Channel Four’s half-story of the miners’ strike

Above: the ‘Battle of Orgreave’

By John Cunningham

Some aspects of the Channel 4 documentary on the 1984-85 miners’ strike, The Battle for Britain, are worth paying attention to. It includes interviews with former striking miners, who give straightforward, honest and hard-hitting accounts of what happened to them and, in particular, their appalling treatment at the hands of the police.

The contrast is stark with the accounts from miners who worked through the strike: they seem blissfully unaware of the broader issues of the strike. They offer a fixation with the idea of “intimidation” as driving the strike, but little in the way of evidence is offered.

A couple of policemen are interviewed, but as often in these instances, there is little that lifts their contributions beyond the level of platitudinous drivel. The “official” political input is provided mainly by the intensely boring Robin Butler CVO, KCB, GCB, KG, a stuffy career civil servant who was Thatcher’s Private Secretary during the strike. As befits a former Head Boy at Harrow he is a master of the cliché, but says nothing of substance.

The episode centred around Orgreave showed where the real intimidation lay. The police engineered a trap for the strikers and arrested 95 miners, who were then charged with riot, which potentially carries a long prison sentence.

The court cases that followed in Sheffield clearly demonstrated that the police arrests and supposed “evidence” were utter fabrications. All 95 were acquitted and the charges withdrawn.

Channel Four chose not to mention the case, in 2012, where an ex-miner was charged with an actual crime and found guilty. Neil Greatrex stole funds from a retired miners’ home, was found guilty, and received a prison sentence. Greatrex worked throughout the strike and was a leading figure in the establishment of that pathetic travesty of a trade union, the so-called UDM (Union of Democratic Miners).

The programme omits what happened to the working miners who continued in the industry when the strike was over. Did their loyalty to Margaret Thatcher save their jobs? Roland Taylor, one of the working miners who features prominently in the programme, describes how, after the strike, he was invited (via an anonymous phone call) to a “drink” in London where Margaret Thatcher turned up.

Sherry

Well, I hope he enjoyed his glass of sherry, because his pit, Shirebrook in North Derbyshire (which features prominently in the programme), was closed in 1994. The “loyalty” of the UDM was repaid by the closure of all Nottinghamshire mines. The last pit in Nottinghamshire to close was Thoresby in July 2015. Other pits such as Shireoaks closed as early as 1990.

The miners who worked through the strike, in Nottinghamshire and elsewhere, ended up no different from those who stayed loyal to the union. Their reward for betraying their union and their community was to be flushed down the toilet, along with everybody else.

Much heralded, and timed for the 40th anniversary of the most important strike in British history, the Channel 4 series promises much but delivers little. Much of the treatment is superficial. There is almost no attempt at contextualisation and the historical background is paltry.

For example, why did the Nottinghamshire coalfield prove so resistant to joining the strike, though about 20% of the 32,000 workforce did join, and there were Women’s Support Groups and other supporters from the area. The only answer given by the documentary — and repeated ad nauseam — is that “intimidation” explains the success of the strike elsewhere.

In fact, in the initial weeks of the strike, striking miners went into Nottingham to meet miners going to work and talk to them, with the result that many turned back. Support for the strike was clearly growing. The Thatcher government was rattled. It responded by mobilising thousands of police from up and down the country and eventually “sealed off” the Nottinghamshire coalfield.

There are many, many omissions from the documentary. Ian McGregor, the manager of the National Coal Board (formerly of the British Steel Corporation), imported by Thatcher from the USA gets no mention. Cortonwood colliery in South Yorkshire, whose threatened closure was the initial spark for the strike, is ignored. Thatcher’s whole closure programme gets a brief mention, but there are no details and the NUM’s response is omitted.

There is no mention of the murky connections of Roger Windsor, an National Union of Mineworkers executive officer. (After many charges and counter-charges, former MI5 chief Stella Rimington chose her words carefully. “It would be correct to say that he, Roger Windsor, was never an agent in any sense of the word that you can possibly imagine and that MI5 did not run agents in the National Union of Mineworkers… That’s not to say that the police or Special Branch … might not have been doing some of those things”.)

This dish of cold left-overs is all the more surprising because during the strike Channel Four, along with some foreign news services, was one of the few media outlets trusted by the striking miners. At the so-called Battle of Orgreave, Channel Four’s footage showed clearly that the pickets began throwing stones etc. at the police in response to being charged down by mounted police. The BBC reversed this footage and made it appear that the mounted police charge was in response to stone throwing (which could hardly be described as intense).

Many years later the BBC “apologised”, claiming a “mistake” in the editing process. In The Battle for Britain Channel Four, despite having got it right in 1984, has itself reversed the footage!

Better on the strike

Films:Which Side are you On? (1984) Documentary. Dir. Ken Loach: here

Still the Enemy Within (2014) Documentary. Dir. Owen Gower: here

Brassed Off (1996) Dir. Mark Herman. A colliery band struggles to survive after the closure of the pit is announced: here

Pride. Dir. Matthew Warchus. Uplifting film about Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners: here

Website: Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign otjc.org.uk

Books, pamphlets: Class Against Class: The Miners’ Strike 1984-5. Workers’ Liberty book

The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners. Seumas Milne

Marching to the Frontline. Francis Beckett and David Hencke.

Shafted: The Media, the Miners’ Strike and the Aftermath. Edited by Granville Williams. Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom

Across Frontiers. Jonathan Saunders. Detailed account of the international solidarity evoked by the miners’ strike

Poetry: Any poems by Mogg Williams are worthy of attention: particularly Of Bread, Gods and Men (1987) and Mogg’s People (1985). Although he died long before the strike the poetry of Idris Davies still retains its power and beauty.

Stage: Close the Coalhouse Door (1968): Musical written by Alan Plater, songs by Alex Glasgow. Has been revived and updated on a number of occasions. Fine renditions of various songs from it are performed by the Unthanks, a band based in the North East.

The Pitmen Painters (2009): Drama by Lee Hall. Concerns the development of the Ashington group of miners, who became accomplished artists.

The strange case of David Hart

The Channel Four documentary spends a large part of the third episode recounting the story (or myth) of David Hart who, it is claimed by some, played a major role in advising Margaret Thatcher on the strike and engineering the downfall of the NUM. Hart is one of those individuals, much loved by the media, who are frequently portrayed as a cross between James Bond, the Scarlet Pimpernel and a character from a John Buchan novel. A product of Eton, Hart never had a “proper job”, apparently being satisfied with a “playboy” lifestyle and property investments while carousing with the rich and powerful and dreaming up various schemes, some of which, such as engineering a coup in Equatorial Guinea, suggest a fantasist of the first stripe. A warrant was issued for his arrest but nothing came of this. Hart did advise Thatcher about the strike and did travel round Nottinghamshire (in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes according to some reports!) drumming up support for a breakaway union from the NUM and handing out dosh to those he deemed worthy. To what extent he was a key player in the strike, as suggested by Chanel Four, is open to question. Even many Tories were distrustful of him (he was once refused a ticket to the Tory Party Annual Conference), as was Roy Lynk, the ultra-dim President of the UDM. Hart died in 2011. Good riddance.

• This article also appears in the latest issue of Solidarity and on the Workers Liberty website.