: Streic! 84-85 Strike!

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.

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

There was never any such thing as an immortal colliery. Everyone ever connected to the mining industry recognised that reality. But like any sensible being, I wanted change involving closures to have been thought through, grounded in fact, justified in real economics and geological analysis with a rationale behind it all. That was a strategic view which took account of the energy needs of our country and the well-being of communities. The Government accepted none of these purposes. Nationalised British coal was a financial burden and the Miners’ Union a militant impediment to a closure programme. Both had to be eliminated.

There are instances of developed countries organising the shift away from extractive industries and heavy manufacturing by preparation and compensation, consultation, local planning, re-training, encouraging inward investment. None of that meaningfully occurred in the UK. Closure of industry meant abandonment of community. Levelling down of security, incomes, physical and mental fitness, social capital, cultural vigour.

Apart from the overall national significance of the coalmining industry, the issues were political and personal for me. In 1984 there were 6,000 coalmining workers in my Constituency and they included several friends. My Dad, extended family members in Tredegar and Aberdare, both of my Grandfathers, six of my Uncles, were all miners at some time. One was a face captain in Tower Colliery which became the last one to close in South Wales. Employment around both towns related to coalmining, including steel and much of engineering. Mam, who was a District Nurse, brought me up to believe that miners were the greatest men and that areas like ours were the most productive and strongest communities.

There had always been pithead ballots – although, over the decades, national strikes hadn’t been a common way to resolve issues. From the 1926 General Strike to 1972 there hadn’t been a national miner’s strike. The 1974 national strike, the one that’s said to have brought down the Heath Government, was preceded by a national pithead ballot. In 1984, however, Scargill managed to avoid putting a strike Resolution to the Special National Conference of the NUM, therefore by – passing a democratic ballot. This was because he thought that he’d be beaten if he allowed a vote – he’d already been defeated in ’83. He was determined to rely on mass picketing instead.

I – and a lot of miners – knew that was a huge risk: not having a ballot would definitely divide the workforce and it also reduced the likelihood of sympathetic support from other workers in transport, power stations and docks. When I and others put this reality to Scargill our views were ignored.

Scargill was an intelligent man and a brilliant mob orator. All of history, realism, common sense said that it was stupid to rely on the confrontation of mass picketing. But when he simplified the dispute by putting the challenging question ‘Whose side are you on?’ it was impossible for people – especially young miners whose livelihoods depended on a future for coal – not to be caught up in the enthusiasm, especially when they were told that coal stocks were almost exhausted and the Government was wilting.

Arthur Scargill issued demands and orders from the platform and from his office in Sheffield – but there was no strategy. After the strike had started – ironically by accident – he offered the confident semblance of a deliberate, cogent process, but it didn’t exist except in his mind. Scargill had no plan. By searing contrast, Thatcher’s government very definitely had a strategy, and the means and mind to put it ruthlessly into effect.

• The Prime Minister appointed Ian McGregor as the chair of the National Coal Board. He had a “tough guy” reputation, built as a corporate boss in the USA and reinforced during his time Chairing the British Steel Corporation.
• Her government enacted legislation that removed benefits from the families of strikers.
• She co-ordinated British police forces in a way that was unprecedented, using the Home Office and Association of Chief Police Officers to produce a national organism never seen before or since in the UK. 
• And, vitally, she ensured a stockpile of coal at record levels – about 40% larger that ever before and deposited at power stations, coke works, and docks.

She had made these preparations for disruption to the power supply following her reluctant settlement of a coalmining pay dispute in 1981 and on the basis of the “Ridley Plan” compiled by one of her Ministers following the fall of the Heath Government in 1974 – a defeat which had left the Conservatives with an aching ulcer of resentment.

The government were well-prepared for a prolonged dispute. But they could never have anticipated two development that favoured them very strongly: First, they never assumed that the Miners would strike without a ballot, secondly, they never dreamed that a coal strike would begin in early spring. Both were elements that would clearly work against the miners. The Government had resources at their fingertips and, as extra advantages, they were given the weather and division in the mining workforce. The miners had endless courage and determination and a practical Case for Coal – but nothing else. Picketing miners versus working miners, with the police, often in huge numbers with regimental organisation, cavalry and dogs holding the ground in between. They described themselves as ‘The meat in the sandwich’.

Given the intensity of feeling and the attitude of some police units, conflict was inevitable. In traditional mining towns and villages, where the policemen had been seen as dependable people who were part of the community, the relationship was smashed. Families, and in some areas neighbourhoods, were divided. “scabbing” was treated as a mortal sin. In some localities where majorities continued to work, striking was regarded as treachery. As the strike wore on for a year - and for years in the wake of it - there was debt, destitution, high unemployment, mental anguish, division and deep anxiety. People sought to overcome all of this with immense fortitude. Families pulled together and communities became closer. But that was not universal. Family break-up, foreclosed mortgages, delinquency and suicides increased.

One positive development that emerged on the coalfields was that was that, during the strike, women took leadership roles. Collectively, they ensured the things that mattered were sustained: every family had a meal, every child had something to unwrap at Christmas, no- one had to feel like a recipient of charity because everyone was contributing something.

Over a relatively short time, soup kitchens evolved into community organisations that were properly organised around strategic thinking and financed from donations by local people, other trade unions at home and abroad and incessant fundraising. Some women travelled throughout the UK and, often, abroad to actively make the case for coal and communities.

They flourished in these roles, frequently providing a quality of leadership that was not offered by some of the men in their communities.

In July and September 1984, together with Stan Orme, who handled Energy in the Labour Shadow Cabinet, I compiled proposals to manage pit closures through a process of independent expert examination and economic evaluation. The National Coal Board accepted them. Scargill personally turned it down flat without showing it to any of the NUM Executive. As Stan (a lifetime trade union activist) said “Arthur’s not a trade unionist – he doesn’t believe in negotiation”.

Ultimately, the strike is a story of heroism - and of the abuse of that supreme quality.

Neil Kinnock, politician, MP for Bedwellty and Islwyn 1970-94, Leader of the Labour Party, 1983 – 1992.