Dispute that divided the nation: 40 years on from the Miners Strike

The year-long struggle between the miners and the National Coal Board which started exactly 40 years ago today split communities and set family member against family member.

There were friendships formed on the picket lines; but also feelings of betrayal, as the drift back to work finally began.

And a strike that miners hoped would save their industry marked, for many, the beginning of the end of large-scale coal mining in the UK.

For many who were involved, the strike left bittersweet memories. Even 20 years after it ended, those feelings endured.

A picket is arrested and carried off to a police van during the miners strike in 1984 (Image: Yorkshire Evening Press)

One former Selby miner, Ken Rowley, told The Press in 2004 – on the 20th anniversary of the strike – that there were lasting resentments over those miners who had gone back to work early.

He worked at Wistow mine on the Selby coalfield, where he was one of 100-or-so miners who stayed out the full 12 months.

He and his colleagues had a name for miners who went back early, he told The Press in 2004: BBCs, for ‘Back Before Christmas’. "It is never forgotten," he said.

The dispute is officially dated as beginning on March 6, 1984 - although Yorkshire miners had walked out the day before, on March 5, after the announcement that the Cortonwood pit near Barnsley was to close.

By March 12, half of Britain’s 187,000 miners had followed suit.

Arthur Scargill speaking to miners and their families at a rally in Scott Road Selby on August 23, 1984 (Image: Yorkshire Evening Press)

Initially, picket lines at Selby were friendly. Some picketing miners even talked of police bringing them cups of tea.

Then came the infamous ‘Battle of Orgreave’ - a violent confrontation in June 1984 between picketing miners and police at the British Steel coking plant at Orgreave, in Rotherham.

The media images of hate-filled faces, of donkey-jacketed miners at war with police in riot gear, changed the whole atmosphere of the dispute.

A picket being arrested at the Orgreave coking plant during the 1984 miners strike (Image: Contributor)

North Yorkshire was soon to have its own memorable stand-off, which came to be known as the ‘siege of Selby’.

On July 6, about 1,000 miners effectively sealed the town off by blockading the toll bridge over the Ouse.

Selby was brought to a standstill on July 6, 1984, by striking miners blockading Selby Toll Bridge (Image: Yorkshire Evening Press)

The siege lasted two and a half hours, until police began to mass at the Barlby side of the bridge.

Cars blocking the approach to Selby toll bridge during the 'Siege of Selby' on July 6, 1984, which brought the town to a standstill (Image: Yorkshire Evening Press)

The blockade was peaceful - although outside the Evening Press offices in Gowthorpe a van carrying contractors to one of the Selby mines was overturned.

Later, during clashes at Whitemoor mine, ten police officers and three pickets were hurt.

Ugly scenes in the Selby coalfield on June 15, 1984, as police and strikers clashed at the North Selby Mine, near Escrick. Hundreds of miners were picketing all five Selby pits and Gascoigne Wood (Image: Yorkshire Evening Press)

Eventually, the length of the dispute began to take its toll. By August 1984 the cracks had begun to show as the first few rebel miners returned to work.

The slow drift back to work continued throughout the autumn and winter, and the strike officially ended on March 3, 1985.

Police and pickets clashing at Selby during the Miners Strike of 1984 (Image: Yorkshire Evening Press)

The legacy for the UK mining industry was devastating.

Ken Rowley told The Press in 2004 that when he became a miner in 1961 there were about 700,000 miners in the UK. By 2021, it is thought there were fewer than 500.

The Selby coalfield itself – which consisted of five mines, at Riccall, Wistow, Stillingfleet, Whitemoor and North Selby near Escrick, plus the central distribution ‘hub’ that was Gascoigne Wood – survived in the short term.

Kellingley miners marching back to work behind their banner in a demonstration of solidarity and defiance at the end of the miners strike, on March 5, 1985 (Image: Yorkshire Evening Press)

It had opened only in 1976, and was touted as the ‘future of UK mining’.

By the mid-1990s, it was breaking European production records.

But then it all went wrong.

There was plenty of coal: but the coal seams were fractured, making it difficult to mine.

Eventually, the decision was made to close the coalfield. Whitemoor was the first to go, closed in July 1996. North Selby followed in 1997.

The remaining three pits closed in 2004 – Wistow in May that year, Stillingfleet in July, and Riccall in October.