Thatcher

The good start

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The railway into Kellingley Colliery, ©Alan Murray-Rust (CC BY-SA 2.0)

When Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited  Scotland he was asked to name the date when the UK would be free of fossil fuel.  He provided no answer, instead he talked of the “good start” provided by Mrs Thatcher’s closure of the coal mines, adding to the view that the dramatic closure of the British coal industry was driven by environmental necessity. Anything but as my friend Ray Hudson and I explore in our article in Tribune.  Thatcher’s main concern was the NUM. Our reliance on coal extended well beyond the closure of the mines. Today Britain is far less well prepared for a green future that countries (like Germany) that kept their pits open longer. 

When the last coal mine – Kellingley – closed in 2015 its shipments to the Drax power station were replaced with coal from Russian mines then adding to the half a trillion tonnes of imports made by the UK since 2001. Meanwhile on the coalfields the miners were, to all intents and purposes, pensioned off and their future left in the hands of the market and the beneficence of foreign inward investment. There was no strategic national plan for the coalfields or for a green economy!  Today, Johnson’s description of Britain as the “Saudi Arabia of wind” ignores the 34% of electricity generation that comes from burning gas in power stations.

All this is fanciful. The future may well lie in off-shore wind power but no British company has the expertise that Vestas and Siemens-Gamesa have accumulated over the last decades. In fact, the number of  companies based in the UK involved in off-shore wind  declined  by a third in the years between 2014 and 2019.   If there was indeed an early start it has clearly been wasted.  Johnson’s projection of the UK as a “world leader” in climate change has already been called out as a lie and it is clear that any future    green revolution it’s unlikely to be  driven by technologies ‘built better’ in the UK  on its old industrial regions.

No, Thatcher’s War on the Miners Wasn’t Good for Green Politics – Tribune 24/08/2021

Our book is now published…

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Well our new book The Shadow of the Mine: Coal and the End of Industrial Britain is now published and also reviewed here and there:

“A hymn to working-class community and to men and women’s souls” Will Hutton, author of The State We’re In

“Refreshing and necessary … [The Shadow of the Mine] explains in loving, careful detail why working people’s relationship with Labour in former industrial communities … had become complex and ultimately soured.” Laura Pidcock, Red Pepper

“Their brilliant analysis of the decline of British coal mining, and its social and political effects, is required reading for those who would speak for this working class. It is in many ways a study in the lost world of British labourism.” David Edgerton, The Times Literary Supplement

“The Shadow of the Mine reminds us why this spirit [of solidarity and collectivism] has lived on in the coalfields, in spite of people feeling a sense of political betrayal going back decades … enlightening.” The Guardian

“Their new book is essential reading for anyone who wants to dig deeper beyond vague generalizations about the “red wall” that have proliferated since December 2019…Beynon and Hudson encourage us to explore the long-term trends that have shaped the bewildering political situation we find ourselves in now” Charlotte Austin, Jacobin

“The Shadow of the Mine, is a moving account of 150 years of coalfield history, focusing on South Wales and Durham. It is not, however, a detached study of the past. By tracing the “deep story” of the marginalisation of Britain’s coalfields, it aims to understand the continuing exclusion of working-class people in deindustrialised areas from political and social life…if the current Labour leader wants to understand the challenges facing him, he would be far better reading The Shadow of the Mine than listening to PR companies telling him to wrap the party in a union jack.” Diarmaid Kelliher, Antipode Online

About the book

The Shadow of the Mine: Coal and the End of Industrial Britain, London, Verso, 2021, 402pp. ISBN -13:978-1-83976-156-0

This historical study of the coal industry tells of King Coal in its heyday and how communities of mining families created a unique and powerful social and political presence in areas like South Wales and Durham. In 1984 miners here were involved in a yearlong strike to save jobs  and to save coal mining. After the defeat the industry went into precipitous decline and this book outlines the social and political consequences that followed: often told in the words of the people themselves.

How Black were our Valleys – Book Review

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How Black were our Valleys

How Black were our Valleys

Debora Price and Natalie Butts-Thompson

“If you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything”
This is what one of the women interviewed for this book feels that she has learned from living in the South Wales valleys and growing up during the coal miners’ strike of 1984/85.  In this way, through interviews and extracts from documents, the book tells of how the strike remains a lived reality in the valley towns of South Wales. One man, a young striker in his teens in 1984, reflected  that “the violence that was inflicted on me and the violence I witnessed fellow miners receive will stay with me for the rest of my days”.

The book itself was inspired by a speeches and discussion at a social evening at the Newbridge Hotel held on the occasion of the funeral of Mrs Margaret Thatcher. This led two undergraduate students to document stories of the strike that  they felt deserved to be more widely heard.  In a very short time, they have collected the materials, and published them in this excellent collection. One of them (Natalie Butts-Thompson) was a teenager herself in 1984 and her personal account is particularly moving. In exploring the voices of the young people the book brings a perspective that has been silent in many accounts of the strike. More generally  it challenges many of the myths that still exist, and helps to explain its lasting significance of the strike in people’s lives.

Review for Amazon

Huw Beynon

The Miners’ Strike – A Personal Memoir by Kim Howells

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It’s now 30 years since the epic struggle between the miners and a Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher, a strike that lasted a bitter twelve months. Former Labour government minister Kim Howells was involved at the heart of the action, working for the National Union of Mineworkers in South Wales. In this deeply-felt memoir, he asks some challenging questions about the conduct, the strategy and the outcomes of the strike.

This memoir by Kim Howells was Broadcast on BBC One, 10:25PM Sun, 9 Mar 2014, and is available on the Iplayer until 11:24PM Sun, 16 Mar 2014.

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