Significance Of The Num's Defeat In The Miners Strike

The impact of the NUM’s defeat in the Miners’ Strike encompassed the entire social, political and economic spectrums, making some significant contribution in all of the three areas in some way or another. However, whether they are evidence of the Miners’ Strike’s significance or of another factor outside of its sphere will be made clearer through further analysis of the year-long crisis in the coal industry.
The NUM’s defeat in 1985 is generally seen as a major victory against the excessive power of labour. Labour movements found themselves on the back foot after the Miners’ Strike as a series of legislation aimed at curbing union power ensured that they could never threaten the nation to the extent that they did. Simon Jenkins argues that
the unions “were now made subject to similar legal controls as other corporate institutions.”1 Moreover statistics regarding trade union membership affirm this tight control over the unions, highlighting that membership after the Miners’ Strike dropped from over 10 million to approximately 9 million2 by 1995, following the anti-union laws. Further compounding the NUM's misfortunes, their defeat allowed Ian MacGregor’s National Coal Board to force a rift between the organised labour movement, creating “a break away union [Union of Democratic Miners] in Nottinghamshire and other moderate areas,”3 in direct opposition to the NUM. A piece on the New Statesman claims that, “because the NUM was the trade unions’ Praetorian Guard, the defeat robbed organised labour of an important source of its self-confidence.”4 This adds weight to the notion that the strike achieved the exact opposite of what the unions had set out to do. With the NUM defeated and divided, the entire labour movement could no longer command influence as much as they did before. Consequently the NUM and other minor unions easily succumbed to the protracted anti-union campaign after the Miners’ Strike.
The unions, having been rendered impotent and irrelevant by their defeat, affected politics in such a way that Labour had to change itself completely through its disassociation with its traditional base of support, the unions.
The Labour leader, Neil Kinnock found himself “deliberately distancing itself [Labour] from the unions,”5 and “cauterizing – the Scargill factor.”6 Labour, forced by the outcome of the Miners’ Strike “to change its policies even more… in order to make itself electable,”7 abandoned its commitment to working-class interests by repealing Clause IV, once the cornerstone of its socialist policy. ‘New Labour’ with Tony Blair at the helm no longer had need for the trade unions’ support and, according to Alastair Campbell's diaries, Blair was quoted to have said that they can “just f**k off.”8 This clearly demonstrates how far Labour has distanced itself from the unions. At a speech in 1995, during a time of heated discussions over the removal of Clause IV, Blair commented on New Labour’s direction, stating that, “our relations with the trade unions changed and better defined for today's world.”9 However, perhaps Blair’s stated opinions on the party’s relationship with the unions may have been exaggerated as around the same time as his speech Labour support had dropped to 47% from a high of 53% earlier that year10. Therefore Blair may be emphasizing his anti-union rhetoric to win back support for his
party.
A more nuanced argument is that after the Miners' Strike Thatcher's brand of politics soon became irrelevant. Richard Vinen puts forward the view that “When the most terrifying of the British trade unions had been broken, the usefulness of her style of politics had ended.”11 There is evidence to support the claim that opinions of Thatcher took a downturn after the coal dispute. Public opinion polls taken five years after the Miners' Strike indicate a 10% and 17%12 fall in both Thatcher's personal popularity and that of her policies (respectively). In addition, a newspaper article published at around the same time lends credence to the belief that Thatcher outlived her usefulness, stating that, “a key element of her legacy... may have indirectly made the Labour Party electable again... Thatcher's uncompromising, almost school-marmish style of leadership... seems unsuited to the more subtle, consensus-building challenges of the late 1980s and 1990s.”13 This therefore validates the view that her triumph over the NUM more or less rendered her brand of politics irrelevant in post-Miners' Strike Britain.
Thatcher’s victory over the “the enemy within” accelerated her programmes of pit closures and privatization, transferring ownership of mines to private corporations which signalled the start of the “drastic shrinkage of what had been one of Britain’s greatest industries.”14 An article online suggests that between 1984 and 1992, 97 out of 170 pits had been closed, with 25 having been shut down in 1985, the year of the NUM’s defeat15. Furthermore, statistics show that by 1990, coal mining output reduced by 43%16 as alternative energy resources, such as oil and gas extraction saw an increase in production at the same time. It is suggested that Thatcher “took on the miners because she wanted to open up new energy markets, to have a broader energy policy.”17 However economic reasons as the cause for the decline of the coal mining industry may not necessarily be the most accurate diagnosis for in 1985, a hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic was discovered for the first time,18 prompting an increased awareness of the environmental cost of burning coal. Therefore perhaps Thatcher’s government with the need for reducing CO2 emissions in mind, no longer saw an incentive in subsidising an industry at the expense of environmental degradation.
The heavily diminished role of heavy industry in the economy of post-Miners’ Strike Britain allowed a shift in the economy to take place; the end of coal opened the way for the secondary and service sectors. According to a socialist article, Thatcher’s neoliberal revival of the economy resulted in “a consumer boom and the development of the new economy based on deregulation and private capital that even Labour has now embraced.”19 The growing prominence of the service sector, marked by the sharp growth of the finance and telecommunications industries by 45.7% and 37.3% respectively between 1981 and 1990.20 However, to conclude that the Miners’ Strike was the single cause for this shift would be arbitrary. For one, the implementation of the Ridley Plan during the strike proved that coal imports were much cheaper than extraction through domestic sources, rendering the UK coal industry obsolete. Furthermore, throughout the period preceding the Miners’ Strike, there was a growing trend amongst the industrialized nations to shift from industry towards the service economy. In the United States for example, manufacturing’s share of GDP declined from 24% to 18%21; there was a large shift from manufacturing intermediate to services intermediate22. Thus the significance of the Miners’ Strike is somewhat undermined when the changes brought about by its aftermath merely reflect the trends in the global economy.
Areas in northern England, once known for their connection with the mining industry, plunged quickly into poverty once the pit closure programmes got underway.
Deprived of their one major source of employment, according to an Ayrshire local, “Thatcher won, but the fabric of society was shredded, torn up and destroyed.”23 Indeed the strike took its toll on the small, isolated mining communities where unemployment levels soared to 50% by the late 1980s24 and towns such as Wakefield in Yorkshire was classed as one of the most deprived areas in Europe.25 However, it’s important to contextualize the former’s account of events since his definition of “society” may be somewhat narrow, applying solely to the socio-economic fabric of mining communities. For example, not all primary industries experienced a downturn since the productivity of the oil and gas industry along with agriculture increased by 0.8% and 18.8%26 by 1990 respectively, meaning an increase in the prosperity of people and communities dependent on those industries for income and employment. Therefore the local from Ayrshire may simply be using such emotive language, instead of stating facts, in order to garner sympathy and
support
During and after the Miners’ Strike, perceptions surrounding the police underwent a metamorphosis from upholders of law and order to the armed wing of the state, resulting in a lack of trust in the force and a breakdown in law and order. While Thatcher believed that “our police… upheld the law with an independence and a restraint,”27others, particularly during the Battle of Orgreave, witnessed police brutality which would act as a precedent for later examples of heavy-handed responses such as the Brixton Riots in 1985. In sharp contrast to Thatcher’s comments on the police, an article on the Guardian describes the events that took place at Orgreave as “the scene of a running battle between a highly trained and disciplined police force out of control and coal miners,”28 lending credence to claims of police brutality. Furthermore, merely a few months after the coal dispute, riots erupted in Brixton over the fatal shooting of a woman by the police. This example of police heavy-handedness combined with that at Orgreave undermines Thatcher’s praise of the police and considering she was speaking at a Conservative Party Conference, it’s more than likely that she underplayed the role of the police for the sake of political expediency.
When all is considered, it’s clear to see that the significance of the Miners’ Strike is defined by its role as the catalyst for wider change in the subsequent years after its conclusion. Its outcome, in favour of Thatcher and much to the detriment of the unions and the Left, greatly impacted the British political and economic structure; shifts in priorities and perspectives are the running motif throughout the period after the coal dispute. Indeed one of the great ironies of the whole affair was that while the strike marked the definitive end of the British coal mining industry, its demise having paved the way for the service sector, it simultaneously signalled the end for Thatcher, who remained in office for only five years after the strike. Meanwhile the lower classes, whose disillusionment caused by the loss of a once great industry and alienated by the scenes at Orgreave, no doubt contributed to the scale and intensity of the civil disorder such as the Brixton riots in the months following the Miners’ Strike. The strike set a rough precedent in Britain’s changing socio-economic condition in an increasingly globalized economy, where mass labour movements could no longer command such an influence as they did decades prior, especially in the face of cheap imports and outsourced labour. However the strike is most significant in that in the same way industry refashioned itself, the Labour Party, once the champion of working-class interests found itself making alterations to its constitution, becoming ‘New Labour’ without their trademark Clause IV, so as to better integrate with the new socio-economic landscape of the late 1980s and early 1990s.