The Iron Lady & the UK Miners Strike of 1984-85

LS 707

Hillary Adams
December 9, 2014
Dr. Nicholson

The Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, was born in 1925 in Grantham,

England as Margaret Hilda Roberts. She was introduced early to
Conservative politics and Christianity by her father. After graduating college
from Oxford University with a degree in chemistry, she made her first bid for
public office in the 1950 elections for a Dartford Parliamentary seat. She was
defeated, two years in a row, and ushered politics to the side while she
studied law. She married Denis Thatcher and in 1953 welcomed twins, Carol
and Mark. Although trained as a lawyer, Margaret jumped back into the
political arena and won a seat in the House of Commons in 1959.
A woman on the rise, Thatcher rose political rank, and was appointed
Secretary of State for Education and Science in 1970. She quickly became
disenchanted by Prime Minister Edward Heath due to the little attention he
gave to her ideas. The Margaret Thatcher Foundation (2005) stated Thatcher
did not feel she would see a woman as prime minister in her lifetime, due to
the lack of respect for women in her field. In 1974, while the Conservative
Party was losing power, Margaret was gaining it; she was named head of the
Conservative Party in 1975, winning over Heath. England, at the time, was
facing severe economic and political turmoil. This unsteadiness pushed
Conservatives back into power in 1979, making history as Margaret Thatcher
was appointed Britains first female Prime Minister. The shaky platform she
rose to was significantly battered by the conflicts with labor unions. These
conflicts gave rise to one of Margarets most criticized and acclaimed

decisions; thirty years separated, Britain is still bickering over Thatchers

infamous win in the 1984-85 UK miners strike.
The Lead Up
In 1969, tension in the mines began to build, and anger spread, as pay
cuts and job security began to diminish in the UK coalfields. Miners were
amongst the lowest paid manual workers in Britain. In 1972, tensions boiled
over as the miners decided to strike, demanding negotiations be made
between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Coal
Board (NCB). Due to widespread power outages, a state of emergency was
declared and by February 19th, the NCB gave in to the demands for wage
increases; the miners agreed to end the seven week strike. The
accomplishment the miners felt from this victory led many to believe the
mining industry and job prospects were looking up; the cross party
agreement, Plan for Coal, appeared secure.
In 1979, Margaret Thatcher came into office. One of her primary policy
objectives was the taming of inflation, which meant interest rates would be
lowered. In 1981, Thatcher increased taxes to slow the growth of the money
supply in the middle of a recession; two million manufacturing jobs were lost,
leaving labor unions heated and ready for a fight. Rumors of Thatchers plan
to close several coal pits spurred the rumors of another miners strike. The
threat of the strikes, alone, left Thatchers government backing down, merely
avoiding an uprising in 1981. Margaret, knowing they were not ready to

handle a strike yet, was preparing her government and police departments
for the decision she knew she would eventually make the closure of twenty
mines, and eventually up to forty-five more. She was preparing for the 1984
miners strike which would last almost one year.
The Players
Arthur Scargill. Arthur Scargill joined the National Union of
Mineworkers at the age of nineteen and successfully worked his way through
the ranks of the Labor Party, playing a significant part in the miners strike of
1972. Scargill was seen by the British working class as a hard-working man,
genuinely concerned for the welfare of those he represented. In the 1981
election for NUM president, he attained 70% of the vote (Edgar, 2014).
Scargill was very vocal in his opinions of Margaret Thatchers Conservative
policies, noting that he was very aware of Thatchers plans to strip the labor
unions of their power. Scargill stood as the leader of the union in the 198485 miners strike.
Ian MacGregor. Originally from Scotland, Ian MacGregor had formed a
no-nonsense reputation in business by the time he was appointed as
Chairman of the nationalized British Steel Corporation in 1980. Margaret
Thatchers Secretary of State for Industry noted that MacGregor may be just
who they needed to support the radical program of industrial restructuring
that the Conservative government was striving toward. Upon arrival, British
Steel employed 166,000 staff, and post MacGregor, 71,000 (Lyall, 1998).

MacGregors program swiftly transformed British Steel to a profitable

company. MacGregors drastic changes toward privatization set the stage for
his new role as the head of the National Coal Board in 1983, personally
appointed by the Prime Minister. MacGregors approach with the NCB
directly mirrored his work with British Steel close pits to return profits.
MacGregor quickly became the enemy of Scargill and the Labor Party, as the
proposal of twenty mine closings was soon to be announced in March 1984.
Peter Walker. Appointed as the youngest leader of Prime Minister
Heaths Cabinet at the age of thirty-eight, Peter Walker made a name for
himself in the Conservative Party early. When Margaret Thatcher became
Prime Minister in 1979, she appointed him as Minister of Agriculture. Walker
was then moved to energy in 1983 to prepare for the impending miners
strike. His role would play a prominent role in leading to the security of
Thatchers fight against Scargill in the 1984-85 miners strike.
The Public Plan
Prime Minister Thatcher and NCB President, Ian MacGregor, made it
very clear to the public that only twenty pits were to close in 1984-85. They
made sure to avoid discussion of the next several years, focusing only on the
upcoming year. Thatcher expressed that plans were not to run the coal
industry down, but to continue the proposed plans to reduce high cost output
and financial losses. Plans of the closure of South Yorkshires Cortonwood
Colliery, along with nineteen other pits, were announced in early March

1984. One industry union group, The National Association of Colliery

Overmen, Deputies & Shotfires (NACODS), expressed their willingness for
discussion and compromise. NUM members, many already on strike from
news of closure plans, were pushing for a national ballot. Thatcher and
MacGregor promised that every man who wanted to continue work would be
offered a job at another local pit, along with payment for their transfer and
an allowance of up to 1,550. Mr. MacGregor stated, The industrys
carefully planned strategy will win us stability in the following year. The
benefits of continuing investment will then enable us to expand output to
100 million tonnes a year as new sales opportunities arise. But we must get
our prices right. It is no use producing coal at prices customers are not
prepared to pay (Margaret Thatcher Foundation, 1984, 1).
True Plans Revealed
The NCB said, at the time, they wanted to close twenty, but Arthur
Scargill, head of the NUM, knew better. He rallied union members,
expressing that plans to close seventy pits were in the works under
Thatchers government. Many disregarded Scargills claims, stating the NCB
had not lied to them previously. In January 2014, Margaret Thatchers
private and personal files were released for the world to know the truth.
According to the Margaret Thatcher Foundation (2005) original documents
show a secret meeting was held on September 15, 1983 with Margaret
Thatcher, The Secretary of State for Energy, Secretary of State for

Employment, and four others present. The document, marked not to be

photocopied, or circulated outside the private office, records the
government agreement to shut down seventy-five pits over three years,
cutting 64,000 jobs. It was stated that there should be no pit closure list, but
a pit-by-pit procedure. The document also noted how well the closure
program had been going thus far, with one pit closed every three weeks
(18,000 less jobs).
The Secretary of State, present in the secret gathering, expressed the
hardship these cutbacks would produce. Two-thirds of Welsh miners would
become redundant, 35% of miners in Scotland, 48% in the North East, 50%
in South Yorkshire, and 46% in the South Midlands (Thatcher et. al., 1983,
2). These staggering numbers would not allow for displaced miners to seek
other employment opportunities in the mining industry as Thatcher and
MacGregor had promised.
On March 16, 1984, Peter Walker wrote the Prime Minister with clear
expression of his reasoning for the closing of the uneconomic pits. He
referred to the Plan for Coal, created after the previous strike, which had
led many miners to believe their jobs were secure. Walker (1984) wrote,
the miners, when they originally agreed in 1974 to Plan for Coal, agreed
to three major objectives of that plan: (1) massive investment; (2) an
improvement in productivity of 4% per annum; (3) the taking out of
production between 3-4 million tonnes of coal per year from the least

economic pits. Only the first of these objectives has been achieved (p. 2).
In the ten years since the plan had been put in place, productivity had only
increased 4.7% total, and uneconomic pits had only closed at a rate of one to
two million per year. The Prime Minister had her reasoning to move toward
privatization, no matter the miners opinions or livelihood.
Strike
Over six thousand miners were already on strike when a local ballot on
March 5, 1984 called miners to action in Cortonwood Colliery and Bullcliffe
Wood Colliery, spurred by the NCBs announcement that five pits were to
close within just five weeks. Arthur Scargill called for a national strike with
NUM members in all coal fields on March 12th. As Macintyre (2014) explains,
Scargill would not attempt a national ballot, because he believed that a man
in one area did not have the right to vote a man in another out of a job
(which may have happened if the members rejected a strike).
Nottinghamshire, a pit with modern equipment and large coal reserves,
avoided strike, stating they were unhappy with the decision to embark on a
national strike without a ballot. The strike was, however, well-supported in
the coalfields of Yorkshire, Scotland, the North-East, Kent, Lancanshire, and
eventually South Wales.
In late April, David Hart, one of Margaret Thatchers political advisors,
wrote the Prime Minister a letter with his impression of the coalfields. He
expressed the stark differences he witnessed in Nottinghamshire and

Sheffield. In Nottinghamshire, Hart expressed the miners disdain for

Scargill, noting he has not given them a ballot or honorable reason to strike.
In Sheffield, however, Hart noted the personal attacks toward the Prime
Minister. The advisor continued with his opinion of NUMs leader, Scargills
address was appalling. Stilted, read from a prepared statement, utterly
without inspiration. He is no orator. Still the young militants cheered and
roared at almost every sentence. For they have found a Messiah who
promises to lead them out of the dark valleys of decaying pits (Hart, 1984,
2).
Confrontations and violence were frequent during the year long strike,
including one of the most notorious clashes on June 18, 1984, known as the
Battle of Orgreave. Ten thousand NUM pickets, including Scargill, attempted
to halt the transfer of coal out of the plant near Rotherham. The strikers
were permitted to assemble, creating controversy as to whether it was a setup, because over 5,000 police officers from several different counties
descended onto the scene ready to force back the miners. Charges on both
sides escalated to hand-to-hand combat, miners beaten with batons, and
stones thrown at police officers. Ninety-five picketers were charged with
rioting and unlawful assembly, while fifty-one picketers and seventy-two
police officers were injured. All charges of the ninety-five were eventually
dropped (Conn, 2014).

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The end of the UK miners strike slowly approached due to the assault
of a working miner in November 1984 and the death of a taxi driver
attempting to drive a miner to work in December. This strike simply did not
have the power that the strike in 1972 contained. On March 3, 1985, NUM
voted to return to work, signaling the victory of the National Coal Board and
Thatcherism. Thirty years after the NUM leaders defeat, Scargill expressed,
The men returned to work not because they had stopped believing in
what they were fighting forhouses were being repossessed,
marriages were breaking up, the kids were going without, and there
was no end in sight. We were not now picketing steelworkers to try
and stop coal or steel. We were picketing people who had stood on the
picket lines with us for a whole year. Proud, strong miners crying
because they were going back to work. We had no right to demand
that they continue with the strike. (Macintyre, 2014)
Margaret Thatchers Role
Margaret Thatcher was ready for a showdown with the unions upon her
election in 1979. Her economic policies weakened the Labor Party, while the
recession minimized manufacturing by half and unemployment was on the
rise. Thatcher helped to remove the legal protection of unions and outlawed
miners from joining unions to seek employment after pits were closed.
Maggies major opponent, Arthur Scargill, unfortunately went about
defeating the Iron Lady in way that she and her team prepared for; one of

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Scargills major mistakes was that he did not create a national ballot to
strike. Thatcher had waited and chose her battle carefully. Peter Walker built
up massive coal stocks and Thatcher prepared police to keep the pits open
for miners who were not striking. Scargill helped to push the Prime Ministers
agenda even further when he did not take a peace offering from the NACODS
to join the strike.
Although many speculate the true meaning of her words, Thatcher
became infamous for her 1984 speech, comparing the miners dispute to the
Falklands conflict two years prior. We had to fight the enemy without in the
Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much
more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty (Travis, 2014, 1).
Thatcher denied that her words were reflective of the unions as the enemy
within, but meant to depict those who are the enemies of freedom and
democracy. As Thatchers personal files surfaced this year, it is difficult to
deny her meaning, as the ripped up notes of her speech show that she could
have left an even more indelible impression on Britain with the speech she
originally planned to deliver. Thatchers speech notes expressed the country
was facing an insurrection. Our country is not to be torn apart by an
extension of the calculated chaos planned for the mining industry by a
handful of trained Marxists and their fellow travelers (Travis, 2014, 1).
The Prime Minister was working on these words at 2:54am October
12th, just hours before she was to speak, when a bomb, detonated by a

12

member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), went off in the
Brighton Hotel in England where Thatcher was staying. Margaret, the target
of this attack, remained unscathed, while five others were killed and thirtyone injured. Due to the bombing and loss of lives, the Prime Minister
dropped her attack statements regarding the Labor Party. Her cool
demeanor during the speech won the approval of the British people, showing
that the IRA did not shake her. The Tory Party leader did not waver from her
goals she ran her campaign against the unions like a military operation.
Thatcher was convinced she had to cure the nation of what she referred to as
a British disease.
Maggies Political Prowess & Influences
Margaret Thatcher rooted her political beliefs in context over
philosophy, inspiring her own her political style, Thatchersim. Thatcherism
is essentially an instinct, a series of moral values and an approach to
leadership rather than an ideology. It is an expression of Mrs. Thatchers
upbringing in Grantham, her background of hard work and family
responsibility, ambition and postponed satisfaction, duty and patriotism
(Smith, 2007, 235). Whether one agreed with Thatchers politics or not,
many believed she was a good leader for her country during critical times in
history. She earned the nickname The Iron Lady for her personal and
political toughness. Margaret Thatcher was a Christian who believed in the
power of the individual, a Conservative who opposed Socialism and

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Communism, and an admirer of Adam Smith, as she was rumored to carry

Wealth of Nations in her purse.
The Prime Minister based many of her beliefs on a Christian faith that
guided her political life. Margaret grew up in a home where her father was a
shopkeeper, local politician, and lay preacher. Smith (2007) notes that her
father intimately fused theology, finance, and politics into his household; the
same values were at play during Thatchers role as Prime Minister. What is
important to note, is that Thatcher used instincts, norms, and culture to draw
from, rather than a set of beliefs or developed theories. She sought to
ascribe to hard work, self-reliance, thrift, and enterprise. Thatcher also relied
on pride in and obligation to ones community. Described as a
Nonconformist Christian, her values led to the distaste for commercial and
industrial society in the postwar period, particularly in the late seventies and
early eighties when she came to office. Thatchers decisions and political
maneuvering during the 1984-85 miners strike mimicked the ideals
expressed by Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations, her individualistic character
as the leader of her country aired on the side of Ayn Rand, and her
misguided idea of what was best for her country created a snapshot of a
utilitarian Maggie.
The Wealth of Nations.
Adam Smith was a firm believer in rational self-interest and
competition as a way to strive for economic success. He argued for a free-

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market economy; his message clearly states his theory about national
wealth. First, by the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which its labour is
generally applied; and, secondly, by the proportion between the number of
those who are employed in useful labour, and that of those who are not so
employed (Smith, 2005, 13). In other words, make productive labor even
better by improving markets to deepen the division of labor, and second, use
more labor productively instead of unproductively. As Margaret Thatcher
came to power, her goals were clear; to set about creating wealth for her
nation. She first had to break the power of the unions. One of the ways she
did so, was to insist on the closing of unprofitable mines, where costs were
much steeper in comparison to the competition, similar to Smiths
suggestion. Thatchers conference speech on the morning after the Brighton
Hotel bombing, October 12, 1984, addressed that the miners strike was not
of the governments seeking, or of its making. Thatcher expressed it had to
do with miners refusing to accept a long agreed principle that pits should
close when the losses are too great to keep it open.
Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand believed that individuals should never be slaves to another,
using rational self-interest and realization. She fostered individualism, and
the protection of life, liberty, property, and limited government. In Rands
understanding, ones own life and happiness are ones highest values. One
does not exist as a slave to the interest of others, or vice versa. She

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expected self-responsibility amongst individuals, expressing they are

accountable for improving and sustaining their own lives. Margaret
Thatchers beliefs often mirror many of Rands, focusing on the individual.
The Prime Minister, in a 1987 interview with Womens Own, stated there is
no such thing as society, rendering her moderately cold and individualistic
to the public. Thatcher did not believe that an individuals country should be
given blame for ones misfortune. She encouraged her voters to believe that
an individuals life, and the responsibility for that life, is left to the individual.
What she attempted to make clear, however, is that she hoped citizens
would become less dependent upon the state, and challenge the lack of
socially responsible individuals.
Although Thatcher embraced the self-serving, desire-driven ideas of
Rand, she claimed that an individuals best interest was to recognize and
accept responsibilities to their family and cultural community. Her heartfelt
sentiments appeared lackluster, however, as Thatcher showed very little
care for the miners, her citizens, whom she never visited on the picket lines.
In his letter to the Prime Minister in April 1984, Thatchers political advisor,
David Hart, counseled her to visit the villages who were reaping the
misfortune of the strike the most. Thatcher did not heed the advice. Due to
her intimidation and avoidance, she was criticized by many and labeled
aloof.
Utilitarianism

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The Iron Lady would never be considered a utilitarian by most

onlookers human centered, altruistic, and standing with moral foundation
are not often descriptions one hears alongside the Prime Ministers name.
Margaret Thatcher, in fact, would likely be characterized as the opposite of
the utilitarian mindset. What can be said for her character, however, is that
she strongly felt her ideas were what was best for Great Britain. Thatcher
called for labor union reforms, less government intervention in the economy,
less government spending, and lower taxes. She restricted trade union
leaders power, and privatized coal, iron, steel, gas, electricity, railways,
water supply, and public housing. Thatchers actions were what she
believed was for the greater good of her country.
Jonathan Bentham, one of the founders of Utilitarianism, expressed in
A Fragment on Government (1823), it is the greatest happiness of the
greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong (p. 16). Thatchers
reforms dealt much less with the happiness of the country, but the wealth.
Wealth, in the Prime Ministers eyes, was what would bring happiness and
prosperity to Great Britain. Thatcher believed the opportunity to create
wealth was a moral good, that the wealth created was technically morally
neutral, that is, it had no status until it was spent or saved, and then moral
decisions needed to be made (Smith, 2007, 246). Her actions in regard to
the wealth of her country, however, led to rebellion, thick party lines, and
social unrest. Margaret Thatchers determination to break the Labor Party

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was unmatched; she set goals and attained them with unwavering aim. The
wealth she sought for her nation was built directly upon the weathered backs
of the men and women she paved over with privatization.

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