Shoulder to Shoulder: An Analysis of a Miners’ Support Group During the 1984-85 Strike and the Significance of Social Identity, Geography and Political Leadership
By Beale, David
Drawing on the extensive archive of a support group in the 1984- 5 British miners’ strike, this study considers the process of establishing such a group, its primary welfare and fund-raising role, its attitude to picketing, women’s role and activity, and the role of a particular Marxist group within it. Three interrelated explanatory themes are emphasised: the process of social identification with the strike, geography and political leadership. Some qualification to this analysis is suggested in conclusion, as is the potential for applying and developing the approach more generally in explaining the success of support groups in the 1984-5 miners’ strike, in spite of their diverse forms and membership.
Introduction
While the 1984-5 miners’ strike differed from most other industrial disputes in several important respects, one of its particularly unusual and significant features was the extensive and diverse network of community-based strike support groups that was established throughout the UK, and also internationally. Although financial and material aid was given directly to the National Union of Mineworkers, and to the miners themselves and their families by trade unions, by some sections of the Labour party and a wide range of other organisations and individuals, the local miners’ support groups that emerged played a key role in providing this kind of assistance, and one that may have been the critical factor in enabling the strike to continue for so long (e.g. Massey & Wainwright, 1985; Richards, 1996: 149-57; Winterton &Winterton, 1989: 109, 113-14).
In 1984-5, there were fourteen miners’ support groups in the Liverpool area alone, which raised over 1 million for the strike. There were at least nineteen groups in Lancashire and Manchester (‘Miners Strike Committees and Support Groups’, undated circular, Chorley and Coppull Miners’ Support Committee archives); thirty- four women’s support groups in North Yorkshire; and possibly over three hundred support groups nationwide (Labour Research Department, 1985: 3; Massey & Wainwright, 1985: 151; Winterton & Winterton, 1989:121). The groups were united in the common goals of raising money, providing food and welfare, accommodating visiting strikers and supporters from other areas, maintaining morale and generally discouraging a return to work. While some of their members did participate in picketing, the support groups did not play a role in trying to organise industrial action by other groups of workers in support of the miners. Therefore, the resources the support groups needed in order to achieve their goals were largely financial and material donations, and people’s activity in terms of helping to organise this. However, the membership and forms the support groups took were diverse, ranging from miners’ wives’ and women’s support groups (some of which were formally linked to the Women Against Pit Closures national organisation), to more broadly-based miners’ support groups and committees, to lesbian and gay, student, unemployed, workplace and local union support groups, as well as important international networks and systems of support.
Previously published literature about the 1984-5 miners’ support groups can be divided into five categories: writings focusing on women’s role in the strike; support groups’ own celebratory publications; brief case studies published in edited collections; a largely factual and descriptive national survey; and fragmented references to support groups in more general accounts of the strike (e.g. Adeney & Lloyd, 1986; Barnsley Women Against Pit Closures, 1985; Bloomfield, 1986; Goodman, 1985; Knight, 1986; Labour Research Department, 1985; Massey &Wainwright, 1985; Miller, 1986; Oxford Miners’ Support Group, 1985; Richards, 1996; Seddon, 1986; Stead, 1987; Winterton & Winterton, 1989; Worsbrough Community Group, 1985). However, in spite of the considerable value of this literature in painting a vivid picture and providing important ethnographic data, absent from it is an analysis of the actual processes involved in establishing, organising and developing community support for the strike.
Such an analysis might help to explain why these groups were successful in meeting their objectives and why they became such an important and influential element in the strike, as previous literature has clearly demonstrated. This article argues that three main factors and their interrelationships can make an important contribution to an analysis: the means and process of social identification with the strike, its geography and its political leadership.
The notion of social identification can be related to social movement literature and its exploration by industrial relations specialists through mobilisation theory (Fantasia, 1988; Frege & Kelly, 2003: 13-14; Kelly, 1998: 24-38; McAdam, 1988). It refers to the social groups that an individual considers him- or herself to be a member of or empathises with. It has been linked to notions of perceived injustice, attribution (i.e. who or what is the cause of an event or development), willingness to act collectively, the form of collective action taken, and social agency particularly in terms of leadership (Kelly, 1998: 27-38, 44-51). This literature therefore suggests a basis for incorporating social identification into analyses of miners’ support group activity. In the context of this article, ‘social identification’ refers to the process by which those individuals who were active members of a miners’ support group identified with the strike and the way in which they strove to win wider support for it through their group’s activities. This question is easiest to answer with regard to members of strikers’ families in communities that were dominated by the coal industry, and in which there was overwhelming support for the strike from miners themselves.
However, it raises more difficult questions with regard to, for example, women’s groups or lesbian and gay strike supporters, and those located in London or on the south coast of England. Thus, the question of social identification and how it might be established and developed in the campaigning activities of support groups can be linked to the geography of the dispute.
Geography evidently played an important part in the form that different groups took, their specific objectives and the way they operated. The most obvious factor was whether the group was located within or outside a coalfield, since if it were the former then a direct relationship with strikers could be more easily established, and such groups were often set up and organised by the wives, partners, girlfriends, mothers and daughters of striking miners.
Geography was also important in terms of the characteristics of particular coalfields, in respect of both the level of support for the strike by miners themselves and the variations in economic, geological and political dimensions. For example, in some coalfields, mining dominated the local economy, while in others, mining was one of several sources of employment, a factor that affected the nature of mining communities both at the time of the strike and historically (e.g. Carr, 2001: 6-7).
While the idea of making sense of miners’ strikes and lock-outs in terms of geography is not new in itself (e.g. McIlroy et al., 2004: 3; Sunley, 1989; Gilbert, 1992, 1996), the potential for relating it to questions of social identification in the context of the 1984-5 support groups does open up new possibilities for analysis.
Another aspect of the strike worthy of analysis here is the question of political leadership. Fantasia (1988: ch. 3) and Kelly (1998: 32-6, 49-50) emphasise the links between leadership and perceptions of injustice, social identification, group cohesion, attribution, collective action and defending the legitimacy of taking such action.
However, Darlington (e.g. 1998, 2001, 2002) has also argued for the importance of left-wing leadership in the development of workplace union militancy, reporting findings from a wide range of sectors in support of his case that industrial relations research in the UK has placed too much emphasis on objective factors at the expense of understanding the role of social agency.
This article explores the analytical potential of this approach, based on the dimensions of social identification, geography and political leadership, by examining an extensive archive of a particular miners’ support group, citing evidence that has not been previously used for research purposes. The archive is unusually detailed, and was dated and filed chronologically at the time of the strike as an historical record.
Background and methodology
The support group studied was located on the edge of the Lancashire coalfield in the town of Chorley and the adjacent village of Coppull. There were significant divisions amongst Lancashire miners in 1984-85, though the majority eventually joined the strike following a complex and protracted train of events (Howell, 1989: 121-2). Not until 11 May 1984 did the area NUM officials declare the strike in Lancashire official, in response to a national union instruction. A Lancashire area NUM delegate conferenceaccepted this decision soon afterwards, and the Area Executive subsequently decided to suspend any branch officials or members who crossed picket lines (Howell 1989: 132-5).
Chorley had been a typical Lancashire cotton town, although by 1984-5, cotton and most other textile manufacturing had long since disappeared, and major employers in the area included a large truck and bus manufacturing plant and an important armaments factory. The town’s population was around 40,000. Coppull was traditionally a mining village, though the collieries around which the village had developed had been closed in the 19605. Approximately 125 miners lived in the Chorley and Coppull area, and were employed at collieries fifteen to twenty miles from their homes. About 85 per cent of them were on strike by the end of May 1984. The majority worked at Parkside Colliery (Newton-le-Willows), which was the largest colliery in the Lancashire coalfield at the time, but some were at Golborne (near Wigan), and one or two striking miners worked at Kirkless Workshops and at Bold and Bickershaw Collieries (figures based on the Chorley and Coppull Miners’ Support Committee food centre book records). However, there was also an opencast coal site on the outskirts of Chorley, which was a focus for picketing.
The support group was known as the Chorley and Coppull Miners’ Support Committee (referred to below as the MSC) . It operated as a new and relatively autonomous body but with representation from the local Labour party, the local Trades (Union) Council and the National Union of Mineworkers. A miners’ wives’ group was established later and operated in conjunction with the main committee, although in practice it acted more broadly as a women’s- rather than a wives’-support group, and women also participated quite extensively in the main committee.
The author of this article was chair of the Chorley and Coppull MSC, and was thus a participant observer, constructing the archive in a form that effectively constitutes a diary of the time. For the purposes of this article, however, every attempt has been made to avoid producing a memoir of the strike, with occasional exceptions that are indicated in the text.
The article instead analyses the documentary evidence alone, doing so with a relatively fresh sense of purpose twenty years after the events took place. While there are certain limitations to such an ethnographic methodology, these are arguably outweighed by considerable advantages in terms of the richness of the data and its potential to explain the detail, complexity and unfolding processes. There can be few support groups, including those that have published accounts of their activities, that managed to preserve dated records to this extent.
The article considers in turn five key aspects of the Chorley and Coppull MSC’S activity. These are:
(1) the way the support group was established;
(2) the group’s primary role in providing weekly food parcels and raising funds;
(3) its attitude to picketing;
(4) the significance of women activists in the strike, and
(5) the role of supporters of the Marxist group, Militant.
On the basis of these five aspects, the significance of the key questions of identification with the strike, geography, and political leadership are then discussed, and some wider conclusions and implications are suggested.
1. Establishing the support group
In the light of the particular circumstances of the strike in Lancashire, it was not until mid-May that a decision was taken within the local Labour party to establish a formal miners’ support group. In accordance with a motion proposed by its women’s section, the Chorley Constituency Labour Party elected five party members to organise local support for the strike:
This GMC [Labour Party General Management Committee] will set up a Miners’ Campaign Committee to assist miners in organising speaking tours and visits to local workplaces, this campaign committee to consist of Labour Party members and trade union delegates. (Chorley Constituency Labour Party agenda and notes, 17 May 1984)
The fledgling support group had a strong trade union dimension from the outset, numbering among its membership a sheet-metal workers’ senior shop steward from a large local factory (Keith Bamford, who became the support group’s secretary), a retired engineering union district secretary and a shop steward employed as a nurse.
Developments unfolded quickly over the next three weeks. First, the new support group met with Chorley Trades (Union) Council and secured its endorsement. In the process, a second key initiative was emerging, as the Trades Council president indicated:
The majority of the area’s 250 miners1 are now suffering severe hardship. The immediate problem facing many miners’ families is knowing where their next meal is coming from and to assist in the supply of food to the hardship cases, a collection centre and distribution point has been set up in the Labour Party rooms at 94 Clifford Street, Chorley. (Chorley Town Crier, 31 May 1984)
Third, the local Labour party women’s section visited the miners’ picket line that had been established at the Ellerbeck opencast coal site located just outside the town. Their visit received important local press coverage, with a photograph in the town’s newspaper and the headline ‘Women join miners on the picket line’ (Chorley Town Crier, 24 May 1984).
This acted to advertise the fourth initiative: a public meeting to be held in a well-known town centre pub on 31 May, in order to promote the new miners’ support group. Speakers at this meeting included Roy Jackson, the NUM Sutton Manor branch secretary; Len Brindle, representing the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions’ district committee, and well known in the area as the engineering union district secretary and a former British Leyland union convenor; and Christine Sullivan of Broadgreen Labour party, who was the wife of a striking miner and a supporter of the Marxist group, Militant. Up to 150 people attended, and 125 was raised by a collection (Charley Guardian, 7 June 1984).
The fifth development in establishing the support group was the direct involvement of striking miners in its activities and this was initially done through contact with the local pickets at the Ellerbeck site, and through their attendance at the 31 May public meeting. Thus the local pickets, as the key NUM activists in the community, played a critical role in influencing the decisions of the support group and quickly became the de facto local representatives of the NUM. In addition, their wives and partners soon began to participate alongside them in the support group’s weekly organising meetings.
In this and other respects, the group’s trade union links were now widening.
Immediately the Committee involved delegates from Chorley Trades Council and various representatives from Parkside and now Golborne National Union of Mineworkers Branches. We hope to have Bickershaw Colliery and Kirkless NCB Workshops NUM Branches represented on our Committee very shortly. (Letter from the MSC to the TGWU branch secretary, Preston Corporation Buses, 2 June 1984)
Another letter from the MSC, dated 18 June 1984 and sent to the secretary of the Chorley Labour Group of councillors, stated, ‘Also Leyland Motors Works Committee [i.e. the local British Leyland truck and bus factories] is now represented.’
2. Food, money and welfare
The MSC opened its doors as a food centre for striking miners on 4 June, and two weeks later it was distributing seventy food parcels each week, although this increased to eighty-six food parcels by mid- July, and to ninety-six by the end of October.2 With a drift back to work from November onwards, this figure declined to between forty and fifty food parcels by the end of the strike. Most food for the parcels was purchased and collected from the local Co-op supermarket, with between 4 and 8 spent per parcel.3
However, although the MSC’S appeals were primarily for money with which to purchase food, some food was also donated. For example, the British Leyland shop stewards’ committees sometimes preferred to purchase the food themselves and donate it to the MSC. They would thus be asked by the MSC to purchase a set number of identical items of food for the parcels (entry in MSC food centre record book, 18 July 1984). Also, by August, some companies and local farmers were beginning to make food donations to the MSC. An undated press cutting from August 1984 reports that ‘Local firms are … rallying round to provide essential food supplies. Sara Produce, of Charnock Richard, has given fruit and vegetables, Coppull farmer Alan Riding is offering cheap eggs …’.
A substantial fundraising operation was necessary in order to provide food parcels. In the period from the end of May to December 1984, 14,000 had gone through the MSC’S books, and by the end of the strike this figure had risen to 24,000 (Chorley and Coppull Miners’ Support Committee, Family Hardship Appeal leaflet, spring/summer 1985). MSC records indicate that trade union donations formed a major element of this. For example, in June, a donation was sent from the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) members at Preston Buses; in July, 183.40 was received from British Aerospace manual workers; in August, TGWU drivers at Scottish and Newcastle breweries (Chorley) donated 200; and in December, donations of 118 and 200 were made by the construction workers’ union shop stewards at British Nuclear Fuels’s Sellafield site.4 However, the MSC files report that Our biggest regular w/place donation has been the Chorley sites of B.L. [British Leyland] truck and bus’ (‘Solidarity with the Miners’ survey form, Labour Research Department, 6 March 1984).
In addition, street collections-and particularly those organised by miners’ wives and families-made a significant contribution, in spite of difficulties with the policeand the local Conservative council.5 However, lost from the records are the details of the numerous individuals who called in to the food centre to make donations, as are details of a regular financial contribution that was made to the MSC funds by the North West area NUM. This is believed to have been approximately 200 per week for about a six- month period that commenced in August or September 1984. This clearly made a substantial difference to the financial position of the MSC but, unfortunately, little documentation has been discovered to date regarding these details.6
Although providing food parcels and raising money in order to do so was the MSC’s primary function, it was also involved in other welfare activities, including the social events that were organised for striking miners’ children. Very often, miners and their families took the initiative in this regard, with the MSC playing a supportive role. Following a limited drift back to work in some coalfields in November 1984, striking miners and their families prepared for Christmas. In Chorley and Coppull, some miners took the initiative and launched an appeal for children’s toys, games, baby clothes and food, and the MSC also organised a benefit night at a local labour club in order to raise money for a children’s Christmas fund that it had set up (‘Christmas Is Coming’ appeal leaflet; MSC publicity leaflet).
3. Picketing
Local miners who picketed divided their time between different Lancashire collieries and the local opencast site, as directed by the NUM. Activists from Bold Colliery played a key role in picketing activities in Lancashire, as indeed they had at the start, when they occupied the Lancashire NUM Area Office in support of the strike (Howell, 1989: ch. 7).1 There were occasions on which non-NUM MSC members accompanied miners to the colliery picket lines but in most instances they visited the local picket at the Ellerbeck opencast site.
Ellerbeck was seen as significant by the NUM. Production was of 2- 2,500 tonnes a week, with thirty to forty lorries a day delivering coal to power stations in the North West. The sixty-five strong non- union workforce was employed by contractors Norwest Hoist Ltd (Lancashire Evening Post, 26 May 1984; Chorley Guardian, 31 May 1984). Operating a 24-hour picket, and occasionally adopting other drastic measures, NUM activists attempted to shut down the site, or to at least partially disrupt the distribution of coal. On 31 May 1984, the Chorley Guardian reported:
‘Five thousand gallons of diesel fuel have been drained from a tank at Ellerbeck opencast mine. Coal board officials say: “It was sabotage”. Bolt cutters were used to snap chains and locks securing the fuel tank. The fuel, which is used for vehicles and machines, was worth 4,000.’
Two months later, further incidents were reported at the site, this time at the expense of the pickets:
‘”The first encounter we had was the burning down of the (pickets’) hut which housed food and drinks.” … Other incidents included the spreading of broken glass on the grass verge where pickets park their cars, crockery has been smashed and the replacement hut has been dismantled’ (Charley Town Crier, 2 August 1984).
In spite of these events, there were few arrests and a mostly minimal police presence at Ellerbeck, aside from the occasional ‘push’ with the police when larger numbers of flying pickets turned up for short periods.
The NUM picket failed to shut down the opencast site, though the picket continued throughout most of the remaining period of the strike. For a combination of reasons, MSC members began to visit the site regularly from the end of May onwards. Such visits were easy to arrange since the picket was often present in the evenings, and most MSC members lived only ten minutes’ drive away. Significant direct links could thus be established with the leading local NUM activists, which probably encouraged both the morale of the pickets and the ability of the MSC to mobilise support for its own activities.
Other issues related to picketing were the number of strike- breakers and the way striking miners treated them in the local community. Between the end of May and the start of November 1984, the evidence suggests that around 15-20 per cent of miners in the MSC’S catchment area were crossing picket lines.8 Some strikers publicly expressed their deep resentment of the scabs who lived in Chorley and Coppull, naming them in leaflets and graffiti, though this very rarely spilled over into violent confrontation.9
4. Women’s activity
Women’s activity was a significant and conscious aspect of the MSC from the outset. It was the local Labour Party Women’s Section that had first proposed setting up a support group; the women’s section organised the first publicised visit by local supporters to the local picket line; and it took the initiative in organising the public meeting that launched the Msc.10 The significance of women’s role in promoting support for the strike at this stage was emphasised by local press reports, with headlines including ‘Women join miners on the picket line’ (Charley Town Crier, 24 May 1984), ‘Women ask miners to press case’ (Lancashire Evening Post, 29 May 1984), and ‘Wives are backbone of strike’ (Charley Guardian, 7 June 1984).
However, the MSC was not set up as a women’s support group but instead decided to incorporate local trade union organisations into its structure, making them a central feature of its activity and mobilisation of support for the strike. It was not until August that a Miners’ Wives’ Action Group (henceforth referred to as the ‘MWG’) was established, with the aim of encouraging the local women of striking miners’ families to get involved in supporting the strike if they were not already (Chorley Miners Support Committee News Bulletin, no. 3, 6 August 1984).
One of the first very successful activities of the MWG was to organise a coach in order for local women to attend the Miners’ Strike National Women’s Demonstration and Gala, held in London on 11 August 1984. Attendance at the demonstration was estimated at 25,000 people, and a photograph of the local women with their new banner- ‘Coppull and Chorley Miners’ Wives: Lancashire Miners Unite for Victory’-appeared in the pages of The Miner, the HUM’S national newspaper (17 August 1984). Although the MSC and the new MWG agreed that the latter should technically be established as a sub- committee of the former, in practice the MWG took the initiative and acted as it thought fit, and the MSC fully accepted this in the environment of consensus it had generally established in its operation (‘Solidarity with the Miners’ survey form, Labour Research Department, 6 March 1984). The MSC records of March 1985 state the following:
The Coppull and Chorley Miners’ Wives Group are a sub-committee of our support committee. They meet once a week, are a fairly informal group. They’ve attended many local and national rallies and organised picket line visits. They’re at the centre of all we’ve done. (They) have their own banner (but) no separate funds.
Rita Aspinall, the wife of one of the local Bold miners, soon emerged as the leading public spokesperson for the MWG. She was relentlessly involved in all aspects of supporting the strike, attended almost all local and many regional and national events, and spoke on important local and regional public platforms. In November, she spoke at a large local public meeting organised by the MSC, alongside Sam Thompson, vice president of the Yorkshire area NUM; Len Brinde, engineering union district secretary, Preston; and a speaker from the South Wales area NUM (publicity leaflet, MSC public meeting, 7 November, Standish Labour Club). In January 1985, the North West Labour Party Regional Women’s Organisation organised a rally in Manchester in support of the strike, at which Rita Aspinall also spoke. The Morning Star gave prominent coverage of the event:
Polished speeches from MPs and other experienced orators at a rally in Manchester at the weekend were put in the shade by a moving contribution from Bold miner’s wife Rita Aspinall. Ms Aspinall told the rally of nearly 1,500 people in Manchester Polytechnic’s Mandela building: “We are tired of standing alone week after week in this fight. We need other workers to take industrial action.” Words from the TUC, she said, were not enough. (21 January 1985)
Here were the views and actions of someone who had emerged as a key organiser of Coppull and Chorley women in support of the strike, and who was evidently not standing on the sidelines of the dispute in some sort of lesser, auxiliary role. It is clear from the evidence, therefore, that women were centrally involved in the MSC’s activities, and that they played a leading role in several key respects, whether through the MSG itself or more generally with regard to the MSC.
5. The role of Militant
Supporters of Militant, the Marxist group that was organised within the Labour Party at the time and which later faced mass expulsions, played a significant role in the MSC (Lancashire Evening Post, 28 January 1986; Chorley Guardian, 30 January 1986). Local press coverage about Militant in early 1986 noted that there were five members in the town, while internal Militant records indicated twelve in October 1984 (Chorley Guardian, 6 March 1986; notes of a Militant internal meeting, Preston, 10 October 1984). Personal recollections suggest the latter to be an exaggeration in terms of active Militant members and that this figure was also based on a larger area than Chorley itself. In practice, there were three Militant members consistently involved in the central activity of the MSC from the outset, plus two other members who took part in the MSC’S work.11
The core group of three included the local Labour Party Women’s section secretary, another activist in the women’s section (who was also a shop steward and elected by the Labou\r party to the original five-person MSC) and myself as chair of the MSC.
At an early stage, moves were made to link the support committee closely to the traditional organisations of the labour movement, with Labour Party, Trades (Union) Council and NUM representation. Although this form and orientation of the MSC might have emerged in any case in light of the interest expressed independently by the Trades Council it was encouraged by Militant supporters and reflected the latter’s philosophy of emphasis on political activity within the traditional organisations of the labour movement.
This resulted, in practice, in a strong and broad-based alliance within the MSC between Militant, left Labour party and trade union activists, women of striking miners’ families and miners themselves.
However, several events were indicative of Militant’s role in these local developments. The public meeting held in May 1984 to launch the new MSC was proposed by the Militant activists and called by the Women’s Section, and a Militant supporter and miner’s wife from Broadgreen Labour Party, Christine Sullivan, was a key speaker.12 In July 1984, Derek Hatton-the deputy leader of Liverpool City Council and well known for his support for Militant-was invited by the MSC to speak at a public meeting (letter from Chorley MSC to Derek Hatton, 31 July 1984. He was, however, unable to attend).
A Militant supporter and member of the Hoyland Women Against Pit Closures (South Yorkshire) also spoke at the MSC public meeting in August 1984 (Chorley MSC press release, 24 August 1984; Lancashire Evening Post, 23 August 1984). The following month, a Militant public meeting entitled ‘Solidarity with the Miners’ was held in Coppull Working Men’s Club (leaflet, Chorley and Coppull Militant supporters public meeting, 4 September 1984). Obviously, this account is far from providing the full picture of Militant supporters’ role in the MSC but it does at least give a flavour of the level of engagement that Militant had locally and the extent to which its activists in the MSC made use of Militant’s network.
However, in terms of local recruitment to Militant’s own organisation, the figures given previously suggest that it gained little; and indeed by 1986, its Chorley members were threatened with expulsion from the Labour Party.
While the defeat of the strike almost certainly facilitated this and ultimately led to the demise of Militant activity in the town, there were serious difficulties for its supporters in striking a balance between work for the MSC and political activity aimed at building the local Militant organisation.
This was due not least to the enormity of the task faced by the MSC, which included the work involved in helping to run its food centre on a weekly basis, helping to raise sufficient money to do so, picketing activity, the organisation of meetings and the many related activities that were essential in order to avoid local miners being starved back to work.
In conclusion, and in spite of the difficulties they faced, it would seem that Militant supporters made a significant contribution in terms of leadership and influence in local MSC and related strike- support activity, and especially so in the formative few weeks of the support group. This was probably related principally to the following factors:
* the importance that Militant supporters attached to the dispute and to supporting it from the very early stages;
* the high priority they gave to raising money and food for local strikers and their families;
* the amount of time and effort they put into the work of the MSC itself and the respect this earned;
* their political analysis of the conflict, and of its ferocity, scale and duration;
* their commitment to organising support through, and linking up, the traditional organisations of the local labour movement;
* the importance they attached to women’s role in the strike;
* their organising and campaigning skills and abilities;
* and the regional and national network of contacts provided by Militant’s organisation.
Social identification with the strike, geography and political leadership
Five key aspects of the work of the Chorley and Coppull Miners’ Support Committee have been considered: establishing the support group; food, money and welfare; picketing; women’s activity; and the role of Militant. Although not every aspect of the MSC’S activity is included, this account does identify the major elements, particularly in relation to organisation and mobilising support.
Identification with the strike
With regard to the MSC’S endeavour to encourage other organisations and people to identify with the strike, five factors were evidently important. First, the initial coalition of the Labour Party Women’s Section, some trade union, left Labour party and the Militant activists, through their respective areas of influence and contacts, encouraged key groups to support and assist the MSC.
The support group was endorsed by the Chorley Labour Party, the local Trades (Union) Council and the local NUM activists and, de facto, by the NUM itself. This form of development was central in promoting identification with the strike in the locality. It was very important, for example, in terms of persuading local union committees, especially the Leyland truck and bus joint shop stewards’ committee, to back the MSC financially. In turn, this made it easier for shop stewards to win support for such funding from their members on the shop floor, some of whom almost certainly must have had some misgivings about the strike.
However, the Women’s Section initiatives were also important in promoting identification with the strike. The Women’s Section proposed the initial motion to the local Labour Party that called for a support group; it organised the first publicised visit to the local Ellerbeck picket line; it raised the first funds for the support group, organised the well-attended and very successful initial public meeting that effectively launched the MSC, and generally achieved extensive local press coverage regarding women’s support for the strike. This created a clear image from the start that this was a women’s as much as a men’s struggle and that women would engage in it on equal terms. These points also clearly demonstrate the importance of women activists in providing political leadership for the MSC.
Second, the MSC’S emphasis on food and welfare allowed it to appeal to the local community for support on a relatively wide basis. Those who did not support the strike in trade union terms still often assisted on a humanitarian basis. MSC activists, however, saw its provision of food and welfare as very political acts, tantamount to feeding an army at war, and critical to maintaining the strike.
Third, the food centre, local picket line and street collections were effectively used by the MSC as focal points for making the strike real to potential supporters. Here, people could have direct contact with striking miners, and get to know them and their families and the local NUM activists. They could see the weekly reality of miners reluctantly collecting food parcels, experience picket lines, and witness the police threatening to arrest miners’ wives for collecting money and food in the town’s streets.13
This usually increased their identification with the strike, and their willingness to support the MSC financially and practically. The morale and personal sense of solidarity of committed supporters was also maintained and greatly strengthened through the daily informal contact, discussion and general social exchange that occurred at the food centre and on the local picket line.
Fourth, the Miners’ Wives Group was important particularly in terms of promoting and maintaining identification with the strike amongst the wives, partners, girlfriends, mothers, sisters and daughters of striking miners. While MWG members played an important role in running the food centre alongside other male and female supporters, the MWG’s primary function was in organising other activities explicitly targeted at women who were related to striking miners, in an attempt to combat any demoralisation and to discourage a return to work.
Fifth, the local strike-breakers were a small, isolated and dispersed group who kept a low profile during the strike. The local press ignored them, probably because there was no colliery in the community and there was therefore no local story of strike-breakers crossing picket lines.
The effect of this was that the strike-breakers had no voice in the community and thus did nothing to counteract the MSC’S endeavours to promote identification with the strike.
Geography
However, these factors cannot be divorced from the geography of the dispute. First, prior to the strike, miners in Chorley and Coppull were a small and largely forgotten section of the community, since vehicle manufacturing and defence were the big employers in the local economy, with relatively strong traditions of workplace trade union organisation. This meant that the task of supporting the local striking miners was small compared to that in many mining communities in South Yorkshire, Durham and South Wales, and yet the potential for local trade union assistance was quite considerable.
Second, with striking miners living in the community, practical help to them soon became a priority. With sympathetic local people identifying with their families and an initial Trades Council press statement highlighting the need for food, the provision of weekly food parcels to local miners through a food collection centre quickly became a central objective of the MSC. The location of the MSC was a key factor in affecting this outcome, since if it had been geographically removed from the coalfields a somewhat different form of support would probably have emerged.
Third, and linked to this, the geography of the situation was favourable to the MSC’S attempts to comm\unicate the reality of the strike to supporters and potential supporters, and thus to establish and consolidate their identification either with the strike itself and with the NUM’s objectives, or at least with the families of striking miners.
This occurred because the hardship suffered was made visible within the local community through press coverage, personal knowledge of and contact with the families concerned, and through second-hand accounts. As explained above, the MSC also mobilised its support through the food centre, local picket line and street collections as three key focal points. It is important, however, to emphasise that the local geography made this possible. In addition, the lack of collieries and of an NUM branch in the immediate locality meant that it was easy for the local NUM activists and pickets to take the initiative to get involved in the MSC, regardless of branch or area NUM officials.
Fourth, geography almost certainly played a part in the particular nature and development of the local Miners’ Wives’ Group. The latter was established part-way through the strike, and was not the main support group locally. A different picture might have emerged had Chorley and Coppull been a traditional mining community in which coal dominated, and had it been similar to such communities in South Yorkshire, Durham and South Wales.
A fifth geographical factor is that with strike and support activities happening on a daily basis in the Chorley and Coppull area, the local press was very keen to print local strike news. This provided critical opportunities for the MSC to promote its cause, which it made full use of through regular press statements.
Political leadership
In conjunction with the process of identification with the strike and the geography of the situation, political leadership was also an important explanatory factor regarding the MSC. This seems to have had four related elements.
First, the key initiatives of the women’s section, as indicated above, taken in very quick succession a few weeks after the start of the strike, were very important in ensuring the successful launch of the MSC and in setting the mould for what was to follow in terms of the latter’s form, activities and impact. Second, from August onwards, the Miners’Wives’ Group provided an important lead to the women of local striking miners’ families. The MWG successfully organised a significant group of them through its own weekly meetings and persuaded significant numbers to attend national and regional rallies, street collections, meetings and picket lines.
A Bold miners’ wife, Rita Aspinall, took the initiative in proposing that the MWG should be formed and she was its organiser throughout the rest of the strike. She took the lead on all the key activities that the MWG got involved in, was assertive and confident, personally challenged police and strike-breakers on picket lines, and became an impressive speaker.14 The fact that her husband was employed at Bold, of which she was very proud, gave her added credibility. Her speaking and picket-line role indicated that at times she was probably also providing an important lead to local miners themselves, and her influence within the MSC itself was considerable.Thus, the MWG as an organisation provided an important element of political leadership and its organiser played a central role in this.
Third, political leadership with regard to the MSC was also provided by local supporters of Militant. As a Marxist organisation, Militant saw the strike as important from the outset, and as a major class confrontation between the Thatcher government and the trade union movement, with the miners as the vanguard of the latter. As a matter of policy, Militant orientated its political activity towards the traditional organisations of the labour movement; it encouraged women to get involved in the strike; and it recognised the role that miners’ support groups could play in food and welfare provision, while repeatedly campaigning for major industrial action by other unions and the TUC in support of the miners (e.g. Smith, 2004). These points were strongly and clearly advocated in the arguments and actions of Militant’s local supporters who were involved in the MSC. Essentially, Militant’s activists provided political leadership to the MSC through a combination of these aspects and their organising and campaigning skills, through their own emphasis on the importance of food and finances to keep the strike going locally, through the time, effort, money and general commitment they gave personally to assist the local strikers and their families, and through their ability to establish links between the MSC and Militant’s regional and national network of activists. The leadership provided by Militant activists was not only evident in the MSC’S development and activities, but also in that of the women’s section, and in the encouragement and assistance its members gave to the MWG.
Fourth, several left-wing Labour party activists and trade unionists who were not Militant supporters played an important role in providing and consolidating the political leadership of the MSC. The MSC secretary, Keith Bamford, was a senior shop steward at a large local factory, and MSC founding members and stalwarts included a Labour party county councillor and a retired engineering union district secretary.
The Labour party women’s section chair, who also was not a Militant supporter, played an essential role in the women’s section’s initiatives to establish the MSC, and keenly supported it subsequently. Quite often these activists took initiatives of their own, thus contributing in important ways to the political leadership of the MSC. The Labour councillor Bill Challis, for example, was relentless and outspoken in championing the miners’ cause simultaneously within the county council, the Labour party, the food centre, on the local picket line and face-to-face with the police.
Thus, while it is useful to identify the four strands of political leadership with regard to the women’s section, the MWG, Militant and left Labour party and trade union activists, in practice these strands were closely interwoven, and a strong, trustful alliance was founded between the different groups.
Conclusions and implications
These findings suggest that an interplay of (i) the process of social identification with the strike, (ii) geography, and (iii) political leadership were central factors in explaining the actual processes involved in establishing, organising and developing community support for the strike through the Chorley and Coppull MSC. In doing so, this helps to explain why the support group was successful in meeting its objectives and in becoming an important and influential element in the strike in the area.
However, two main points of qualification are appropriate. First, placing the emphasis on social identification and leadership in this analysis is not intended to suggest that other elements of mobilisation theory are irrelevant, such as perceived injustice, attribution and collective action (Kelly, 1998: 27-38, 44-51). The willingness to act and the form of action, and its links with the social identification process, are interesting in the context of the Chorley MSC case. Not only did people identify with different aspects of the strike on more humanitarian or on more political grounds, but they also expressed this in terms of various essentially individual or collective acts.
This might have taken the form of an occasional financial donation and no more, or it may have been regular activity with MSC members as a group, in helping it to collect money, assisting in running the food centre, visiting the local picket line and helping to organise MSC public meetings. Effectively, there was a sliding scale in terms of the form and degree of identification with the strike, and also with regard to the form and degree of supportive action that sympathisers took.
This would seem to differ from some of the processes of mobilisation that might lead trade union members to take industrial action, as indicated by Kelly (1998: 27-38, 44-51), which is more precisely defined and ultimately entails a clearer choice.
Second, there may be potential in any further research about miners’ support groups to conceptualise the geography in terms of the interrelated factors of place, space and scale (Castree et al., 2004: xiii-xiv).The detailed aspects of place-i.e. the geographical location itself-are discussed and compared in some depth with regard to the Chorley and Coppull MSC.
However, the notions of space (the distance between locations) and scale (essentially the local, regional, national and international dimensions) might add something to this by highlighting the processes of interconnection between the MSC, the strike in Lancashire and the national picture. Of course, when people chose to support the MSC, they were not influenced by or identifying with the MSC, local miners and their families alone, but also by and with the strike nationally. Overall, support groups were located in a wide range of places with very different geographies, and yet they were interconnected across geographical space through complex processes of social identification and mobilisation that formed a large-scale, powerful and very united social movement.
Finally, what might this study tell us more generally about miners’ support groups in the 1984-5 strike? In terms of membership and form, the support groups were very diverse, but they were also strongly united in their common fundraising, food, welfare and morale-boosting goals.
In many ways, the common goals and powerful sense of solidarity with the miners that emerged, in the context of this bitter period of the Thatcher government, seemed to have created a situation in which a diverse range of politically aggrieved groups and individuals took different routes to the same \end. In spite of the differences between the Chorley and Coppull MSC and other support groups in the 1984-5 strike, there is a case to suggest that the interrelated concepts of social identification, geography and political leadership, with the suggested qualifications to them, might provide a sound basis for analysis of other miners’ support groups, and of the strike’s support group movement as a whole. It might go a long way towards explaining how and why such powerful expressions of unity and solidarity, which were extremely encouraging and liberating both to striking miners and to those who were active in the support groups, developed from such different beginnings, backgrounds and experiences.
This is worth understanding and explaining, not only because the support groups were a very important and unusual feature of the 1984- 5 miners’ strike, but also because it might inform us more generally about the relationship between social movements and protracted trade union struggles.
Acknowledgement
This article is dedicated to the Coppull and Chorley striking miners and their families, who fought relentlessly in 1984-5, were an inspiration and will never be forgotten by those of us who were privileged to be ‘friends and comrades within’. (And the British media told us that young miners wouldn’t strike because they’d lose their colour TVs and videos … .)
Notes
1. The MSC records indicate that the initial Trades Council’s claim of 250 miners was about double the real number, with those on strike probably numbering just over 100.
2. Charley Guardian, 7 June 1984; letter from the MSC to the secretary of the Chorley Labour Group of councillors; the MSC food centre record book, entries for 16 July and 29 October 1984.
3. ‘Solidarity with the Miners’ survey form, Labour Research Department, 6 March 1984; Chorley and Coppull Miners’ Support Committee, Family Hardship Appeal leaflet, spring/summer 1985. The weekly purchase and collection of the food was a considerable task, organised by the MSC secretary, Keith Bamford.
4. Letter from the MSC to the TGWU branch secretary, Preston Corporation Buses, 2 June 1984; MSC meeting agenda, 6 July 1984; press cutting, August 1984, source and date unknown; letter from MSC to UCATT branch secretary, Sellafield, 3 December 1984; and MSC 1984 Christmas appeal correspondence.
5. Lancashire Evening Post, 15 August 1984; Charley Guardian, 16 August 1984; Charley Town Crier, 23 August 1984. Chorley District Council included a significant number of rural as well as urban wards and was narrowly controlled by the Conservatives in 1984-5.
6. The author, as chair of the MSC, witnessed this regular payment as it was made at the weekly MSC meetings. Such payments are also indicated in the Labour Research Department ‘Solidarity with the Miners’ survey form, 6 March 1984.
7. Their reputation was enhanced by the legendary ‘Bold Battle Bus’, a former police bus that Bold NUM had apparently purchased by chance before the strike and which was often used for flying picket activities.
8. The latter is an estimate drawn from lists in the MSC’S records of the names of strike-breakers who lived in Chorley, Coppull and the nearby village of Standish, which were publicly circulated by local striking miners (probably sometime in July 1984).
9. Bitter ridicule was a more common weapon used by the strikers, with the most well known strike-breaker being the subject of some prominent graffiti and referred to by his nickname of ‘Gut Bucket’. However, as a discussion with the Miners’Wives Group organiser in 2004 indicated, some of the bitterness and resentment towards the local ‘scabs’ is very deep-rooted, and is still there twenty years later.
10. Chorley Constituency Labour Party agenda, 17 May 1984; Chorley Town Crier, 24 May 1984; publicity leaflet to advertise the 31 May public meeting that launched the MSC.
11. Very few internal records of Militant’s local activities remain, though some Labour party and public documentary evidence is still available. This section therefore draws on documentary evidence wherever possible but occasionally relies on personal recollections of the author as participant observer.
12. Publicity leaflet, Chorley Labour Party Women’s Section public meeting in support of the miners, 31 May 1984. Broadgreen Labour Party, Liverpool, was a stronghold of Militant support, with the constituency electing the Marxist Labour MP and Militant supporter Terry Fields.
13. This refers to an incident during the strike reported by Rita Aspinall, MWG organiser, in a discussion with her in 2004.
14. The last two points were indicated respectively in a discussion with Rita Aspinall in 2004 and in a press report in the Morning Star, 21 January 1985.
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David Beale is a lecturer in Employment Studies at the University of Manchester, and an active trade unionist. During the 1984-5 miners’ strike, he was chair of a large miners’ support group in central Lancashire, and a supporter of the Marxist group Militant.
Copyright Conference of Socialist Economists Autumn 2005