The miners’ strike in Brent

In March 1984 over 150,000 miners went on strike to protest against widespread closures in the industry. There were, of course, no mines in Brent but the area contributed to a nationwide solidarity movement for the miners. The large collection of food and money meant that the (ultimately unsuccessful) strike was able to last for twelve months – making it arguably the longest national strike in British history. The large amount of material on the strike held in the Brent archives helps tell the story of this solidarity campaign.

One activist in November 1984 claimed that £74,000 had been collected for the miners in Brent, which she believed was the largest amount raised in London. The Brent Miners Support Campaign was set up to co-ordinate these efforts, as an alliance primarily between the local Trades Council and Labour parties, with a range of other individuals and groups involved as well. Brent collected food and money specifically for the Kent miners, several of whom stayed in the borough during the dispute. On the first day they arrived, the strikers attended a local union meeting. Ken Evans, a miner from Kent’s Betteshanger colliery, described the “fantastic reception” the miners got:

“We were really choked and there was more than one of us with a moist eye”

While Brent was far from the heartlands of the coal mining industry, some saw significant shared experiences. A leaflet from Brent Miners Support Campaign explained:

“In fighting for their industry and their jobs, the miners are also fighting for people in Brent and for all working people. We too have seen workplaces closed down, jobs destroyed (about 15,000 in the past five years) and our Borough turned into an industrial graveyard. We are all in Thatcher’s sinking ship and a victory for the miners will be a victory and an inspiration for us all.”

But the Kent miners weren’t only in Brent to raise money and food, they were also there to picket. At first this was Charrington’s coal depot but later on the strike focus shifted to the power station in Neasden. The latter in particular became a focus for large scale pickets with people from across London joining – four hundred reportedly picketed the station in December 1984. Brent then was one of the few areas in London during the 1984-5 strike to experience picket lines. It was important because it highlighted the material connection between the borough and the coalfields: they weren’t just distant areas with nothing to do with London, they provided the coal and (some of) the electricity that Londoners relied on.

This wasn’t the first time that Kent miners had been to Brent. While new relationships were developed during the strike, it is worth thinking about the support movement in terms of longer histories and cultures of solidarity. The Brent Miners Support Campaign pointed out that “people in Brent helped the miners in 1972 and 1974 and we’re doing it again now. But the miners have helped us too; they did so during the Grunwick strikes and they have always responded to calls for support from other workers.” During the mass pickets at the Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories in Brent during 1976-8 one of the most conspicuous presences was miners from across Britain, Arthur Scargill (then Yorkshire National Union of Mineworkers President) amongst them. The Scottish miners’ leader Mick McGahey reportedly said to the picket line at Grunwick: “the whole of the Scottish miners will come here if necessary”. Margaret Thatcher quite clearly linked the two disputes at the Conservative Party conference in 1984 in which she claimed that the miners’ strike was being run by ‘an organized revolutionary minority […] whose real aim is the breakdown of law and order and the destruction of democratic Parliamentary government. We have seen the same sort of thugs and bullies at Grunwick”.

The Grunwick strike is of course an acknowledged and important part of local history in Brent. Part of this history was used to explain why the people of Brent should support the miners – because ‘they have helped us too’. The miners’ strike then should also be seen as part of ‘local’ Brent history, but the connections developed with the coalfields suggests the way in which local histories can be understood partly in terms of relationships with other places.

 

 

Brent Museum and Archives would like to thank Diarmaid Kelliher for writing this blog post. Diarmaid Kelliher is a PhD student in Glasgow studying the miners’ support campaign in London. He has recently written about the group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) that was featured in the movie Pride: http://hwj.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/77/1/240.