.8 By 1972, the government-funded research project into the

history of the coal-mining industry in South Wales, which launched in August 1971, had

expanded to include oral history and the taped autobiographies, memoirs and

reminiscences of those activists, miners leaders, politicians and wives who had

grown up and come to prominence in the first half of the twentieth century were recorded

for posterity. Biography would, as a consequence, lie at the heart of the new Welsh

history.9

Since the 1970s, oral history has remained a vital source for the writing of labour

history in and about Wales even as the field has moved towards more traditional

empiricism elsewhere in Britain.10 Key published texts on Welsh International Brigaders

and on the role of women in the 1926 Strike, as well as several significant doctoral theses

have been written with oral history as their foundation rather than written primary-source

material.11 For topics extending before the Second World War, would-be oral historians

are working at the limits: knowledge and memory being that of children rather than, for

example, politically active adults.12 Nevertheless, such oral sources provide insights that

would otherwise be hidden from history. Their narrative quality linked, as Alessandro

Portelli wrote a generation ago, to the tradition of folk narrative lends itself to an

understanding of how particular events fit into an individuals own life-story.13 Historians

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may record the negotiations between trades-union leaders and employers or the places of

picket lines; the oral testimony of a young child may record the absent father and being

given a special hot meal in school. Both are necessary to fully understand the impact of

events and institutions on communities.

Amongst the clearest benefits of integrating oral history into studies of twentieth-

century working-class experiences is the imparting of personal meaning. When the

interviewee tells a story of a particular event, the oral nature of the interview enables the

historian to engage with emotion and vocal rhythm as well as insight into historical

happenings. Personality and sense-of-self is, therefore, a vital factor in oral-history sources

and biography an essential foundation of any writing that makes use of them. We know

now that when a respondent tells us a story about an event or an experience, writes Lynn

Abrams, they are likely telling us something about themselves and about how they

position themselves in the social world. It is for us to work out how that story fits into the

larger schema.14 Biography (through the medium of oral testimony) can therefore inform

the work of historians working from all perspectives but it is perhaps most valuable in

circumstances where written testimony is scant: working-class experience generally, and

that of women, children and groups in society who are otherwise hidden from those

histories which privilege written source material. In the words of Paul Thompson: History

becomes, to put it simply, more democratic.15

Despite the fruitfulness of oral testimony, historians have tended to be far more

reflexive in making use of it than they are with other forms of source material: searching

for balance which is much less forthcoming than when relying on, for example,

newspapers. Drawing generality out from the individual experiences of the interviewee is

indeed fraught with difficulty and methodological questions, but these make oral history

controversial, exciting, and endlessly promising.16 It is not the intention of this article to

reflect meaningfully on the theoretical implications and problems of oral history; instead,

it suffices to say that by integrating oral history into the writing of history, particularly

history from below, historians are actively merging personal biography (as relayed

through reminiscence) with the aims and purposes of more general social history. As such,

whilst not entirely in keeping with prosopographical methods (that is, collective

biography), the place and role of biography in the writing of history from below is

significant without it, labour history in particular would not exist in the form it does

today.

This article draws primarily on part of an archive of oral history held at the South

Wales Miners Library in Swansea as well as discussions conducted by the author either

deliberately arranged or held in passing at conferences and later documented. The

background of the collections at the Miners Library is worth relaying since this provides

insight into the nature of the evidence which will be relied upon in the second half of the

essay that follows. The first interview conducted as part of the South Wales Coalfield

History Project took place on 6 September 1972. The interviewee was Max Goldberg,

who spoke of, amongst other things, his experiences as a Communist during the 1920s

and 1930s and the 1926 Strike. Following from Goldberg were interviews with founder

members of the South Wales Miners Federation such as Abel Morgan and William

Morgan Davies. In this first wave of interviews, the researchers concentrated on the

period before 1945, on active members of the Union, and several community-based

studies including Maerdy and Abercrave. Little attention was given to women until,

towards the end of the project, the intervention of one miners wife during an interview

prompted reconsideration and subsequently the recording of memoirs from women

as well.17

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The first wave of oral-history interviews came to an end in 1974. From that date until

the establishment of the second coalfield-history project in 1979, the burden of oral-history

recording fell on the South Wales Miners Library, which was itself established in 1974.

Only a small number of interviews were conducted in this period but these ensured that the

momentum created between 1972 and 1974 was not extinguished by the end of the original

project. The aims of the second project were somewhat different from that of the first: its

chronology was focused on the post-1945 period and its scope had widened to include

nationally significant figures and more of the decision makers than had been the case in

the more localised 19724 project. The second coalfield-history programme ended in

1982, but as events unfolded in the following years, it was decided to record as many

voices as possible, particularly during the strike and its aftermath. The result is a collection

of nearly 100 interviews encompassing individual accounts, video recordings taken in pit

villages, and discussion groups.18

These later programmes of recording provide a wide range of experiences and have

allowed subsequent historians to draw upon the opinions of ordinary men and women. By

ensuring that the interviews were recorded in the heat of the moment it is possible for

generations who did not live through the strike to hear (and to understand) the emotions of

those whose lives were turned upside down by what was going on. Significantly, this also

means that those perspectives had not been tempered by the calming waves of distance and

time. Contemporary history has, as one of its benefits as well as drawbacks, a wealth of

material upon which to draw: in this case from the edited newspaper articles and television

news bulletin to the raw quality of a tape recorder left on record during an organic

discussion. By understanding the context in which this audio-visual material was created,

it is possible to draw out of it the different biographical narratives and memories

(individual and collective) that are present.

What follows draws explicitly on questions of memory a particularly important

aspect of biographical and autobiographical writing and how contemporary events

shape (and can be shaped by) popular dissemination of the past in its managed, written

form: history. Biographies, of course, come in many different forms and serve many

different purposes: at one level, biography presents a narrative of an individuals life

their childhood, their coming of age, and the rise to the height of their powers; at another

level, however, it stands as an interpretative form. The many different indicative prefixes

such as political biography or literary biography point very clearly to the potential of

biography as a form of writing which enables understanding not just of the individual

concerned but also of their society, circumstance and cultural surroundings. What follows

is conceived in two parts: the first explores the contemporary context and lays out the

turbulent history of the South Wales miners in the 1970s and 1980s. The second part,

which occupies the bulk of the article, examines the role of history and memory in the

construction of meaning and understanding of the 1984 miners strike.

This article adds to the growing literature on 1980s Britain and the 19845 miners

strike.19 Its purpose is to demonstrate the role of oral history (and thereby biography) in the

writing of more personalised narratives about national events. Throughout the oral

testimony that underpins what follows, speakers made conscious connections with the past

whether through folk memories of earlier industrial action or by building links between

their own lives during the 19845 strike and those of their parents and grandparents during

the 1926 strike. Respondents saw themselves as part of the collective story of both their

own family and the community in which they lived. Their sense of biography provided a

means of understanding and relating the events that had engulfed their lives for over a year

and which, for that generation of people, still defines their life story today.

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The turning point

It has become almost a cliche of British history in the last quarter of the twentieth century

that The Miners Strike understood as the 19845 clash between the National Union of

Mineworkers (NUM) led by Arthur Scargill and the National Coal Board (NCB) and its

allies in the Thatcher government marked the major turning point in the history of the

labour movement in Britain. As the largest and most significant of the trades unions in

Britain, the NUM stood at the apex of the British trades-union movement and was widely

held responsible (in both Labour and Conservative circles) for the fall of the Conservative

government of Ted Heath in 1974. Miners leaders, and particularly Scargill himself,

were branded by Margaret Thatcher as the enemy within in a speech to the influential

backbench 1922 committee in July 1984 (some four months into the strike). Linked

consciously to external threats such as the Soviet Union and, just two years after the

Falklands War, to Argentina, the striking miners were conceptualised by Thatcher as a

direct antagonism to British democracy and to the British way of life.20

The strike began in Yorkshire with a walkout in protest at the planned closure of the

Cortonwood colliery near Barnsley. Between the evening of 5 March and 10 March 1984,

miners from across coalfields in Yorkshire, Kent and central Scotland had gone out on

strike in solidarity with workers at Cortonwood.21 In the traditionally militant SouthWales

Coalfield, support for the all-out strike was mixed and in the ballot taken on 11 March, 18

of the 28 collieries voted against joining in the action. Pro-government newspapers such as

the Times splashed the news across their front pages the following morning. Describing the

vote as a Welsh Revolt, the ballot astonished miners leaders and commentators across

Britain who widely expected South Wales to participate. The area president, Emlyn

Williams, observed: [I have] never before encountered a rejection like this.22 The

rejection of solidarity by the rank-and-file reflected the failure of other coalfields to

support action by the South Wales miners to save the Lewis Merthyr Colliery in the

Rhondda the previous year. The bitter hangover from 1983 came through in the union

meetings held on 910 March when sentiments such as Yorkshire owes us a fortnight,

make them sweat earned much initial applause.23

Reputation and folk memory, however, soon provided an antidote of reality to the

previously prevailing sense of betrayal: South Wales miners had a duty to uphold the

legacy of solidarity inherited from previous generations. Call it what you like, recalled

Des Dutfield (the South Wales Area president from 1986), its always been a fact of life as

far as Ive known the industry: fathers, grandfathers before me and now my son.24

His predecessor, Emlyn Williams, had expressed much the same sentiment in 1983:

Our reputation as political leaders in the British coalfields [ . . . ] is at stake.25 The strength

of this tradition and the folk memory of it, as much as anything else, ensured the

transformation in attitudes in the South Wales Coalfield within the space of a week. By 14

March, every miner in the coalfield had struck.

The oft-neglected North Wales Coalfield provides an entirely different story.26 Here,

folk narratives emphasised pragmatism and a more cautious approach to industrial

relations in part reflective of the more scattered settlement patterns in the region; in

contrast to the pit villages of coalfields such as Durham and South Wales, the North Wales

collieries drew workers from towns and villages throughout Deeside. The ballot of the two

collieries in North Wales provided confirmation of the regions historical reputation with

barely a third of miners voting in favour of solidarity with the miners in Yorkshire and

elsewhere. North Wales joined with similar smaller coalfields such as neighbouring

Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and in Derbyshire in staying in work. The fragile unity of the

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NUM maintained after the successes of the 1970s had been shattered and would never be

restored.

Pickets from South Wales arrived at the two collieries in North Wales Bersham and

Point of Ayr soon after the strike began. This split local miners with some respecting the

pickets and others ignoring them. Those who respected the pickets criticised their

colleagues for being unable to see the bigger picture: They wouldnt look far outside their

own pit and in north Wales there was always a reluctance to look outside their own area.27

By 20 March, however, a good part of the North Wales coalfield had been picketed out

despite the disunity amongst local miners. The disunity was made clear a few days later

when the miners lodge at Bersham Colliery decided to honour the strike after all.28 Point

of Ayr lodge, by contrast, refused to join in and its members were encouraged to break the

picket line. As a result, even at its height, only around 35% of the 1000 miners in North

Wales had struck; by March 1985 this had collapsed to just 10%.29

By the summer of 1984, the strike had settled into yet another hot, angry season akin

to the unrealities of jazz bands and carnivals that took place during the 1926 lockout:

miners from South Wales picketing power stations in North Wales could be found,

stripped to the waist because of the beaming sunshine, playing cricket outside the gates.30

A significant feature in this unreality was the sharing of platforms by the entire spectrum

of the political Left in Wales: Labour, Plaid Cymru, the Community Party, and small left-

wing groups which had been attacking each other throughout the 1970s came together to

promote a united front with the miners. As Charlie Swain, the secretary of the Cardiff

Miners Support Co-ordination Committee, put it in April 1985: Peoples of goodwill

from many backgrounds came together and worked, without bitterness or rancour, for

our common cause.31 However much it plastered over the all-too-real cracks, one of the

leading narratives of much strike literature was that of a united Wales standing against an

external foe.

In the autumn and particularly in the winter of 1984, this unity was crucial to the

survival of the strike in what remained the most solid coalfield in the country. Despite

letters from church leaders urging reconciliation between the miners and the government,

the resolution of both sides remained strong. The death of taxi driver David Wilkie, killed

by a concrete block dropped from a bridge over the A470 as he was transporting a strike-

breaker to work at Merthyr Vale, on the morning of 30 November 1984 could have

unravelled the strike there and then. It did not, however, because it was such an

aberration.32 With Christmas just a few weeks away and little sign of a resolution,

attention of the miners turned with respectful calm to surviving the holiday period and

providing a little normality for their children. Its not the kids strike, its our fight,

observed one miners wife from Beddau, the kids are going to have the world when they

go back to work.33 By this point, the resolve of the miners had begun to break, scabs had

returned to their jobs because they were desperate.34 The daughter was sitting there,

discovered one union official, her friend was having a birthday party and she had no

clothes to go [ . . . ] there was hardly any food in the house at all.35

When the strike finally broke in March 1985, nearly 95% of the miners in South

Wales had remained out. Returning to work marching behind the brightly coloured lodge

banners that proclaimed such ideals as workers of the world, unite, they knew that

they had been defeated and that, perhaps even before the decade was out, the world of

coal mining would be extinct and the industrial way of life that had existed in the South

Wales Valleys for nearly 200 years gone as well. Seeking to lift the mood, lodge

chairmen such as Tony Ciano of Cynheidre Colliery, spoke out into the darkness on the

first morning back:

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I am delighted that over 800 of you marched in united behind the lodge banner thismorning. I am proud that you did this because although many of you went back to work in thelast few weeks you were driven back through despair and suffering and not through any lackof loyalty to the union or its struggles. Youre not scabs. The only scabs in this colliery arethose who broke the strike early on and it is their treachery which led to the prolonging of oursuffering and that of our families.36

Cynheidre closed in 1989 with the loss of over 1000 jobs. The very last pit in South Wales

to be closed by British Coal was Tower Colliery in April 1994. Convinced that it was not

yet exhausted and entirely profitable as a business, the workers of Tower bought it using

loans and their collected redundancy money. Reopening in January 1995, it was mined

until 2008 when the final seams were exhausted. In retrospect, Tower proved the viability

of the coalfield and its remaining collieries but by then it was too late and the deep mining

of coal had ceased.37 Only history ensured that deep mining of coal continued to have a

presence in South Wales (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Marking the end of mining in the Rhondda. Crown Copyright: Royal Commission on theAncient & Historical Monuments of Wales, John Cornwell Collection, NA/GEN/90/047e.

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In historys mind

The modern Welsh miner will better assess the value of his trade union by knowing what

tremendous tasks it has performed in the past.38 These words, written by the journalist

(and later MP for Caerphilly) Ness Edwards in 1938, serve to encapsulate the role of

history in the events of 19845. From the role of the union in its society to the continued

taint of certain families as scabs because of the actions of earlier generations, the past

played a significant role not only in convincing miners to go out on strike in March 1984 or

sustaining the pit villages through the harsh realities of economic deprivation, but also

providing the foundations for individual understanding of what had happened over the

course of the year. Furthermore, the longevity of the strike the longest in British history

and the return of food parcels to mining villages (something not seen since the 1930s)

encouraged a juxtaposition of the present and events in the past such as the Great

Depression and the 1926 General Strike and Miners Lockout. In a letter sent to families

across Wales in January 1985, the Welsh Council for Civil and Politic Liberties observed

in this vein that the struggles of the Welsh mining communities today can only be

compared with the desperate days of 1926.39

The juxtaposition of experiences during the 1926 Miners Lockout and the 19845

miners strike emerged during the latter event and has continued to shape an understanding

of both actions. Explicitly comparative work such as the introduction to David Gilberts

Class, Community, and Collective Action (1992) or Jaclyn Gier-Viskovatoff and Abigail

Porters 1998 article Women of the British Coalfields on Strike in 1926 and 1984, make

clear connections between the two events.40 During the 19845 miners strike, writes

Gilbert, there were many times when history seemed to be repeating itself; not first as

tragedy, then again as farce, but as tragedy twice over.41 Equally, the publication of history

books focused on the labour history of SouthWales, the republication of classic proletarian

literature and poetry from the 1930s, and television documentaries which brought to life the

miners lockout of 1926 and the stay-down strikes of the 1930s, ensured that public

consumption and knowledge of the industrial battles of the past was fresh and strong. Even

if, as Gier-Viskovatoff and Porter point out, the miners wives and girlfriends who formed

the womens support groups in 1984 had no knowledge of the long tradition of mining

womens activism, the presence of the past was still tangible. Indeed, as they ultimately

observe, the strike presented itself as a unique opportunity for the older generations of

women [ . . . ] to share their knowledge and experiences with the younger generation.42

Central to the list of works which emerged between 1975 and 1985 was The Fed: A

History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century published in 1980 and written

by Hywel Francis and Dai Smith. Consciously (and officially) a continuation of the earlier

histories of the union written by Robin Page Arnot in the 1960s and 1970s, which had

taken the story to the fateful year of 1926, The Fed brought together and built upon the

wealth of archival material that had been rescued to carry the history of the miners of

South Wales through from 1926 to the events of the 1970s. It also followed Arnots

approach to writing the history of the South Wales Miners Federation by closely

integrating oral testimony and, in common with Ness Edwards, the book had a clear

objective beyond simply relaying the history of miners and their union in the twentieth

century, namely to serve as a link for those younger members and their families with their

own past.43

Following the publication of The Fed were the ground-breaking television

documentaries Wales! Wales? (BBC Wales, 1984), which was written and presented by

Dai Smith, and The Dragon Has Two Tongues: A History of the Welsh (HTV, 1985), which

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was presented as a dialectical battle between Professor Gwyn Alf Williams and the

wartime radio broadcaster Wynford Vaughan-Thomas and remains something of a

benchmark in Welsh historical documentary.44 Broadcast amidst the industrial strife and

the immediate aftermath of the miners strike, these documentaries provided further

insight into the turbulent past of the Welsh nation. In the opening foray of The Dragon Has

Two Tongues, the life-long Marxist and Cardiff history professor, Gwyn Alf Williams, can

be seen hurtling down to the pit bottom at the Big Pit mining museum in Blaenavon. He

states his case baldly:

I want to begin this history of Wales with this particular journey into a Welsh past atBlaenavon Big Pit in Gwent. For years, one Welshman in every four made this journey everyday of his working life and thousands of Welsh women worked alongside them. Sixty yearsago, nearly half the population of Wales lived from this hard and dangerous workunderground. [ . . . ] Today it looks to me as if the Welsh people have been declared redundant,as redundant as this pit which after two hundred years is now a museum. This is a museum.Wales is being turned into a land of museums! Now what is shovelling us into these folkmuseums? History they say. History! Whats this History?45

This episode was first broadcast on 9 January 1985 in the depths of the winter, which had

seen increasing numbers of men return to work. The very last episode, entitled The Death

of Wales?, was broadcast on 4 April 1985 and as an epilogue featured the march back to

work by the miners of Mardy Colliery in the Rhondda. The strained voices of the gathered

wives and children can be heard singing a varied verse of the hymn Cwm Rhondda. The

lyrics hungry miners, hungry miners, well support you ever more reflected the very

strength of the community in the last pit village, the last Little Moscow, of what had been

the central hub of the South Wales Coalfield since the 1860s.46 Gwyns words and these

final, poignant images almost certainly resonated with viewers given events of the previous

year and the series is remembered as having captured the zeitgeist of mid-1980s Wales.

Similarly, Dai SmithsWales! Wales?, which was shown between February and March

1984 against the backdrop of the beginning of the strike, provided histories of the

Tonypandy Riots of 1910 and the effects of the Great Depression on the Welsh working

class. Smiths favourite episode, broadcast on 18 March 1984, dealt with the events of the

1926 General Strike and used readings from the miner-poet Idris Davies to provide a

contemporary voice.47 Peter Davalle, a television critic for The Times, observed that

weekend that whether in the 1920s or in the 1980s, they [the miners] have occupied

centre-stage position in our national industrial drama, so the topicality [ . . . ] needs no

underlining.48 History, that attempt to make sense of the chaos of the past, was alive and

well throughout the long months of 1984.

The significance of this, especially in the early days of the strike, cannot be

underestimated even if, as Smith observed, events overtook the television schedules.49

In March 1984, as was noted above, much was made of the historical nature of solidarity in

the mining valleys of South Wales. As such, the decline of the industry (not to mention its

potential death) was understood as a direct threat to an entire way of life. The conflict was

therefore framed by the tension of keeping the status quo of jobs in the coal-mining

industry and all the social and cultural facets that flowed from its institutions, and the death

of both. For the last forty years, explained one leaflet distributed in the Llynfi Valley,

there has been a constant and continual decline a decay of decline eating its way into

the social fabric of the valleys.50 Most obviously this was felt in the strain on community

and communalism. Hywel Francis observed, in a paper delivered at a conference in Paris

in November 1986, that miners across pit villages in South Wales felt [the] industry is no

longer our industry [ . . . ] the old personal, perhaps paternal, but certainly consultative,

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atmosphere is no more.51 If the strike began out of a sense of solidarity and duty to stand

shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow workers, it ended with families over-burdened with large

debts and thus seeking individualistic solutions to problems considered entirely personal.

Taking redundancy payments, an anathema at the height of the strike, eventually became

commonplace in the years that followed.52

Fighting for the future

The most emotionally powerful of the narrative threads that emerge throughout the oral

testimony both from men and women is the focus on the future prospects of their children

and young people generally. When asked by an BBC journalist how many of his friends

were out of work, one striking miner, then aged just 26, explained: Eighty percent of them

are unemployed, theyve worked, then get laid off, get a job and work a month, then get

laid off [ . . . ] its ridiculous [ . . . ] Im twenty-six years old and this is my third pit Ive

worked.53 The desire for a job amongst young people in the South Wales Valleys in the

early 1980s was extremely high, but with nearly 3.5 million people drawing the dole, few

opportunities existed in the peripheries of Britain. In an interview with a journalist for ITN

in November 1984, Barbara Williams, a miners wife in Maerdy, was blunt:

If you were to go along the road and say to those young boys, what would you rather do, wouldyou rather go and sign the dole or would you rather go to work at the colliery? Theyll answeryou: Id rather go to work at the colliery. I know of boys that have walked up to that colliery toput their names down, begging to be taken on.54

The plea from miners wives and mothers was simple: Give us employment for our

youngsters to have a life.55 This voice is echoed in many of the oral testimonies and

speeches given by women throughout 1984 and 1985. Kath Evans, who was Secretary of

the South Wales Womens Support Group during the strike, explained in a speech to the

London-Wales Congress in Support of Mining Communities in March 1985 that the

women knew that if the pits closed their children would either have to leave the valleys or

be condemned to the dole queues.56 Attitudes such as these were clearly motivated by an

entire generation of parents looking towards to a time when coal mining and the stable

income that it had provided for generations would be gone in its entirety.

Despite remaining a working coalfield, Nottinghamshire was not immune from these

fears either. Ive got a lad of 19 and another of 16, explained one miners wife from the

area. Its no good getting some flaming job at the pit when in five years time theyre

going to be made redundant, is there? It alters lives and you just cant sit back and let

that happen.57 Her reflections, which merit quoting in full, continue with a focus on the

reasons why younger men might feel isolated from and yet tied to both the communalism

of pit culture and pit village society and their own family history:

My sons name is Billy Graham. His dads name is Billy Graham and his Grandfathers nameis Billy Graham. And there they were before that, Billy Graham. I bet nobody can go back fouror five generations with the same name and all working in the same job! Its like fishermen, Ithink, miners. Youre in the pits therefore your son goes in the pits therefore his son goes in thepits. Its families, families following on, one after the other. Now if they keep closing the pitsdown then how are the kids to follow on, one after the other?

Worse, from the point of view of mothers, was the growing apathy amongst young people

and even children. A group of women in Mardy Strike Centre, which was housed at

Maerdy Workmens Hall, reflected that children as young as 12 refused to study for exams

in school because they saw no purpose to and few opportunities arising from education.

To pick up from an interview with Barbara Williams for the BBC:

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If youve got children and theyre willing to stay in school, get an education, you keep them inschool and you know damn well at the end theres nothing for them. Thats hellish hard totake.58

In the succeeding generation, apathy has resolved itself into far greater social disintegration:

amidst the decaying houses and derelict chapels are issues including soaring teenage

pregnancy rates and extremes of poverty. Today, as Peter Stead observed during events to

mark the twentieth anniversary of the strike, the SouthWales Valleys are the poorest part of

Western Europe with an ageing population which clings on desperately to the NHS and its

mythology and a new underclass of young people who are just drinking and taking drugs.59

The fears apparent in the oral testimony captured in 1984 have indeed been realised.60

Mams, supporters, organisers

From a biographical point of view, the miners strike and the interviews undertaken during

and after it provide a fascinating insight into changing attitudes and expectations

particularly amongst women.61 If the emphasis on the plight of children reflected what was

considered to be the traditional role of mam, that is to say, the homemaker confined to the

house and its immediate environs, then the tangible sense of liberation which followed

from heavy involvement in strike activity reveals a different character of the women of

the South Wales Valleys. Margaret Donovan, of Ynyswen in the Rhondda, reflected in

this vein that when I had the children, my life centred around [them], centred around

playgroups, school, [I] certainly didnt go out at all.62 As the strike developed and the

boundaries of what had been a predominantly masculine and paternalistic world began to

blur, this changed and one of the clearest narratives in the oral testimony is that of a sense

of liberation. I didnt really get to know anybody, Margaret Donovan explains of her life

before the strike, but since the strike, I know a terrific amount, and we are all good friends

now. Thats one good thing about it really: got me out of the house.63 For those who were

activated by the strike, it would prove a turning point and life would never be the same

again. Theres no way, insisted one woman from Treherbert, no way Im going to sit

down in the house after all this is over, after being so active.64 Historians of women and

the womens movement recognise the 19845 strike as a key turning point in the

development of greater recognition for the role of and equality for women in society.

Women, writes Deirdre Beddoe, organised as never before.65

Across the coalfield, women formed support groups which existed in parallel with the

trade-union branches for the men. We realised there was a fight on, recalled Barbara

Williams in 2004, we thought wed need to give out food parcels, so a couple of women

went round with trolleys, going round to shops and door-to-door [ . . . ] we were weighing

potatoes, counting tea bags sugar was like gold dust.66 In Newbridge, women organised

a soup kitchen in the miners institute. They asked us if we would make pasties for the

men that were going away picketing and it developed from there, explains Dot Phillips.

We started doing breakfast. It grew so big and so fast that we didnt realise what was

happening [ . . . ] we found that we were having tonnes and tonnes of baked beans and

corned beef. All Sunday Id be making corned beef pie which developed into making

dinners for the men.67 For Williams, it all evoked the past and particularly 1926. In 1926

those people were starved, she says, lets be quite honest about this, in 1984 we wont

starve [ . . . but] where are you going to find a job.68 For some families, the strain of

ensuring they did not starve was extremely great. Pam, a miners wife from Maerdy,

confessed to living on just 6.50 family allowance per week.69 The bitter realities of that

earlier strike were very apparent in the South Wales of the 1980s.

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The actualities of womens organisation in 1926 was relatively little known at the time

but subsequently historians have turned to the literature written by women in the aftermath

of the lockout and uncovered striking similarities. Marion Phillips, who was the chief

womens officer for the Labour Party in the 1920s and was instrumental in the

development of its womens section, wrote in 1927 that the role of women in the miners

lockout the previous year was the greatest effort ever known by the womens section of

the labour movement [ . . . ] this wonderful effort: the collection of money, clothes, boots,

and their distribution to the worst areas, the arranging of choirs, bands, concerts, sales,

meets etc., was a colossal task [ . . . ] It is the women who made the great sacrifice.70 In

Wales, a local committee for womens relief was organised and women travelled across

the country to speak in support of the miners.71 Without changing anything other than the

dates, the same passages could stand for events in 19845.

Yet, as the strike began to unravel towards the end of 1984, it was also recognised that

women could also be a weak point in the solidarity of pit villages. One miners wife

recalled, during a discussion class held in Blaengwynfi in November 1985, Christmas

dinner held the previous year in Clydach (near Swansea):

The scabs wife was the first to serve dinner. There she was in the middle of the photograph her husband was back at work at this stage no one has said anything to them. [ . . .You]couldnt help thinking there but for the grace of God go I, my husband could be next.72

Picking up on this story, another of the activists who had been present at a similar dinner

in Blaengwynfi interjected: I knew there was miners wives going out of that meeting

and asking their husbands to go back. Her comments provoke raw emotion from the first

speaker who continues her own narrative:

I knew they were [going home and asking their husbands to go back] and Ill tell you thismuch now: I felt as sad as I could be; in fact, I cried my bloody eyes out, I couldnt stopbecause I knew they were going there never mind what we done together; like collectingmoney etc., and they did go back and ask their husbands to go back. Their husbands stoppedthem: the men said no.73

That was the saddest day, she concludes, one of the saddest Ive ever experienced.

From this point, the discussion the women are having veers towards thinking about how

their role related to efforts and experiences of women during the 1926 miners lockout.

Unlike later historians who have turned to published accounts, these women had access

only to the folk memories that had been disseminated through the generations.74

Im thinking of what I was told by my parents after the 1926 strike, begins one of the

discussants:

our picture of that 1926 strike as weve been thinking about it now as if they were all togetherin it [ . . . ] Ill tell you what after 1926 right through to the 30s what, what kind of um upsurgein the Labour Party was there really in these valleys? What did it produce in people? I knowthat when I joined the Labour Party in the 50s there was no deep socialist convictions. Thesocialists were the poorest of the poor in the Labour Party, keeping together because if theydidnt they couldnt afford, the poor had to keep together in order to survive.75

Despite this uncertainty at the effects of the strike on political consciousness and the

general unity behind the scenes, the strike did give this group of women a tangible sense

that community had been restored and that they and their children had been relinked to the

aims and aspirations of their parents and grandparents. Whatever the miners strike have

done, observed one resident of Blaengwynfi, it have shown people can stay out, can stick

together, and I think it have taught these kids something. As she concluded: Theyre

not stories theyve heard when theyre looking back, theyve seen some of it.76 In other

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words, the strike would serve as a key event not just in the biography of the individuals

who went out onto picket lines or who collected money to provide food parcels for hungry

families, but also those who were children at the time.77

The awakening of political consciousness may well not have been universal and

a number of women involved in the strike may well have understood their roles in a

traditional manner that of the supporting housewife but for a number of women, the

miners strike offered a clear sense not just of community but of politics in practice. My

attitudes have changed through the strike, explained one woman from the Dulais Valley.

I thought I was a socialist before, now I know what socialism is its a whole way of life,

and were living it in our valley right now.78 The men, it seems, agreed. The women, they

were brilliant. Brilliant! exclaimed Allan Stevenson. She [his wife] kept my bloody

hopes up during the strike. She was bloody tremendous. And a lot of other people will tell

you the same thing about the women.79 I think the involvement of women in the strike

has strengthened the strike and raised peoples consciousness, explained Howard, a miner

from Newbridge. I dont think the strike would have lasted this long without the womens

support groups.80

For industry, job and union

Men interviewed reveal a different focus to that contained in the oral biographies of female

activists. For the men, it was, first and foremost and understandably an institutional

question, and oral testimony also reveals the prominence of trade-union language

compared to howwomen framed their responses.81 Miners spoke of the state and of union

rules, regulations and resolutions ahead of their concerns about the future of themselves

and their children. When asked to give a reason for the failure of the strike, one miner

explained that the state had learned from the 1974 strike [ . . . ] there was a deliberate policy

to create unemployment to weaken solidarity. The unions [are] afraid of going on the dole.

Another miner agreed whilst offering the opinion that the main difference [between 1974

and 1984 was] total use of the state against us rather than just the employer.82

The focus on the union and its fight gave the men strength, a sense of purpose, and a

sense of continuity with the battles of earlier generations. One striking miner fromMaerdy

in the Rhondda, in an interview broadcast on BBC 2 in July 1984, put it in these terms:

Well, how can I say, its strengthened me towards the strike [ . . . ] and the longer its gone on,the stronger I feel about the strike. Our fathers and grandfathers fought for a lot in this industryand were not letting it slip for nobody. Im not letting slip what my grandfathers fought for.83

The miners had a very clear sense of why they were fighting and against whom they were

fighting. Regarding the latter, as the same striking miner explains at the end of the

programme: We are just men fighting for the right to work [ . . . ] nothing else, the right

to work. As for their enemy, that was the hostile state personified in the forms of Ian

McGregor, the Scottish-born American chairman of the National Coal Board, and

Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Prime Minister. Alun Jones, who was vice-president

of Maerdy Lodge in the Rhondda, observed in 1986 that we knew that we were against

one of the hardest governments that possibly anyone has ever seen even those that lived

through the 1930s and the 1926ers, theyd not seen as much hard-line attitude towards the

working class as Thatcher.84 At the local level, anger was more readily directed towards

the police whose heavy-handed tactics caused not just friction but widespread

disenchantment as well. Its going to take them [the police] a lot of years for them to

get the respect of the local people now, observed one miner from Abertillery.85 Such

comments, along with many others hostile to the actions of the police, were readily

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repeated by miners interviewed across South Wales in 1984 and subsequently. His voice

was certainly not alone.86

The hostility of miners and their families towards the police reflected the manner in

which policing was carried out during the strike.87 The appearance of militarised tactics

and approaches at first startled strikers and later angered them. One policeman on

horseback went up the road chasing miners shouting come on you bastards, observed

one miner from the Garw Valley: He looked as if he was in a Western. For another:

I was looking for the Zulu warriors coming over the hills when they were banging their

shields.88 The images these men provide are bound up with popular culture and

representations of peoples under threat: on the one hand, there is the miner as the Indian

of a John Wayne film, and on the other, the miners as the small band of soldiers at Rorkes

Drift in South Africa.89 Given the imagery, the latter almost certainly draws upon Stanley

Bakers production Zulu, which was released in 1964 and remains an extremely popular

film, especially in Wales.90 Yet, this was hardly nostalgia and drawing on imagery from

films merely underscored the impact that the police had had.

The day-to-day experiences of men on the picket lines are captured in a remarkable

diary kept through the early months of the strike by Alun Jones. Transcribed by Paul

Mackney into a more general diary kept by the latter in Birmingham, the Maerdy entries

reveal the more intimate details of mens experiences which are rarely captured in

interviews. On 16 March 1984, the diary begins to take its form as something greater than

a chronicle of where Jones was on a given day. Weather, he writes, very cold. Sleeping

in the backs of transit vans uncomfortable, 12 men to each van; not to worry we will

overcome.91 Not unsurprisingly, striking miners regarded the twelve months as a life

experience beyond anything they had encountered before. They didnt teach things

like this in school, remarked Alan Stevenson of Maesteg in terms echoed by Alun Jones.

The twelve month strike educated not only me but a damn sight more people.92

One aspect of this education was the encounter with black communities. For the most

part, race relations in the peripheral regions of Britain were framed not by experience but

by ingrained cultural prejudice.93 Aside from the docklands areas of Cardiff, Barry and

Newport, the numbers of black men, women and children were extremely small, and,

for most people living and working in the South Wales Valleys, the influx of migrants

from the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s had passed them by (at least in terms of direct

contact). Some of the boys had not been in contact with coloured people, observed one

striking miner from Maesteg. They knew they were going to a coloured community and

they were making racist remarks.94 This echoes the perceptions made by Kenneth Little

in the 1940s. It is important to realise that so far as something like 95 percent of English

people are concerned, he writes, they [racial attitudes] are based entirely on some

stereotyped idea rather than on first-hand personal knowledge of coloured people.95

Arriving in Birmingham in the summer of 1984, miners made direct contact with racial

and ethnic minorities and attitudes soon began to change. Realising that attacks made by

the media and the police had a similar basis to attacks on black and Asian communities, the

miners became fervent anti-racists. To this day, concludes Potts, those boys they never

make any racist remarks [ . . . ] it seemed as if the two different causes the two colours

had joined together.96 Just as working-class male attitudes to women lost the more casual,

stereotyped features of its paternalism, so too did it lose its racism.

Back on the picket lines, the resolve and decorum of the striking miners was tested

very nearly to its limits. The combination of the cold weather, the pressures of being away

from home for long periods, and jostling from scabbing workers placed significant strain.

Nevertheless, as Alun Jones recorded in his diary, all the pickets are in good spirit with all

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the hardships that have to endure. To keep up their spirits, Welsh miners leant on and

borrowed from aspects of their own popular culture such as the singing of rugby songs and

hymns and the use of the Welsh language irrespective of the hostility from antagonists on

the streets or their own fluency. Outside Sainsburys, recalled one miner, if they gave us

a bit of jip wed start battering on in Welsh. We didnt understand a word of Welsh really

but we were just singing words of songs that wed heard.97

A few days later Jones attention turns towards his family and home. We are still away

from home, he writes on 22 March: Never mind, the cause is just. Then on 31 March:

Going home for a rest. We have been away from home and families for three weeks. Need

to see them.98 The personal hardships that the men endured on the picket lines, especially

pickets that were long bus journeys away from home, are often less apparent in oral

interviews than might be expected. This almost certainly reflects the reluctance, which as

long been recognised, of working-class men to talk openly about their feelings. As many

scholars have observed, this stiff upper lip serves as a lynchpin in the construction of

working-class masculinity.99 Jones diary entries therefore offer a rare insight and enable

greater appreciation of expressions of respect and admiration for the role of women in

supporting the strike. We have to endure all sorts of lies and intimidation, complained

Alun Jones in his diary on 3 April 1984, but we are able to stand and face it by the very

nature of our wives and girlfriends spirits we will win.100

The strike ended on 5 March 1985. In the months and years that followed, journalists,

historians and activists conducted numerous interviewswith thosewho had been involved in

an effort to understand what had happened and its likely effects on the coalfields of Britain.

Miners were, on the whole, reflective. The anger directed towards the government had little

dissipated and in the years that followed, their own fears about the loss of the pits and their

own jobs were realised. Summing up his own experience of the strike, one miner said:

We lived with the strike. It wasnt just on the picket lines, it was in the house [ . . . ] All theactivists, we lived the strike [ . . . ] Nothing was talked about apart from the strike when we wason strike. My wife said to me: would you ever go back to work, would you be a scab? And myeldest boy turned and looked. He said: Dad, if you go, Ill never forgive you. Ill never talk toyou again [ . . . ] A scab asked me, what did the strike do? We lost. Clem turned to him andsaid: if it did one thing, he said, it made me fucking proud. I fought for my class.

They all agreed with the final sentiment: We was proud to walk back on that day behind

the banner.101

Conclusion

For the generation born after the strike took place, all that remains of the coal-mining

industry are history books, museums, the memories of older generations and the

occasional reminder of the horrors of working underground. In mid-September 2011, an

explosion in the small Gleision Colliery near Swansea and the resulting news of four

trapped miners brought back to the forefront of news bulletins and discussions in the

workplace, bus stop, and at home an industry that had, essentially, disappeared from public

view almost a generation ago. Writing in the Guardian on 16 September, Jan Morris made

the explicit link between the national biography of Wales and coal mining. If you love

Wales you will shed a tear this morning, she writes. Not since the black day of Aberfan,

nearly half a century ago, has a calamity seemed to strike so close to the heart of all that

this small proud country means to us.102 Throughout the press in the days that followed,

articles relived the loss of the industry as contemporary reportage explored the living

nightmare of the families whose fathers, brothers and sons were trapped underground.

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Journalists observed that the miners working in the Gleision mine had taken

employment there because, following the closure of the industry, their skills had become

redundant and as life-long colliers that was all they knew. Rather than face half a lifetime

on the dole, they took jobs at small and dangerous drift mines in order to make ends

meet. What was apparent in the aftermath of the Gleision disaster was the continuing

strength of mining in the national biography of Wales even as it has faded in the

individual and familial biographies of almost all of its citizens. Much of this can be

related to the miners strike and the nature of the community identities which it evoked

and provoked.

Ultimately, the 19845 strike was a failure and hastened the decline of the industry

that the men and women fought long and hard to preserve. Its effects have been far

reaching: from the entrenched apathy of young people and the emergence of a little

understood underclass to the deep-rooted poverty which seems unable to be shaken off,

the generation that has followed the year-long miners strike has been one fraught with

difficulty. A century ago, the South Wales Coalfield was the largest exporting coalfield in

the world; not to be outdone by its entrepot, Cardiff, it holds claim to being the place

where the first 1 million cheque was written. The death of the industry has seen the fears

expressed in the oral testimony from 1984 and 1985 realised. Distance and time have,

therefore, not healed the wounds inflicted in those long months of struggle and hardship.

To conclude on a more positive note: this article has used oral history and other (auto)

biographical source material to provide insight into the personal circumstances of the

19845 miners strike in Wales. In doing so, it has hopefully presented a further case for

the significant contribution that oral history continues to make to the understanding of the

past. It is hardly an exaggeration to state that oral history is central to the understanding of

the role of mining history in the national narrative of Wales and the Welsh. Without it,

those individual biographies of miners and miners wives and the collective biographies

of pit villages and the nation as a whole cannot be understood. In writing articles and

monographs, popular books and school textbooks, if we are to retain the spirit and

commitment of earlier generations and provide a history which remains true to their

aspirations, then oral history must remain at the heart of how we write, how we research,

and how we think about the past. And with oral history comes the equally central

importance of biography and emotion and the once quintessential facet of history: a story.

Notes

1. Williams, When Was Wales?, 298.2. Nasaw, Introduction, 573.3. Allen and Chase, Britain: 17501900, 87.4. Arnot, The Miners: Years of Struggle, 541.5. Thompson, Homage to Tom Maguire, 2768.6. Williams, ed., Merthyr Politics: The Making of a Working-Class Tradition.7. Smith, In the Frame: Memory in Society, Wales 1910 to 2010, 157.8. This passage draws on Hopkin, Llafur: Labour History Society and Peoples Remembrancer,

19702009, 12946.9. The history of this project is relayed in its final report published in 1974. Williams ed., The

South Wales Coalfield History Research Project: Final Report.10. The key text in the field remains Thompson, Voice of the Past: Oral History. For a recent

appraisal of the theoretical questions surrounding the practice of oral-history research seeAbrams, Oral History Theory.

11. Francis and Smith, The Fed: A History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century;Francis, Miners Against Fascism: Wales and the Spanish Civil War; Francis, History on ourSide: Wales and the 198485 Miners Strike; Bruley, The Women and Men of 1926: A Gender

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and Social History of the General Strike and Miners Lockout in South Wales; McIlroy,Campbell, and Gildart, eds., Industrial Politics and the 1926 Lockout: The Struggle forDignity; Curtis, The South Wales Miners, 19641985; Morgan, Stand By Your Man: Womenand the Miners Strike 198485 in South Wales.

12. Bruley, Women and Men, 8.13. Portelli, The Peculiarities of Oral History, 99.14. Abrams, Oral History Theory, 53.15. Thompson, Voice of the Past, 9.16. Abrams, Oral History Theory, 1.17. A sense of the development of this first wave of oral-history testimony and subsequent

projects can be gleaned from the annual reports of the Miners Library. These are held at theSouth Wales Miners Library, Swansea, and I am grateful to the Librarian, Sian Williams, formaking them available to me.

18. This draws on information provided by Sian Williams and the South Wales CoalfieldCollection Catalogue: http://www.swan.ac.uk/swcc/ [Accessed 16 October 2011].

19. Much of the history of the 1980s has been written by journalists with a few notableexceptions. Of the former, the best examples are: Turner, Rejoice, Rejoice! Britain in the1980s and Beckett and Hencke,Marching to the Fault Line: The Miners Strike and the Battlefor Industrial Britain. For a more academic treatment see Vinen, Thatchers Britain: ThePolitics and Social Upheaval of the 1980s. Wales in the 1980s is dealt with in Johnes, WalesSince 1939. On the challenges of writing contemporary history see Johnes, On WritingContemporary History, 2031.

20. Thatcher, Speech to 1922 Committee, 19 July 1984. Available online: http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105563 [Accessed 16 October 2011].

21. Felton, 56,000 Miners to Strike, The Times, 6 March 1984, 1; Felton, Miners Leaders willback all Areas that Strike, The Times, 9 March 1984, 1.

22. Clement and Jones, Welsh Revolt over Strike widens Split among Miners, The Times, 12March 1984, 1.

23. Francis and Rees, No Surrender in the Valleys: The 198485 Miners Strike in SouthWales, 43.

24. Interview with Des Dutfield 6 March 1986, South Wales Miners Library, Swansea:AUD/465. The South Wales Miners Library holds 33 such interviews conducted acrossSouth Wales in the aftermath of the strike.

25. Cited in Francis and Rees, No Surrender, 49.26. The wider post-war history of the North Wales coalfield can be found in: Gildart, The North

Wales Miners: A Fragile Unity, 19451996. See also Howell, The 198485 Miners Strikein North Wales, 6798.

27. Unknown Point of Ayr miner interviewed by David Howell, in Howell, Miners Strike inNorth Wales, 76.

28. Wrexham Leader, 23 March 1984.29. BBC Radio Clwyd Documentary on Miners Strike, March 1985, http://www.bbc.co.uk/

wales/northeast/sites/your_films/pages/minersstrike.shtml [Accessed 23 October 2011].30. Thompson, ed., Glo: Strike, 19.31. Swain, Letter, 18 April 1985. located in Bert Pearce (Welsh Communist Party) Papers: WS

3/15.32. Francis and Rees, No Surrender, 63.33. Welsh Council of Civil and Politic Liberties & National Union of Mine Workers, Striking

Back, 39.34. Scabbing is the subject of a sensitive and pioneering article which tackles head-on the

mythology of the scab. Burge, In Search of Harry Blount: Scabbing between the Wars in oneSouth Wales Community, 5869.

35. Interview with Eric Davies, 17 May 1986, cited in Francis and Rees, No Surrender, 64.36. Cited in Francis, First Reflections on the 198485 Miners Strike, unpublished paper,

March 1985, located in Bert Pearce Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: WS3/14, file 2 of 2.

37. OSullivan, Tower of Strength: The Story of Tyrone OSullivan and Tower Colliery.38. Edwards, History of the South Wales Miners Federation: Volume I, vii. The second volume

was never published: it exists, in proofs, at Nuffield College Library in Oxford.

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39. Letter dated January 1985. Located in Bert Pearce (Welsh Communist Party) Papers,National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: WS 3/15. The emphasis is my own.

40. Gilbert, Class, Community, and Collective Action: Social Change in Two British Coalfields,18501926; Gier-Viskovatoff and Porter, Women of the British Coalfields on Strike in 1926and 1984: Documenting Lives Using Oral History and Photography, 199230.

41. Gilbert, Class, 1.42. Gier-Viskovatoff and Porter, Women of the British Coalfields, 226.43. Francis and Smith, The Fed, xv.44. On this theme see Thomas, The End of History as We Know It: Gwyn A. Williams as a

Television Historian, 520; Smith, Gwyn A. Williams, 19251995, 31826.45. TheDragonHasTwoTongues:Where toBegin?DirectedbyColinThomas.Cardiff:HTV,1985.46. The Dragon Has Two Tongues: The Death of Wales? Directed by Colin Thomas. Cardiff:

HTV, 1985. For a sense of Maerdys radical leanings see Macintyre, Little Moscows:Communism and Working-Class Militancy in Inter-war Britain.

47. Interview with Dai Smith, 30 March 2010. Notes in Author Possession.48. Davalle, Weekend Choice, The Times, 17 March 1984, 6.49. Interview with Dai Smith, 30 March 2010.50. Keep Mining in Maesteg. Leaflet located in Bert Pearce (Welsh Communist Party) Papers,

National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: WS 3/1.51. Francis, Coming to Terms with Defeat: Recent Responses to Change in the British Coalfields

with Particular Reference to South Wales, unpublished paper, November 1986, 7. Copyconsulted located in Bert Pearce Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: WS 3/14,file 1 of 2.

52. Johnson, How Bleak is my Valley, Manchester Guardian, 5 February 1988, 21.53. Steve, Mardy: Last Pit in the Rhondda. Directed Chris Curling. BBC Bristol, 8 July 1984.54. News At Ten. ITN for ITV, 15 November 1985.55. Pam, Mardy: Last Pit in the Rhondda.56. Evans, Speech Delivered to London-Wales Congress in Support of Mining Communities,

March 1985, 3. Located in South Wales Womens Support Groups Papers, National Libraryof Wales, Aberystwyth: File 1.

57. Coal Not Dole: Notts Women Strike Back, 1. Nottingham: privately published, 1985. Copyconsulted located in Bert Pearce Papers, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: WS 3/14,file 2 of 2. Collections such as this were often based on oral testimony that was latertranscribed.

58. Barbara, Mardy: Last Pit in the Rhondda.59. Peter Stead contribution, The Clash: A Visit to Cwmaman. Written & Presented by Patrick

Hannan, BBC Radio Wales, 30 September 2004.60. For a sense of Wales in the last 25 years see Johnes,Wales Since 1939. On the broader issues

of working-class decline in the last generation see Jones, Chavs: The Demonization of theWorking Class; Mason, Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global.

61. Miller, You Cant Kill the Spirit: Women in a Welsh Mining Valley.62. Interview with Margaret Donovan, 5 November 1986, South Wales Miners Library:

AUD/503. This evidence accords with that gathered by Steffan Morgan in the course of hisresearch. Morgan, Stand By Your Man, 63.

63. Ibid.64. Striking Back, 46.65. Beddoe, Out of the Shadows: A History of Women in Twentieth-Century Wales, 164.66. Striking Tales: A Miners Wife, BBC Wales, 9 March 2004. Available Online: http://news.

bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/3440845.stm [accessed: 26 October 2011].67. Jones, Womens Role in the Miners Strike, 25 Years On, Western Mail, 7 March 2009.68. Barbara, Mardy: Last Pit in the Rhondda.69. Pam, ibid. 6.50 is the equivalent of around 16 in 2010 prices.70. Phillips,Women and the Miners Lockout: The Story of the Womens Committee for the Relief

of the Miners Wives and Children, 11.71. Andrews, A Womans Work Is Never Done, 1956.72. NUM Discussion Class (Blaengwynfi), 26 November 1985, South Wales Miners Library:

AUD/506.73. Ibid.

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74. Francis, The Law, Oral Tradition, and the Mining Community, 26771.75. NUM Discussion Class (Blaengwynfi), 26 November 1985.76. Ibid.77. This can be observed in the interviews conducted by Rebecca Elizabeth Davies during the

course of her PhD research with Leanne Wood, a Plaid Cymru member of the WelshAssembly, who was 11 years old at the time of the strike. Davies, Not Supporting ButLeading: The Involvement of the Women of the South Wales Coalfield in the 19841985Miners Strike, 210.

78. Evans, Hudson, and Smith, Women & the Miners: Its a Whole Way of Life, 14.79. Interview with Alan Stevenson, 11 May 1986, Birmingham City Library & Archive,

Birmingham: Paul Mackney Papers, MS1591/D/1/3/7.80. Interview with Newbridge Miners: Howard, in Newport West Labour Party Young

Socialists Bulletin, October 1984. Copy consulted: Welsh Political Ephemera Collection Box116, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: C 3/10.

81. This is apparent in all-male discussion groups recorded after the strike. See, for example,NUM Discussion Group, 6 April 1988, South Wales Miners Library: AUD/554; NUMDiscussion Class, 1985, South Wales Miners Library: AUD/498.

82. NUM Discussion Class, 1985, South Wales Miners Library: AUD/498.83. Mardy: Last Pit in the Rhondda. Directed Chris Curling. BBC Bristol, 8 July 1984.84. Interview with Alun Jones, 10 August 1986, Birmingham City Library & Archive,

Birmingham: Paul Mackney Papers, MS1591/D/1/3/4.85. Striking Back, 183.86. Interview with Lodge Committee, St Johns Colliery, 6 August 1984, South Wales Miners

Library: AUD/579; Interview with group at Abertillery Miners Institute, 16 August 1984,South Wales Miners Library: AUD/582; Interview with Maerdy Lodge Committee, 5August 1984, South Wales Miners Library, AUD/589; Interview with Garw LodgeCommittee, 6 August 1984, South Wales Miners Library: AUD/593; Interview with PhilWhite, 11 September 1984, South Wales Miners Library: AUD/608; Interview with PhilipJames, 9 December 1985, South Wales Miners Library: AUD/610. The memoirs of formerminer Ian Isaac reflect similarly on this point. Isaac, When We Were Miners, 734.

87. For comparison with earlier strikes see Morgan, Conflict and Order: The Police and LabourDisputes in England and Wales, 19001939, 1987.

88. Striking Back, 98102.89. For wider discussion of popular culture in the South Wales Valleys see James, Popular

Culture and Working-Class Taste in Britain 193039: A Round of Cheap Diversions?; Rose,The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes.

90. Shail, Stanley Baker: A Life in Film.91. Diary: Birmingham and the Miners Strike, 198485, 16 March 1984 entry, Birmingham

City Library & Archive, Birmingham: Paul Mackney Papers, MS1591/D/1/2.92. Interview with Alan Stevenson, 11May 1986; Interview with Alun Jones, 10 August 1986.93. Tabili, Race is a Relationship, and Not a Thing, 12530; Gilroy, There Aint No Black in the

Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation.94. Interview with Bobby Potts, 11 May 1986, Birmingham City Library & Archive,

Birmingham: Paul Mackney Papers, MS1591/D/1/3/5.95. Little, Negroes in Britain: A Study of Racial Relations in English Society, 218.96. Interview with Bobby Potts, 11 May 1986.97. Ibid.98. Diary: Birmingham and the Miners Strike, 198485, 17 March, 22 March, 31 March 1984

entries.99. On the theme of working-class masculinity see Beavan, Leisure, Citizenship and Working-

Class Men in Britain, 18501945, 2005; Tosh, What Should Historians do with Masculinity?Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Britain, 179202; Brooke, Gender and Working-ClassIdentity in Britain during the 1950s, 77395; Cook, Twentieth-Century Masculinities,12735.

100. Diary: Birmingham and the Miners Strike, 198485, 3 April entry.101. Interview with Rob James, 11 May 1986, Birmingham City Library & Archive,

Birmingham: Paul Mackney Papers, MS1591/D/1/3/5.

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102. Morris, The Gleision Mine Accident is a particularly Welsh Tragedy, Guardian, 16September 2011. For a sensitive, academic treatment of Aberfan see McLean and Johnes,Aberfan: Government and Disasters.

Notes on contributor

Daryl Leeworthy was recently awarded his Ph.D. by Swansea University for a thesis entitledWorkers Fields: Sport, Landscape and the Labour Movement in South Wales, 18581958. Anative of the South Wales Valleys, he is committed to peoples history and serves on the executivecommittee of Llafur: the Welsh Peoples History Society. Recent publications include Fields of Play:The Welsh Historic Sporting Environment (Aberystwyth, 2012) and Miners on the Margins:Characterising South Wales and Cape Breton as an Industrial Frontier, 18801920, Llafur 10, no. 2(2009).

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