1980 saw the steelworkers become one of the first group of workers to take on the new Thatcher Tory government, which had been elected in 1979. A union member involved at the time looks back at the action which marked the start of the new decade.
Thirty years ago I woke up on the 2nd of January 1980 at 5am to go over to my picket line with trepidation in my heart. This was the first day of the 1980 steel strike. In amongst the New Year celebrations the local and national media had been pumping out the so-called fact that the strike had no support. This media hype reached its climax when a local radio station at 9pm on New Year’s Eve had a phone-in for those who did not want to go on strike. However this backfired as the vast majority of callers were in favour of the strike.
Arriving at the one of the 5 steelplant gates at 5.45am I was amazed to see a crowd of pickets had already assembled across the entrance, I quickly rode my motorbike round all the gates at Redcar, Lackenby & Cargo Fleet to see if it would be necessary to relocate pickets to any gates where we were weak, but what I found was that each gate was heavily picketed and apart from senior managers no one had crossed the picket line. The strike was not only solid but the level of support on the picket lines was great than we had anticipated. This was the case nationally with 150,000 steel workers out on strike. BSC was shut down and the furnaces across the country were all cooling down
With the complete closure of British steel it was now time to ensure that no steel was to be move from stockholders. With this in mind the strike committee was formed from not only branch officials but activists amongst the striking unions.
Mobile Picket
The first decision was to set up a mobile picket which after a while was nicknamed the Nairobi Scouts due to its ability to seek out targets and the resources necessary for a picket to be successful. The mobile pickets went to the stockholders and created a picketing base, building a shelter, firing up braziers and supplying large quantities of coke. Once established other strikers would move in to maintain the secondary picket. To keep the element of surprise the flying picket would set up the picket lines at 2 in the morning and so by 6 it was established for the other pickets to join. By this method we would have at least a couple of hours before the police could establish a sizeable force. In addition the mobile picket would reinforce secondary pickets.
We said no steel was to be moved and that included razors. After a few weeks we all looked like down and outs with long beards and multiple layers of clothing. After all it was winter. This attire led to one of our cleverer schemes. We informed the tramps and homeless that shelters of scaffold and tarpaulin with warm braziers were dotted around Middlesbrough’s industrial estates and that they were welcome to use these facilities and, as we looked no different from the tramps, it forced the police to maintain an all-day and all-night attendance at the steel stockholders picket lines whilst it allowed us to organise a roaming picket to turn up in numbers at a particular steel stockholder, a decision only made at 5am. We always knew when an attempt to move a lorry was about to happen. The nice coppers who we had been playing football with and sharing mugs of tea would suddenly go off for a meal break and would be replaced by a group of baton wielding thugs. To get round this we had to develop new techniques. One such was at a picket which had some disused garages. Five or six of us with motorbikes would park our machines in the garages and when the police had forced a path through the pickets for the lorry to pass we would get on our bikes and wait till the lorry was about half a mile away so the police were relaxed. We quickly raced after the lorry and disabled it.
The police found that steelworkers had skills that would challenge them such as our knowledge of metallurgy. For instance we found a piece of scrap steel bar around 50mm in diameter and a metre long. Soon we had one end glowing yellow hot in the brazier. With the use of scaffolding poles we bent this bar back on itself. Once cooled we heated up the other end, placed the scaffolding pole over the end and raced over to the stockholders main gate and hooked it through and then bent it back on itself so it now looked like a giant staple. With the vast quantities, of tea coffee and fizzy drinks consumed the staple was quench hardened with urine. The gate was locked. Because of the hardened surface of the bar it was impossible to use a hacksaw. The only alternative was to use a gas axe but the accidental dropping of a red hot piece of metal on the oxygen rubber tube soon put a stop to that.
We even used the police against themselves. Half way through the strike the momentum was losing its initial strength so five us planned to get arrested for obstruction. With the resulting publicity generated locally the picket lines were returned to the initial strengths.
13 weeks out
This was a long strike of 13 weeks, debts mounted and with threats of evictions and repossessions the strain was falling hard on the families of the steelworkers, but through it all no one crossed the picket line, except for one guy. To the police’s amazement a steel worker walked up to the picket line. The workers shuffled to the side to allow this guy through. Some strikers greeted him but no one tried to stop him. This panicked the police as the man walked up to the gate with two white carrier bags. Was it sabotage? For about 30 minutes the police would not believe his story and did not let him in. The striker had dispensation from the strike committee to go in to feed the feral cats that kept the rodents down on the steel plant floor!
When the strike was solid in Teesside pickets we were dispatched to the West Midlands to the large stockholders and car plants to stop the steel moving. In ISTC, the main steel union, 10% of the membership was female so it was suggested that the pickets going to the West Midlands would be 10% female. This tactic surprised one scab lorry driver at GKN in Wolverhampton. During the war the workforce of Cargo Fleet was mainly female and this tradition carried on up the 1980’s. The operators would have to push backward and forward the massive hydraulic switches every thirty seconds for seven hours a day, resulting in powerful upper body strength, so when a lorry drives through the picket line of about 30 pickets a fist punches the cab door, denting it. The furious driver from inside the compound exams the damage, grabs a crow bar and starts walking towards the pickets demanding to know who did the damage. Out steps a petite, young women who walked right up to the scab and said, “I did it. What are you going to do about it?” With a puzzled look on his face he returned to the safety of the compound.
The only people working were a few middle to senior managers at Steel House at Redcar and contract labour building the new blast furnace. As the road into the steel plant was directly off a main trunk road the police made a request that we did not picket here. But after negotiations with the police it was decided that we would have a reverse picket and that the police would not intervene as long as we did not obstruct vehicles leaving we could talk to the drivers if they did mind. So at 4pm everyday pickets would come from all the other picket lines and participate in this strange picket. What the police did not take into account was the fact that the contract labour was paid until it left the site, it wasn’t long before we had the two lanes of the exit blocked as we talked to the contractors for hours. We did have a sweep on how long we could keep them in. The latest a manager left was 8.45pm swearing at us that he had missed his rehearsal for the Gilbert & Sullivan society production of the Pirates of Penzance. Our response was he should not be “A Scab of Steel House”
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Hard Times
Towards the end of the strike times were hard. We had no money and debts were mounting up. We had to do something. One of our methods was going directly to farmers and buying in bulk eggs and potatoes and the workers at a local bakery persuaded management to let us have bread at below cost price. So for most steel workers it was two boiled eggs with toast for breakfast, chip butty for lunch and egg & chips for tea.
All of these activities showed that we were determined steel workers prepared to use anything at our resources, to call on all our organisational skills to win. A flavour of what workers are able to do when they have to. We stayed firm even when BSC distributed a ballot for acceptance of a meaningless pay offer.
We had been deliberately picked on by the new Tory Government. It was a confrontation which the unions were determined to avoid, and the government equally determined to provoke. The 2% pay rise at the time of hyper inflation was a deliberate provocation to steelworkers, who were looked on as a soft option for Thatcher to practice her union busting tactics on, but it was the Iron Lady who was melted down and in the end capitulated with a compromised pay rise. The Tory government had to regroup to bring in the anti trade union laws which we still have to this day, before taking on the bigger battalions of labour.
This was a long strike of three tough months. We were lions but we had donkeys for leaders. The general secretary of the ISTC was Bill Sirs, a rabid reactionary, who undermined any activity. Such was the feeling towards the end of the strike amongst other workers such as car workers, miners, rail and dockers that there was in fact a mood amongst the rank and file that the TUC should start organising supportive secondary action. The dockers in Liverpool were discussing such action leading to the possibility of a general strike. Such was the mood. While elements in the TUC could be heard calling for a general strike, behind the scenes a bitter response was been planned for a compromise, a predictable TUC sell-out. Rather than challenge the system, like always, the over indulged full time officials sought an easy way out.
Lessons
Some will argue that the return to work was a defeat for the steelworkers, that the TUC had sold out again and that the closure program decimated the steel towns across Britain. But what can be seen here is an enormous growth in class consciousness and a confidence by the steelworkers in struggle. In the ISTC conference in 1979 Price Charles was the main guest speaker. In 1980 it was Arthur Scargill who received a standing ovation. We did get a pay rise and we pushed back the Tory onslaught just enough so that the Tories would need another election victory in 1983 to give them a mandate to once again launch a vehement attack on organised labour. It could be argued that we were the vanguard of the labour movement in 1980 not a rearguard action holding back the Tory menace. But for the vacillations of the TUC hierarchy, the whole period of the Thatcher nightmare of 1983 onwards might never have taken place. The steelworkers may have lost their jobs in the steelplants, but their experiences lives on. We have sown the seeds of class conscious workers across many industries who will be able to use that experience in the coming struggles. All those young steelworkers in1980 on the picket line will become the mature class conscious workers now just requiring a spark to reignite their resolve.
On a side note the five arrested steelworkers charged with obstructing the highway got off on a technicality. Strangely enough no one owned the land we were arrested on, therefore you cannot be charged with obstruction!
