Interview: “It was absolutely liberating!” Remembering the 1984-5 miners’ strike

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the 1984-5 miners’ strike, a major class confrontation between the government of Margaret Thatcher and a trade union that had helped bring down the previous Conservative administration in the early 1970s.1 Ian Mitchell was a young miner at Rotherham’s Silverwood Colliery during the strike. He features in a new documentary, Strike: An Uncivil War.2 Phil Turner, a reporter for a local paper in Rotherham who covered the strike, spoke to him about his time in the industry, the strike and what came after.

Phil: What were your early experiences in the mining industry?

Ian: I started at Silverwood pit in 1974.3 I’m the third eldest in a family of ten. I was the first wave of school leavers that had to stay on an extra year. I hated secondary school and couldn’t wait to leave.

When I started secondary school, I was seen as a bright kid and placed in the top form. However, it went badly very quickly for me when a maths teacher took a dislike to me. On my first day, I was forced to stand on a desk throughout the class for getting an answer wrong. In every maths class he targeted me, and I came to dread going to his classes and school in general—so I just started playing truant and was kicked out of my form. I hated the bastard and went into a downward spiral. My education was basic and functional, and I was sent home and put in detention more times than I can remember. I couldn’t wait to leave. 

I left school on Friday and went to work at Silverwood on Monday. I was considered “green labour” and was the first in my family to go into the pits. To be honest, what made the difference was the pay: it was double what they were offering in the steelworks.

I came in on the back of two significant victories for the miners and the working class in 1972 and 1974.4 Silverwood was seen as a militant pit; militant pits were called “sunshine pits” ’cos when the sun shone, we went on strike. That might be a bit exaggerated, but strikes over bread-and-butter issues were not uncommon. Threats of strikes were even more common. If one district walked out over a grievance, then the whole pit would walk.5 “One-out, all-out” meant just that. If it was a particular hot, sunny Friday, that tended to bring unresolved grievances to the surface.

The attitude to authority in the pits was in marked contrast to my experience at school. The place reeked of confidence. After 13 weeks of basic training, you were sent underground. You had to spend your first 20 days with an experienced collier. You were not allowed on the coal face until you were 18, so at first it was what we called “out bye” jobs: supplying the coal face with props, operating the conveyers that took the coal out, and so on. I was placed with this guy called Rob, who operated one of the conveyer belts. I loved Rob. He was a really kind bloke and taught me what colliers call “pit sense”.

One day, when the deputy came by on his inspection, Rob introduced me to him and then told me: “If he asks thee to do owt [anything], run it by me first. Some of ’em think they’re gaffers [bosses] but they’re not—we are”.6 That was how it was. Any deputy that tried to play Mr Big Boots was very quickly put in their place. I loved it; this was the place for me. Over the next few years, wild-cat strikes were nothing unusual, and they usually won. The saying “militant action brings forth fruit” was alive and kicking.

When I was 18, I went on to my coalface training. My first day on a working coal face ended with me vomiting, I had swallowed that much dust. I worked on a face that was three feet high, in the team that followed the coal cutting machine setting the supports.7 We were called “chock men”. Men! We were boys! Four of us were 18, the eldest maybe 25. Nobody put up with anything, and one wrong word from a deputy and the job was stopped.

Phil: How did you become politicised?

Ian: In the district where I worked, there was a guy called Pete Beevers. He was our spokesperson, and he worked in the rip.8 Pete was a “red”. He was fierce and us young guns loved him. He sold a paper called The Collier, and I started buying it off him.9 Pete, who was then in the Communist Party, used to argue with us youngsters that we should go to union meetings. Most of us just wanted to go pubbing and clubbing at the weekend.

Because my dad was union-minded and a Transport & General Workers Union shop steward at the British Oxygen company, I saw him going to the monthly branch meetings.10 I also started doing that, when I was about 18. One of the first meetings I went to was very well attended. We discussed supporting, or not, the Labour government’s “social contract”.11 I voted for the social contract. That was because the arguments from the branch officials were quite persuasive: we don’t want the Tories back in.12 That’s when I met Steve Hammill, who was arguing to reject the social contract. He kept describing it as the “social con trick”.13 Before going to the meeting, I had been asking my dad what he thought. He told me we must support Labour’s proposal, or we would end up with the Tories back in. So, although I thought Steve was very impressive, the majority and I went along with the officials. I then became a regular at the branch meetings. 

I would say that was my political education: going to union meetings. The input from people on the left, like Steve, Pete and others, meant that wider issues than just the bread-and-butter ones were discussed. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Right to Work marches, Chilean solidarity, anti-apartheid, anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigns were discussed in these meetings.14 We were also exposed to the idea of showing wider solidarity, which was reflected in the monthly Yorkshire Miner, published by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). We were also very much shaped by Arthur Scargill.15

Even though I was learning all this stuff and going to union meetings, I wouldn’t call myself an “activist”. If I was in town or up in Sheffield, and you came across people protesting or campaigning, I would make a point of supporting them. I didn’t like the Nazis marching; I didn’t like the rise of the National Front.16 I was a big music fan, although I never went to any Rock Against Racism gigs. But I did boo a National Front (NF) march when I happened to be in Rotherham. That would probably have been the NF march during the by-election in 1976.17 That’s when the Nazis tried to march through Eastwood, the Asian area of Rotherham, but were stopped by anti-fascists.

Because I bought The Collier and went to union meetings, I knew about the Anti Nazi League (ANL). Pete Beevers targeted people like me, and he used to give me loads of ANL stickers. We used to wear them on our helmets. The ANL did a really good campaign. We had the Cooper brothers at our pit.18 We tried to kick them out of the union. Even though the union won the argument not to kick them out of the NUM—which would have meant them not having their jobs—we did a lot of damage to them, and they left a few weeks later because people kept having a go at them. We’d created an atmosphere, such a hostile environment for them, and some even refused to work with them.

In 1979, all six NF candidates in Yorkshire were from Rotherham, including Terry Cooper. Pete Beevers fought with the fascists in the town centre and as a result got kicked out of the Communist Party for bringing the party into disrepute. That’s when he joined the SWP. Pete had bite marks on him from the fight. People were so enraged about the attack on Pete; it made the reality of the NF very clear. Everyone took an ANL leaflet, so it really backfired for the fascists.

By this time, I had got to know Steve a bit better and bought the Socialist Worker. The nature of Steve’s job, he was an electrician, meant he used to move around a lot. Electricians spent a lot of time sat on their arses, waiting for something to break down. Steve could talk and talk. He was very persuasive. I used to love it when Steve came on to our district. I listened to him arguing with guys about all kind of issues: the Labour Party, Ireland, how we get socialism, fighting racism. The argument someone always threw at him was “yer can’t change human nature”. Yet, he was so knowledgeable and, to me, always won the argument.

When Margaret Thatcher got elected, everyone was depressed by that. Then there was the Falklands War.19 One day during “snap time”, the only official break we got—which was won in the 1974 strike by the way—Steve was in our district. Someone had a copy of the Sun and started going on about “our boys”.20 So, Steve started arguing against the war. And when you had heard people like Steve, it gave you confidence to argue yourself. I was vehemently against the war. People used to shout, “What’s the latest news from the Falklands?” There were people in the pits, like me, who had family in the military and that. But as soon as you put the arguments—“Why are we bothering about a piece of rock at the other end of the planet for? It’s not as if it’s the Nazis in Europe during the Second World War!”—then people got it and could be won around. The sinking of the Belgrano was the turning point for a lot of people.21 A bunch of 300 fresh-faced conscript soldiers perished in a rust-bucket of a warship, sailing away from the exclusion zone. Who gave the order? Thatcher. This is how she treated the “enemy without”. In a few years it was to be our turn, “the enemy within”.22

The first organised political event I went to was a CND conference, as an NUM delegate, so that would have been the early 1980s.

Phil: You attended a day-release course, sponsored by the NUM and National Coal Board (NCB), at Sheffield University from 1983.23 How did that help shape your political ideas?

Ian: We had to write an essay to get on to it. Steve helped me with it. I’d come out of school with nothing in terms of qualifications, but I loved reading avidly. My favourite author was Charles Dickens. By this time, I had started reading pamphlets like the Communist Manifesto. Some given to me by Steve, others taken from the small library our union office ran. That library contained books written by Karl Marx, Lenin and Stalin—no Trotsky. Obviously, this reflected the influence of the Communist Party on the NUM.24 The best book I took and read from the NUM library was The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists.25 I thought it was just brilliant.

One of the lecturers—George Brumwell, former full-time Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians (UCATT) official and onetime leader of Doncaster Council—walked through the class, holding up a pencil.26 He said: “This pencil has more power than a picket line.” So, it was a school for trade union bureaucrats! But there were some other people, such as a woman who lectured on the media. We learned a lot about how it worked, who owned the media, why it was biased, how to deal with the media—that type of stuff. One bloke came in with a folder covered in stuff from the Sun and half-naked women. She took him on, head on, he didn’t last long.

Classes covered industrial relations and the history of the NUM, including the 1926 General Strike. We only had a few drop-outs. Of course, for some, it was just a day off work, but most of us enjoyed it. When the strike came, I think I only went to two classes. The strike came first. The classes stopped after the strike. The NCB stopped funding them. Our pit manager said it was a school for 50 left-wing militants.

Phil: What was the mood like at the pit in the run-up to the strike in 1984?

Ian: It was brewing from the early 1980s. We all knew Thatcher was going to come for us and I felt confident there would be a fight. 

At Silverwood, we came out for the nurses in 1982.27 The nurses came to the pit to talk to the lads and Steve said to one of them: “Is that a picket line?” At first, she didn’t get it, but then Steve added: “If that’s a picket line, we’re not crossing.” So, that morning’s shift walked out. Then, when the afternoon shift heard about it, they walked out even though the nurses had already left by then. The night shift walked out as well!

I remember Warrington, the printworkers’ dispute.28 It was like a trial run for the cops. It created an atmosphere. After the steelworkers, then Warrington, we just knew it was coming.29

I had to watch my mum and dad go through the steel strike of January to April in 1980. My dad was working on the overhead cranes and was active throughout. To stave off hardship, we doubled the amount we paid to the family budget, just like my other brothers who were living at home. All my younger siblings were still at school, and we wanted to make sure they didn’t miss out. It’s another tragic story, the demise of steel. Even the NUM was slow at supporting them. I attended a meeting to discuss how we could support the steelworkers. The Yorkshire NUM was arguing that no new steel supplies would be allowed into pit yards for the duration of the strike. Coal mines used a lot of steel for roof supports and the like. We were high-producing and gobbled the stuff. Stocks by the second week or so were desperately low and coal production was under threat. A meeting was called at Silverwood, and it was suggested that stocks at Brookhouse Colliery could be moved into Silverwood. The Iron and Steel Trades Confederation had given the union a dispensation to allow this.30 Some of us, including myself and Steve, opposed it, but we lost the vote and steel from Brookhouse was allowed in. 

The steel workers lost, of course. My mum and dad both lost their jobs. I had to watch my dad go to one crap-paid job after another. It broke his spirit, and he became very demoralised. Thankfully, for the last few years of his working days, he found his forte working as a porter with the NHS in an old folks’ hospital. He loved it and they loved him.

A national coal strike nearly started when the miners at Merthyr Tydfil went on strike against closure in 1981, and it should have started. It was thwarted after Thatcher did a U-turn and put £250 million into the industry to stave off a fight. However, it didn’t save Merthyr Tydfil. In 1983, there was the overtime ban, to try and run down coal stocks, which went on forever. The Tories were obviously waiting for spring.31 People were itching for a fight. Then the coal board attempted to break the overtime ban at Manvers pit—and so we were on strike in South Yorkshire. The strike was supported by the South Yorkshire NUM panel.32 The only trouble we had was at Manton Colliery, though there weren’t serious numbers against the strike. There was also a strike in Scotland at Polmaise.

Then they announced that Cortonwood would close. And that’s when the shit hit the fan. I remember, at our union meeting, the branch president pulled down the branch banner from the back of the stage and said: “it’s war!” Funnily enough, a number of Silverwood branch officials and committee members loved me before the strike as someone who came to all the union meetings, but by the end of the strike, as I joined the SWP and became politically active, some didn’t like me so much. You had to get used to rubbing the officials up the wrong way. We wanted to unite, but needed to win arguments with people to stop them going back.33

Phil: Many miners have told me that those 12 months were the first time they’d seen the sun in the morning and evening because of shift work. What was it like being on strike for a year?

Ian: The strike was exciting. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. I tried keeping a diary at one point. I still have fragments of it, and when I look at it, I thought “bloody hell!”. One entry says: “Got back at midnight and got up at 4am next day for picketing. It finished with [my partner] Mandy not [being] happy.” The whole year was like that. Mandy, my wife at the time, like a lot of other women in mining areas, founded the local women’s support groups. Silverwood women preferred the label “action group” though. You didn’t mess with Silverwood Women’s Action Group—these groups kept the strike together and Mandy and others are, rightly, super proud of the role they played in the strike.

However, you had incredibly low points. In particular, when our communities came under police occupation. It was hard, what we went through. I still feel it today. Especially the way the police treated us. One day, I was pushing my daughter in her pushchair down the street and a police van pulled up. These coppers shouted at me: “Hey you, Mitchell. We’re going to get you. We’re going to beat you up and rape your wife!” This is what we had to go through. That’s why we say: “Never forget; never forgive!”

There’s a myth that the strike was unending misery from beginning to end. It was hard and people were short of everything. Miners died scavenging for coal to keep their homes warm. For me, the phrase from Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities comes to mind: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” There was a real strong sense of solidarity among people, and peoples’ lives were transformed. They saw things, and each other, differently. They saw solidarity as the basis of a better world. That didn’t die with the end of the strike.

I’ll never forget the run-up to Christmas in 1984. There was so much pride that we were still out that people resisted the propaganda, and the enormous amounts of money on offer to go back. We filled the kids’ stockings with toys; the kitchens laid on fantastic meals—all thanks to the solidarity of trade unionists. 

My ideas changed tremendously, particularly about reform and revolution. I changed myself, but the best thing was watching other people change. They became different, people held different ideas because of the strike. All the divisions in society just melted away because people saw the importance of unity. They started to really understand who the enemy was and who were their friends. Youth whose parents came from the Indian subcontinent started turning up on the picket lines with curries. When we talked to them about police brutality, they said: “Tell us about it!” The LGBT+ community in London, who built links with the Welsh miners, challenged homophobia—now immortalised in the wonderful film Pride.34 The role of women and the support groups, all those divisive ideas about racism, sexism and homophobia, they just didn’t make sense. The best-selling badge at our pit was a pink triangle saying: “gays support the miners”. 

I’m proud to say that, after the strike, other SWP miners and I were able to get our NUM local branches, area and national union to support the campaign against Clause 28.35

Phil: How would you describe the feeling as a young miner fighting back? And what role did the SWP play?

Ian: It was absolutely liberating because it was so long coming. We were relieved it had started. Lots of people of my age and younger were really up for it and put their names down to volunteer. But we quickly started to see weaknesses, and we knew we were being underused. A bit in my diary says that I turned up one day and they said, “We’ve got enough pickets!” So, I didn’t go out that day. I was so furious, and other people had the same experience.

This is why Steve and the party started to challenge the passivity and argued for strike committees, raising solidarity and collections. There was far too much of that “we can do it alone” stuff. People even argued that groups of workers like the steelworkers wouldn’t support us. This is when I started to see the importance of an organisation like the SWP, which looked at the strike from a class perspective. It was in everyone’s interest to stop Thatcher in her tracks, not just the miners.

I remember Mick Hawker, a steelworker coming from Stocksbridge, with a bag of money he’d collected.36 Here’s a group of workers who some miners said will never support us because they got defeated and partly blame us for it, blah, blah, blah. Then this guy with a bag of money came along, coming off his shift. The union officials didn’t want him to speak but we got him to do so and he was great—and that forced the officials to look for wider support. We didn’t get everything we wanted, but it forced them to move.

When you say things, you have to back it up, and that’s why SWP districts like Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds and throughout the country had to respond. Everybody had to respond. That network had to be tapped into. People used to think we had some kind of magic wand that we could set up these things.

Comrades across the country were starting to collect money and organise meetings for the miners. Obviously, other people in the Labour Party, groups like Militant and other good trade unionist were doing the same.37 However, the SWP expected every member to heed the call. Whatever they did, wherever they worked, they were expected to pull out all the stops. The slogan “Agitate, Educate, Organise!” came alive. I started going to SWP branch meetings each week in Sheffield.

I remember a group of us from Silverwood went to Manchester in April, and we collected a couple of thousand quid to take back. The SWP held a rally. Steve was on the platform, along with Paul Foot, who I knew as the columnist in the Daily Mirror. The other speaker was a guy called Tony Cliff. Wow, what an experience listening to those two legends along with Steve!38 I was blown away. Steve came down and asked me to join the party—so I did. Among some of the NUM officials I was now being described as the “sorcerer’s apprentice”. I wore that as a badge of pride. Like a lot of young militants, I really found my voice in the strike.

I saw the importance of Socialist Worker, which every week had the strike on the front page, with informative articles, but also important arguments about the role of the state, the role of the union bureaucracy, the Labour Party and so on. Not surprisingly, we ended up getting sent our own bundle of papers to Silverwood. Because the hardship was absolutely real, we cut the price from 20p to 10p for strikers. Obviously, if someone was absolutely skint, we didn’t begrudge them a copy, but by and large people paid 10p. Our SWP organiser, Dave Hayes, used to turn up with a bundle, put it on the floor and people would hand over their 10p coins.

Other lads at Silverwood did join the party, though the impact of the defeat took its toll. A good few years after the strike, we still sold a good number of papers at Silverwood. The mood changed from one of anger to one of demoralisation, which I’ll talk more about later.

Phil: When NUM leader Arthur Scargill was targeted years after the strike by the Daily Mirror and the Tories, you played a big part in defending him. What’s your view of Scargill?

Ian: Arthur Scargill was head and shoulders above any other trade union leader at the time or since. We, as a party, don’t get enough credit for defending him. We organised a big rally at Sheffield City Hall with Scargill and Peter Heathfield.39 Paul Foot was speaking. It helped turn the tide.

The miners elected Scargill with an overwhelming majority because all of us knew Thatcher and the Tories were coming for us. We wanted someone who would fight and had a record of winning. Voting for Scargill as president, when there were three million unemployed, was a vote for the right to work and a sign that we were prepared to fight for it.

Scargill was absolutely in tune with the rank-and-file militants, particularly in Yorkshire. We had seen what had happened to steelworkers and engineering workers, and we weren’t going to see our lives wrecked like that. We wanted to fight, and when the strike started, we wanted to spread it fast. We wanted a repeat of 1972, when militant action brought the country to a standstill. That is what Scargill wanted too, but there was a weakness. Unlike 1972, which was led by the rank and file, in 1984, there was a section of the union leadership that was seen as allied to Scargill, but in reality held us back. At times, it seemed as if Scargill was acting with his hands tied, and he was, because the leaders of the union’s Scottish, Welsh and Yorkshire areas were out to undermine him. It wasn’t until quite late in the strike that we had enough people who were prepared to act independently of the union officials if needed.

We saw it at the Orgreave coking plant. It has gone down in history as Scargill walking into a trap laid by MacGregor, Thatcher and the police.40 In reality, it was the climax of an attempt to stop the steel industry. On 18 June 1984, the police and Thatcher probably did choose to put the boot in, using paramilitary tactics to teach us a lesson. However, if we had 50,000 miners and other workers, we would have achieved what the miners and engineers did in 1972 at Saltley Gates and closed the plant. A lot of bad things happened that day and the area officials refused to mobilise again. They played up the beating the police gave us, which created fear.

The militants and Scargill campaigned to focus our action on hitting industry, but the NUM area leaders tried to sabotage our action. In the end, the area leaders got their way. Truth be known, they never wanted to mobilise big for Orgreave.

I hope folk go and see the brilliant recently released documentary Strike: An Uncivil War. The documentary smashes the narrative that we were responsible for the riot that day. It also shows the lengths the British state, cheered on by the majority of the media, would go to in order to defeat a group of workers. It gives me a wee bit of hope 40 years down the line that we could see some justice, in particular for the boys who were facing life imprisonment—at least for those who are still with us.41

After Orgreave, Thatcher and the National Coal Board’s strategy was to try and break us in our heartlands. Bribe, beat and starve us back to work was the order of the day. Key moments, like the dockers going on strike (twice) and the deputies’ union National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers balloting to strike, came and went in Thatcher’s favour. 42 The Trade Union Congress and Kinnock left us isolated.43 No second front opened up. And still, we held on until our own union caved and ordered us back with no agreement. For me, the worst thing about that was that they didn’t even try to get an amnesty for the sacked lads, but, aye, we were done and back we went.

Phil: What happened after the strike?

Ian: We were beaten in the end, but it wasn’t a rout. We still resisted. Kent miners tried to stay out in solidarity with the thousand men who had been sacked during the strike. At Silverwood, we stayed out a day longer because we refused to cross the Kent miners’ picket line. A year after the strike, there was loads of unofficial action in the pits. Where we held it together during the strike, we could hold it together afterwards. Remembering what we did isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about one simple lesson: It’s always better to fight than to give in to the bosses.

Some miners couldn’t face going back and left, but there was a fight to be had. At first, it felt like you were pushing against an open door: there was so much anger still around. There were strikes over the bonus scheme, strikes over the charter the pit bosses tried to impose on conduct. It started at Bentley, and Frickley was also out. I was victimised. My own case was with a bloke called Roy Williams, whose nickname was Nice Guy because he was a nice guy. We’d been on a go-slow to put pressure on to get people back who’d been sacked for minor offences, like picking coal.44 One of the pit gaffers on our district reported us, saying, “Watching Ian Mitchell and Nice Guy work was like watching grass grow.” This was read out at a meeting with the management, but thankfully, at that time, the union officials were absolutely up for a fight. The afternoon shift that day refused to work, so the pit manager backed off. The manager said that Nice Guy would learn from the incident, but Mitchell had a “funny way of looking at the world”. The union guys went ballistic. I pointed to a Financial Times article in which this manager had gone on about how he was going to smash the militants.

I could see them putting a noose round my neck, but I couldn’t do anything about it. They tried again in 1987 and again were forced to back off. In 1988, they got me. I wasn’t in a good place, and I woke up one morning and experienced what I think was a panic attack. I didn’t go to work and was given a warning. Not long after that, it happened again. I left myself open, and they got me. The union organised a meeting with the management to discuss what they were going to do with me. When I turned up, they had held the meeting without me being present. They told me the best they could get for me was my redundancy. The pits workforce had started to change. Loads of lads had taken the money, and my team had changed. I knew I wouldn’t get any support this time. Also, mentally, I think I was exhausted. 

It was the most uncomfortable time of my life, to be honest. I was wrestling with the idea of whether I should take redundancy, £14,000, and give it to Mandy for my daughter Tanya. But in the end, I knew it was right not to, and to this day I know this was the right decision. If I had taken it that day, my name would have been used in other cases. I couldn’t live with the thoughts of someone being told: “If its good enough for Mitchell, the SWP miner, to take it, it’s good enough for you.” I chose a principled stand. In hindsight, however, I wish I had pursued some kind of constructive dismissal case. I was a mess, though, and the “witch-hunt” came not just from management but also some sections of the union. 

After the Bentley Strike in 1988, the Yorkshire Post reported that an NUM official from Silverwood had said that the Yorkshire NUM was “infected with Trots who, like cancer, need to be cut out”.45 A couple of days later my car was sabotaged in the pit carpark, leading to me nearly having an accident. I was also banned from the miners’ welfare by the welfare committee on the grounds that I was involved in “activities not in line with the club’s policy” since I sold Socialist Worker. This was a blatant attempt to stop me attending NUM union meetings. 

The mood changed by the late 1980s. Silverwood was a microcosm. Some of the best people had left. As they say, “The shit rises to the top,” and in the union, some were quite vicious to me and Steve. The Frickley strikes were brilliant, but we were losing connections with people. Miners were coming from other pits, which was fine, but you hadn’t got the same connection. And the pit bosses used redundancy as a weapon. Steve used to say “when babbies are crying give them sweets”—he meant the enhanced redundancy. They spent a hell of a lot shutting pits and getting rid of miners.

We were not immune to the general political situation. Wapping in 1986 was another wasted opportunity.46 When Thatcher beat Kinnock in 1987, that deepened the feeling of despair. The Poll Tax battle saw Thatcher off, but the Tories under Major won again.47 Later, there were the pit closures in 1992: the country, though not so much the miners, who weren’t confident, erupted in anger. Scargill became the best-loved man in Britain, and everybody seemed to be demanding a general strike. For me, when Heseltine announced the 31 pit closures, that was the moment Blair won the 1997 election.48 The Tories never recovered.

As for myself, after being sacked, I finally went to a doctor. She told me I was suffering from depression, and she helped me a lot. Not many people would have taken such a step. Back then, miners didn’t do mental illness. You were expected to dig in and tough it out.

The first job I had after the pit was as a parkkeeper for two summers, on a six-month contract. I tried Royal Mail, the railways, labouring jobs, but I didn’t get any reply. Later, I found out through documents from the Tory headquarters that I’d been “blacklisted” through the Economic League, along with hundreds of others.49 I was on the dole and was asked by the SWP to work around a strike in Peterborough, building solidarity with it. That was my introduction to life as a full-time political organiser. After that, I worked on building Stop the War rallies in Leicester, then became SWP district organiser in Newcastle and later Glasgow.50 I did it for 14 years. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot.

However, during this time, I had a heart attack, so I had to massively reassess my life. I got a job in the care sector, working with young adults with autism. Then I became a mental health care worker, working with the homeless. Later, I got a job in an NHS community health team. I now work as a first responder in the voluntary sector on the Isle of Bute, where I live.

Phil: Recently we’ve seen large-scale protests and repression over the Israeli attack on Gaza. Do you see any link between the miners’ strike and the Palestine solidarity movement today?

Ian: A comrade recently said to me that, during the strike, the SWP recruited lots of young people, many of whom went on to play leading roles, and for them it was not just a single issue. People were wanting to discuss everything; that was the role the party played at that time. We can see that today, the same kind of atmosphere over Palestine. A new generation is making a stand.

I went to an event held last year in Glasgow, after the 7 October attacks on Israel, called Marxism in Scotland.51 I was blown away by the number of youngsters, many of whom led, organised and contributed to the meetings. A couple of months ago, I was on a fantastic pro-Palestinian demo. We marched around the city, and it was like a flying mass picket, stopping at places like Barclays Bank and Starbucks. Same with all the protests I’ve been on in Glasgow and London. It really does give you hope that we can change this mess of a world. 

I can remember during our strike sitting down and reading about the Russian Revolution of 1917, reading Lenin and Trotsky—what an education! I did have a bit of a grounding beforehand, which helped, but not about revolution. The strike taught me that revolution isn’t only possible; it’s necessary.

Ian Mitchell works as a first responder in the voluntary sector and is a member of the Socialist Workers Party in Scotland.

Notes