In this series of Strike Stories we hear the highs and lows of that life changing year through the eyes of miners, families, police officers and politicians as they recall what life was like in 84–85.

The Strike Stories form part of the Streic 84–85 Strike exhibition which is on display at National Musem Cardiff until April 27 2025.

© Getty Images / Alamy

Les Jackson (miner, Mardy Pit)

I left school at 16 to be a panel beater on £9 a week. But I had a chat with my brother-in-law and found out he was making £80 a week. I couldn’t get to the Pit fast enough. I was accepted at 17, excited by the money, and just wanted to get in as quick as I could.

I started in 78, 79. Did my basic training in Tondu, there was a simulation centre there. They teach you how to make a pack – pack out the sides where you’re working so no dangerous gases can seep out. But nothing frightened me, not going down in the cage, nothing. You’d sometimes have to take your belt off, it was so tight. Sometimes we were physically sick, you just don’t expect it.

The next bit was training on a four-foot face. They’d send us slim lads in because it was so tight. At one point, in face training, I was working on a lower face, just a bar above you. We’d cut the height in and the bigger blokes would go in after that. Once you’re trained, as soon as there’s a space you’re in. I knew everybody on the face and the first time down, they made a big fuss of me. There’s a really strong feeling of togetherness. And that sense of community was what we were fighting to save, under and above ground. It was more than just a job.

When I joined, I thought it was a job for life. I worked until the day the pit closed.

In ’84, Thatcher wanted us to go on strike. She’d stockpiled coal, got everything ready, and announced the closures. It was a deliberate provocation to get all of the trade unions to toe the line. She thought if she broke us the others would fall into place. But she hadn’t bargained on us having such a strong one. The first one I picketed was Caerphilly. We walked up and got a load of abuse from the wives on the way up to the colliery gates. But we formed the line and talked to the guys showing up for work – they turned back, didn’t go to work. Though we did hear that a few had gone in over the mountain. It wasn’t always like that though – once, they came to work, stopped to talk to us, agreed a management meeting to decide and came back out and told us they were joining us on the line. Once we’d gone the afternoon shift resumed business as usual!

We travelled all over the country. Orgreave was the one that changed everything. It was lovely weather, balmy and warm. A beautiful day. We’d slept on the pavement outside the NUM building.I was driving a transit. Usually, we’d always get stopped by the police. This time they stopped and spoke to us and said ‘We know where you’re going.’ But instead of turning us round or blocking the way, they ushered us on and directed us to a parking space. It was a trap.

Once everyone had gathered, I was right in front. I was a youngster, I was carried along, feet off the ground. Stones were raining down on us. The police suddenly opened up, a huge gap, and there were horses coming straight at me. I turned and ran, as fast as I could go. I leapt into a bush. Others jumped on top of me. More police were coming at us with batons. The guy on top of me was getting battered. I managed to get out and run. There was a three foot wall and I leapt over it – to find that it was six foot on the other side. And there, right in front of me was a load of police dogs on long leashes. I ran towards town – a woman shouted ‘Quick, get in here’ and I escaped out the back of her house into the local shopping centre where I caught my breath. Scargill showed up later that day, he came down the grassy bank towards the protest. He was arrested for inciting a riot.

I was due to get married on 22nd July and had my stag night at Blackwood Bierkeller. A few days beforehand, some coal lorries from a local firm had been torched, allegedly by some of the pickets – the police had had my card marked for a while, for some reason. There were convinced it was me and wanted me out of circulation. There were 45 of us on the stag do – a fight kicked off, and plain clothes police were involved. I lashed out and got arrested and was banged up for a week till two days before the wedding whilst they tried to pin it on me. I got married - my family had all chipped in to make sure it happened and that we’d have a nice honeymoon, despite how tough it was for everyone financially.

So, off we went on honeymoon and whilst I was away, the police dropped a leather jacket at my house and told the lodger they’d found my jacket. It wasn’t mine. They dropped by the day after I got back to search my house and arrest me for stealing a leather jacket. Then I got fined £200 for the stag do – and they agreed to let me defer payment for a bit as I had no money. Two months later they were on the doorstep again, trying to arrest me again for non-payment of the fine they’d ‘agreed’ to let me defer. They were determined to get me, one way or another.

I got a big family. They made sure we didn’t go without and my sister lent me the money to pay the fine and keep me out of prison. I was one of the lucky ones – I had a lodger which helped cover the mortgage interest and I was allowed to take out an endowment to cover the rest – that’s a whole other scandal.

We were getting wind that some NUM members had been having meetings to try and get us back to work because they knew we couldn’t win. When the news came that the strike was ending and we were ordered back to work, I was utterly heartbroken. We weren’t given a vote, just told to go back. I felt embarrassed at what I’d put everyone through. Let down by the powers that be – all kinds of feelings. I felt terrible because we’d lost.

I had to turn back the clock, I’d do it all again. It built me.

In Amgueddfa Cymru there are lots of different ways that visitors with additional learning needs can engage and learn in the museum. 

At National Museum Cardiff, the formal learning programme delivers interactive school workshops that consist of various activities where pupils can create their own artwork, explore the museum galleries and learn about art and natural history. 

Some sessions take place in the galleries for pupils who prefer to explore and some sessions take place in a closed learning space filled with objects that can be touched and offer a more independent learning experience.

By communicating with our staff when booking a museum session, workshops and activities can be adapted to suit the themes being studied in school and the needs of each group of learners. For example, National Museum Cardiff offers sensory packs which can be requested prior to your visit which contain resources such as sensory toys and ear defenders.

In five of National Museum Cardiff’s galleries, sensory toy boxes are placed in the spaces and are themed around the exhibition content, a previous blog about these boxes can be found here: Sensory Toy Boxes at National Museum Cardiff. These boxes offer another way for visitors with additional needs and sensory needs in particular, to engage with the stories told in each gallery. The boxes include items such as soft toys, books and replica objects and offer an opportunity to stop and pause as visitors make their way through the museum. 

All Amgueddfa Cymru sites also have a ‘Visual Story’ for pupils and staff to familiarize themselves with the museum buildings and how to make the most of their visit: Visual story: A trip to National Museum Cardiff

In this series of Strike Stories we hear the highs and lows of that life changing year through the eyes of miners, families, police officers and politicians as they recall what life was like in 84–85.

The Strike Stories form part of the Streic 84–85 Strike exhibition which is on display at National Musem Cardiff until April 27 2025.

© Richard Williams

Richard, photographer

I was a press photographer at the time of the strike, covering the south Wales mining valleys around me. I’d get calls when picket lines were broken, that kind of thing.

One of my most memorable days was in the Garw Valley, where Monty Morgan was the first miner in south Wales to break the strike. There were hundreds of police and pickets out. Monty had felt the strike was becoming futile, driving his return to work. There was a lot of anger – people’s livelihoods were at stake. He was shocked by the levels of anger towards him, but he wasn’t from the area: he was an Englishman, ex-military, and perhaps didn’t understand the sense of community there.

One of my shots shows the bus he’s travelling out of the colliery on, with hundreds of police surrounding it. One courageous striker is standing in its path and he was then arrested. When we were researching our book, we managed to track that miner down. He had kids and he’d known at the time that arrests were frequent. Despite all of that, he kept a sense of humour, even whilst he was locked up.

Earlier that year, I’d photographed Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher coming to Porthcawl for the Tory conference as hundreds of angry and frustrated protestors lined the seafront, behind steel barriers. After addressing the conference, as she left the building, she was pelted with eggs from the crowd. One egg hit her, then the police managed to shield her with an umbrella before she was rushed away.

It was an extreme time, with emotions and passions running high, which was very understandable as defeat meant communities would change forever. As winter set in and things were getting harder, miners were beginning to go back in some areas, although the strike remained remarkably solid in south Wales. Having covered the strike from the start, I was also there for the end and afterwards as miners returned and most traces of the industry began to disappear.

Amanda, journalist

I’m from a Rhymney Valley mining family originally, and these stories and the struggles people went through felt very important to remind people of, as none of us are getting any younger.

I was particularly struck by the role played by women during the strike: the way they organised and then began to speak out. In 2023, I interviewed a woman who had been in one of the miners’ support groups. She’d been quite a shy person, who was persuaded to stand up and speak at a big fundraising event in Maesteg, to a large crowd that included MPs and miners’ leaders. It changed her. She, and others I talked to, feel as strongly about it all today as they did then. Every single person said they’d put up the same fight again.

My brother, a former miner, describes great humour in and around the pits – it kept people going in a dangerous profession, where attitudes to health and safety could be somewhat relaxed at times. The stories are abundant. Injuries were commonplace and the washeries (coal processing plants) sometimes employed miners who could no longer work underground after injury. In our book we tell the story of a washery worker who’d been permanently disabled when the cage (lift) taking him underground malfunctioned and smashed into the pit bottom.

Many of the people in our book have now passed away. Fewer still will be around to tell these stories in the future. It’s critical we do so now, so that younger generations understand what their families fought for.

Authors, Coal and Community in Wales.

In this series of Strike Stories we hear the highs and lows of that life changing year through the eyes of miners, families, police officers and politicians as they recall what life was like in 84–85.

The Strike Stories form part of the Streic 84–85 Strike exhibition which is on display at National Musem Cardiff until April 27 2025.

Phurnacite Works in Abercwmboi, Cynon Valley (1984) 
Source: Dr Mary Gillham Archive Project
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

My Dad worked in Phurnacite smokeless fuel plant in Abercwmboi, which took thousands of tons of coal a week to produce fuel for stoves and other things. I remember the smoke from the plant basically sitting over everything, right across the middle of the valley.

I was about ten when the strike started. We lived about a five-minute walk from the works gate, so Dad used to walk up there for 6am and come home around 6pm. But it suddenly changed. Dad was around. He’d walk me up to catch the school bus. Everyone had to find a way to make ends meet and the community really pulled together. Dad got ‘hobbles’ around the village, painting and doing DIY. He painted family, friends and co-workers’ homes,the chapel, whatever. And if he did something, he’d get something in return. So, he’d get me off to school and then often walk on a couple of miles to somewhere else, for odd jobs.

I went to the Welsh school which was two miles away, a bus ride. While the kids in Abercwmboi all had family working in the coal plant, my school was different, families worked in other places, so the kids I mixed with weren’t exposed to it like we were in my village. They did a lot of kind things for local mining communities.

Opportunities came our way because of the situation – people were so generous. My friend’s family had a little smallholding in Ystradfellte and they took me there for a week so I’d have a summer holiday. Totally off grid. We ran wild, it was wonderful. My friend’s nan arrived with a massive sack of apples. Life was all about apple pie, apple crumble, for weeks on end - Mum would make them for other people, too. Ferrari’s cake factory used to do tray-bake iced cakes, but they couldn’t sell the edges – so we’d get those trimmings. Our elderly neighbours knocked on the door and gave us a big Co-op bag of food – I remember a massive box of cornflakes. Every family had a weekly box that the community rustled up from donations and I used to go to the local football club and help on the ‘production line’, with things like putting a tin of beans in each box.

My aunty lived nearby opposite the gates to the Phurnacite site so it was quite a hotbed of activity with the picket line. I had been allowed to go down there whenever I wanted…suddenly that changed. You’d hear the police sirens. There was violence. Her father-in-law was in the police and her husband worked at the plant, which caused some problems. The police had taken to hiding behind her wall, you’d see their hats poking over the top. But she had to speak with her father-in law to ask them to stop, it was creating too much tension. I had no idea why I wasn’t allowed down to Aunty Eryl’s any more, but I used to listen in on the conversations and as I got older, things started to fall into place.

We became more frugal. The rented colour TV was replaced with a black and white one. We’d water down the ketchup with vinegar. That frugality still lives within me, today. One thing I remember vividly was that the local school did free meals for striker’s children, including at weekends. As I went to an old Victorian school, I recall being thrilled at the novelty of going to a new, state-of-the art school for a nose around and a meal at the weekend – my cousins, who had to go there every day, were somewhat less excited.

My Mum had been a stay-at-home Mum, but the strike led to her getting a job, doing shift work at the Memory Lane cake factory in Cardiff to help things along. She didn’t like it much but moved to a job at Tesco – and she carried on there after the strike ended.

Dad was worried about Christmas, but we remember it being a great one. An extra food box and gifts and toys donated not just from our community, but from all over the UK and beyond, people donated things from places as far afield as Russia and Poland. I heard a story once about someone having a little envelope of funny powder in their food box. They found out later it was powdered borscht.

My Dad still stands by everything they fought for – it was about an entire community and its livelihood, although it was a cesspit of pollution and would never be permitted today. The plant was about fun, camaraderie and banter – he missed all that. But he knew the Phurnacite site couldn’t survive, and ultimately it led him to diversify. He was only 30, young, really. So, he went to night school to do his English ‘O’ level and studied sociology and eventually, he and I ended up at University at the same time. He got a degree in social work and went on to a completely new, successful career. He takes immense pride in everything he’s done.

Meinir Morris, striker’s daughter, Abercwmboi.

In this series of Strike Stories we hear the highs and lows of that life changing year through the eyes of miners, families, police officers and politicians as they recall what life was like in 84–85.

The Strike Stories form part of the Streic 84–85 Strike exhibition which is on display at National Musem Cardiff until April 27 2025.

© Amgueddfa Cymru

Rhian

We were some of the lucky ones, because Dad had a trade. He’d been a builder, before he went to work at cwm coke colliery so he went out looking for work around our community. Our neighbour was amazingly kind and found him some jobs in his house and with other family members and that helped tide us over and my brothers, who were bigger than me, still talk about how tough it was and they’d mix cement and do other bits and bobs after school and on the weekends, to help him.

The garden became really important – vital to us keeping food on the table.

I was only little – four – and my biggest memory of it all was of having the best Christmas I could ever have imagined. In our family we talk still about it being the best one ever. What we didn’t know at the time was that the whole community pulled together to make sure every family had a lovely Christmas. I had the Sindy house, furniture including kitchen bathroom, bedroom, and dining table and sofa. And a horse, cart and dog – and a My Little Pony! They pulled out all the stops.

Betty

My husband had spent 28 years working at the colliery, in Beddau. During the strike, each week, Friday, we’d get a box delivered – with flour, corned beef, and other groceries to help us get through the week. The whole community in our valley pulled together to provide for every family.

We were lucky. A family with three kids, we certainly felt the impact. My husband had a trade before the colliery – he was a bricklayer – and thanks to the kindness of our neighbour, who hired him to work, firstly on his house and then on his mother in law’s, we had some income to tide us over.

We had to manage on what we had. Everyone did. But it didn’t stop us having the best Christmas my kids ever had. Friends gathered together and bought gifts so the kids had presents on Christmas morning. We still talk about it.

We pulled through. After the pits closed some of the men never worked again – there was nowhere to work and then other factories and things went, too, like Revlon, Silent Channel and Louis Edwards – all gone. So, the valley emptied as people left find to work elsewhere, Bridgend, Cardiff, or further afield.

There was a lot of upheaval. We were devastated by the strike, we had no idea it’d last that long. The devastation in this valley is permanent. Despite it all, my children have done well – but it was a very sad time and even now, there’s nothing. Nothing has been replaced in all these years since it shut down. There’s nothing left. They promise the world – and nothing changes, nothing ever gets done. The Valleys are completely shut off.

When Margaret Thatcher died, my husband hung a Welsh flag from a post outside our house. There were a lot of them, hung all across our valley.

Rhian and Betty Philips, mother and daughter of a striking miner, Maesteg.