The miners’ strike of 1984–5 signalled the beginning of the end for the industry in Britain. It was followed by such widespread pit closures that the mining trade was shortly as good as dead. The year-long strike was a time of heavy-handed picketing, police aggression, and hardship. The strike saw a period of high solidarity in the mining community, who had many supporters. Those few who continued to work were considered traitors and never forgiven. As a spokesman, Mick McGahey, from Bilston Glen colliery in East Lothian, was one of the loudest voices of protest during the strike.
I was born in Glasgow and moved through to Edinburgh in 1967/68, left the school at fifteen, went to Bilston Glen and started working in … April 1971, and worked there for thirteen years, eight months until I was sacked during the miners’ strike …
The start of the strike was quite a traumatic time but it was interesting, it was good. The thing that stands out is the solidarity, particularly the first six months wi’ all the workers that were involved and the solidarity that came from other trade unions, particularly SOGAT (Society of Graphical and Allied Trades). No’ just the money but the practical things that they gave to strike centres like foodstuffs, but also toiletries and stuff like that that women would use. It wasnae just about men being on strike, it was about women and men and their families and a lot of the unions reflected that in the type of stuff that they gave and in the way that they gave it.
The one thing that happened was that I got arrested nine times during the strike, well it was five times and nine charges, and out of that it was four I was convicted o’ and five I wasnae…. At that particular time it didnae have that much effect getting the sack. To a certain degree it was like earning your stripes, you know …
We did pit head collections every Friday and the main problem was that, at the end o’ the strike, you started off wi’ thirty or forty people standing outside Bilston Glen and various other pits, but by the second year it was only two or three. It was after the first six months, though, that it really started to affect people. People really realized that they wernae going to take you back …
But right up until the time where Bilston Glen was shut, and that was a few years after the strike, my intentions were that I was going back working in the pit. But when Bilston Glen was shut that was the bubble burst for me … I miss the pit, I miss the work. I don’t miss the shifts but I certainly miss the people I worked with, even the ones that scabbed. Some of them.