Poem: "The Year the Miners Fought"

This weekend sees the 2014 Miners’ Gala take place in Durham – a spectalur festival celebrating the struggles of the miners and the labour movement. To mark the occasion, which this year will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the 1984 Miners’ Strike, we publish a poem by Guy Howie entitled The Year the Miners Fought.

Now, I am young and freshly sprung
from that carefree decade wrought
with royal soaps and brand new hopes –
the times when we were taught,
with internet, unbridled debt, a widescreen television set
and things which could be bought-to-let
that we could just as well forget
the year the miners fought.

I remember my mother telling me
to no uncertain degree
that Thatcher won the hearts of three
million labour voters
when her boaters had the Argies all at sea –
the same Argies (incidentally) who gave Becks the bait
and put an end to our France ’98.

She and the rest did well to save –
while flooding poor Diana’s grave –
my young ears from the truth.
The truth about what happened.
The truth of what Thatcher really did;
what that bitch really hid;
what they all hid
in the name of a money-spinning myth;
what they all did
in their bid to end our futures.

The Tory bully boys had called to arms
their blue line of defence
to keep the spectre at bay,
oh, countless times before.
But this was different. It then had hit them
by 1984: within the leathered palms
of working men and women lay
the destiny of humankind.
The rich’s days were numbered unless they
called on every legion
of lumpen thugs, sycophants and unruly scabs,
meanwhile dividing workers
by wage, job, hours and even region.

Under Thatcher’s watchful eye,
British industry would die.
With it every mansion-dweller’s fears
would be put to rest, at least for many years.
This time the good old bill
would stand to attention like the national guard
as she moved in for the kill
first on the car factory, the steel works and the shipyard;
then at last, as a wholesale destruction of industry befits,
on the foundation of it all: the mining pits.

For so long Ridley’s plan had been out;
For months Scargill had warned the world about
an impending war which would mean something
to the British people –
not just a few days in the colonies
but a full-on fight to keep all
those gains, those human rights,
those basic needs provided for,
those pits upon which towns were built,
lives were led, were spent and shared –
and for any of that to be spared,
they must be defended to the hilt.
Yet Maggie smiled sweetly and assured
every miner that she and her friends at the coal board
only had their best interests in mind.
MacGregor applied the personal touch,
sending them each a letter listing Scargill’s “lies”.
(For once a union leader hadn’t been the crutch
that he could lean on for an industry’s demise.)

Beneath the gritted teeth without a sound
they readied the ground
for every single pit bar three
to be shut down or drowned;
for a hundred thousand jobs to go;
for desolate zombified areas to sow
the seeds for organic unemployment to grow
so that the word “recovery” falls
like lead
through the sparse air of a mineshaft;
and not only have they crushed
the spirit of generations, but in their haste
have thrown a root source of profit to waste,
and with it the pillars of their rotten empire.

In March that year came Cortonwood
pit closure and every miner understood,
they didn’t need an official majority –
divide and rule had had its day –
now actions held the real authority.
By the merry month of May
they were all out to a man stood on the picket line,
with the iron will of women there as well.
Whether it was a coal pit, coking plant
or power station, you could tell
from each united, resounding chant
for “coal not dole”, the ground swell wasn’t hard to define.

What was harder to believe
was that the truth of the battle of Orgreave
would be in those twisted images
my generation would receive:
defenceless riot police suddenly swarmed
by savage miners with truncheons wrapped around their heads.
For sure it must have felt like 1984
enough to leave you trembling in your beds.

The summer arrived,
and with it the TUC fiddled and contrived
to continue doing nothing
as the dockers were about to act,
while the labour right-wing continued to retract
itself, repulsed by what it saw:
the working class…moving?
But that’s against the law!
It wasn’t just the miners now,
As sympathy and millions poured in for their cause.
They may have been already caught
between the monster’s jaws,
still on the miners fought.

At long last, in September
the strike was put to the ordinary member.
It may have claimed four out of five
in favour, but too late, cried the government,
to keep itself alive.
Yet marching on the miners defied them,
without pay or their sequestered union funds;
the more the Tories could not abide them,
far from feckless moribunds,
the more they fought,
with the spirit that breeds revolutions.
By Christmas, turkeys were going two a family,
such was the support.
Thatcher’d exhausted all solutions:
police road blocks on every country lane;
ununionised lorries to play the scabs;
a vicious anti-NUM campaign;
clinging desperately to the dribs and drabs
and her precious middle-Englanders –
still on the miners fought.

They couldn’t fight forever though.
In isolated poverty with no chance of being saved,
twelve months proved enough.
But how important it is that we know,
all of us, just what they braved;
that few are made of sterner stuff;
that we can ever recall David Jones and Joe
Green, how the establishment behaved.

So that when we’re dealt the roughest of the rough,
told to tighten our belts and go
on as we were as another leader’s caved
in and told us “tough”,
we know where we stand:
beside these men and women who marched with pride
after a year of fighting for their lives against the tide.
Had every battle been fought like theirs
for every just demand,
those parliamentary despots
would long ago have lost command
of our futures.

Well, this sickly bunch has used up all its tricks.
When banks, big business, politicians, press and
what else is anybody’s guess are found in bed together
it sticks.
The people have the wood for the trees,
whether it’s a symptom
or the whole incurable disease.
Today the truth burns brighter than the midday sun,
black-and-whiter than a dry cleaning order from the Bullingdon.
Along with the miners, the widespread
decimation of factory floors;
the Irish hunger strikes and Hillsborough;
while our other good friends give their applause,
like Pinochet and Reagan – it all distils for a
wild young heart the need for real change.

With thirty years the smokescreen clears
and Thatcher has been caught.
She may be dead but what she did and said
is still the natural resort
of the same old class still yet to pass
which clings on like a wart
to working people who will one day reap all
The wealth their toils have brought.
Oh dear! That narrow mind.
It didn’t bet that we’d forget
the lesson we were taught.
And soon we’ll all unite and fight
just as the miners fought!