British class struggle anarchists in the Miners' Strike 1984-1985

[Kate Sharpley]

This year is 40 years since the start of the miners strike.
Anyone seen either interesting contemporary accounts of anarchists in the miners strike ( eg solidarity actions like this one - The day we took the white tower [Price Waterhouse occupation, Glasgow, 1984] )
Or interesting reflections after the event (eg Nostalgia in the UK - Bash Street Kids ) ?
We have a number of things about the strike at Kate Sharpley Library: Miners' strike (1984-85)
But it would be nice to have some more.
Anyone want to (anonymously if necessary) send some memories in?
(yes, we know we should look at the footnotes in Ben Franks' 'British anarchisms and the miners’ strike')

 

[hitmouse]

I remember the postscript to Beasts of Burden being interesting, although on a re-read that's more about how the miners' strike affected UK anarchists than about what they did in the strike itself.

So Near, So Far is pretty extensive.
And then you have the various scans of Workers' Playtime, Class War (about 10-12?), Black Flag, Virus, Direct Action and so on.

Am I right in thinking there was something vague about Os Cancegerios(sp?) coming over for it? Exact documentation of that'd probably be hard to find though.

These might also be of some interest:

Jenny Tells Her Tale: Stories From the Yorkshire Miners

Memories of the 1984-5 miners' strike from Jenny Dennis, who was married to a Kiveton Park miner. Covering a range of subjects including the links the strike made with autonomous movements across Europe. Content note: this text mentions sexual abuse and state violence, and contains some language...

libcom.org

A year of our lives: a colliery community in the great coal strike of 1984/85

An anthology of accounts of the miners strike by people from Hatfield, South Yorkshire. Compiled by Dave Douglass and published by Hooligan Press in 1986.

libcom.org

Digging deeper: issues in the miners' strike - Huw Beynon

A collection of articles by 17 different authors analysing the UK miners' strike in detail. It examines the issues at stake, the Tories' strategy, the role of the police and the courts, the miners and their supporters and families, and the TUC and the Labour Party. Published while the strike was...

libcom.org

Our activity in the late 1980s and 1990s: activity and balance sheet - Antagonism

The Antagonism group reflect on their activities and theoretical development, through involvement in various groups and struggles from the mid-1980s to the end of the 1990s.

libcom.org

Come and wet this truncheon - Dave Douglass

Classic pamphlet by miner and anarcho-syndicalist Dave Douglass on political policing during the British Miners’ Strike of 1984/5 - when the state acted like an occupying army in working class areas. First published in 1986.

libcom.org

The British miners strike of 1984/1985 - a retrospective view of some events at St. John's Colliery in Maesteg, South Wales

The following article was written by a Dutch comrade for the bulletin of the group 'Action and Thought'. It describes an action by South Wales striking miners in 1984 when they occupied three dock cranes at Port Talbot in an attempt to prevent the unloading of scab coal. An added 'Postscript'...

libcom.org

 

[hitmouse]

Oh, looking into it a bit more, sounds like Counter Information was founded as part of the strike support efforts, so the early issues of that are definitely worth a look as well:

Counter Information newsletter

A complete online archive of Counter Information, which was a newsletter produced by an independent collective, based in central Scotland, including Glasgow, with the aim is to assist in the struggle against all injustice, oppression and exploitation. Published from the 1980s to the early 2000s...

libcom.org

Just had an idle look at the Freedom archives to see if I could find the infamous "extra thick" article, looks like 1984 hasn't been archived but 1985 has, some interesting stuff in there, eg:

https://freedomnews.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Freedom-1985-02.pdf

I imagine that anyone who spends enough time going through issues of Black Flag from 1984 will probably learn a fair bit about what was written in Freedom anyway. The Burnley conference sounds impressive, hard to imagine a similar conference happening today:

Black Flag vol 07 #124 (1985)

An issue of Black Flag from January 1985 focussing mainly on the Miners Strike.

libcom.org

Direct Action #21 (December 1984-January 1985)

Issue #21 of Direct Action, with articles on solidarity with the miners over the Christmas period, the French CNT supporting the miners, the need to smash the state, Cammell Laird shipyard workers in Birkenhead being jailed for occupying, Ghanian sailors occupying a ship in Birkenhead docks, the...

libcom.org

Direct Action #22 (February 1985)

Issue #22 of Direct Action, with articles on the need for solidarity action with the miners, a report from a conference to plan such action, job cuts on Teesside, the importance of solidarity, Polypipe in Doncaster, the Fitzwilliam Nine trial, Philip Kane on the relevance of anarchism today...

libcom.org

 

[hitmouse]

Oh, looks like this one is useful for the question of what anarchists were doing as well:

Black Flag vol 07 7d #122 (1984)

An issue of Black Flag magazine from 1984. Scanned in by the comrades at Sparrows Nest, Nottingham.

libcom.org

 

[hitmouse]

(from: BF 123 Black Flag vol 07 7e #123 (1984) )

 

[planetgeli]

I'd hope you were on picket lines. I know some of you were. However.

Look, maybe all the other links are brilliant and I've clicked on the one problematic one. But I looked at;

So Near, So Far is pretty extensive

and boy has it pissed me off and reminded me why I want nothing to do with the theoretical bollocks of anarchism or the left.

Ignoring the fact it's a wall of almost impenetrable text, I came across the chapter on Warrington. Found out when I got my head kicked in I was doing it wrong! Along with the other 5000 pickets.

Surely if all these people were against them, many people will say, what the workers were doing must have been good! However workers militancy was not, and at Warrington could not have been, directed towards the right aims.

So sorry. We thought we were doing the right thing. Nobody there was ready for the ferocity of the "testing out" (the only thing the author gets right) of the new police tactics (in preparation for the miner's strike). We were actually winnng for...oh....10 minutes. Then the testing out began. And a lot of us fought back, briefly. What else were we supposed to do? We were getting the shit kicked out of us.

It is important that workers are prepared to use violence when necessary to defend their interests. However the nature of this working class violence is and must be very different from the violence of police riot squads or the army. Working class violence does not depend on military discipline and sophisticated technology of mass destruction: it is by its very nature turbulent and apparently uncontrolled, but in reality based on self-discipline and self-organisation, and fuelled by creativity, enthusiasm and, above all,solidarity.

Meaningless bollocks. Followed by,

Workers can never hope to defeat the police in a set-piece confrontation such as took place at Warrington. But even these specially trained and well-armed forces must give way to the irresistible pressure of the mass struggle of the working class.

Even more meaningless bollocks.

Written by somebody who was never there. But has the gall to tell us who were, who got broken bones and criminal records, to tell us we were doing it wrong. Because he wants to have a go at the SWP.

They were able to ensure that despite Socialist Worker’s grand claim that the dispute had become one between “the working class and the Tory government”, the genuine interests of the working class were not represented at all.

Carry on. Needed to get that off my chest.

 

[marty21]

I was living in Swansea during the miner's strike , there was a lot of support in the city for the miners , I was a student , and we collected money for the miners at The Quadrant shopping centre .

I remember being back in Swansea 15 or so years later (during the petrol boycott thing when tanker drivers refused to deliver petrol, 1999-ish? And I spoke to a woman in a shop , she said people in Swansea didn't support the drivers because the lorry drivers didn't support the miners during the strike .

Feelings about who did or didn't support the miners did last a long time , and in some communities still persist.

 

[Kate Sharpley]

Thank you hitmouse. lots of reading.
hitmouse: Tony Gibson's infamous "extra thick" article wasn't in "Freedom", it was in their 1986 book 'Freedom 100 years'. Which is on libcom https://files.libcom.org/files/freedom-centenary.pdf
hitmouse: re radio hi-jacked. nice. there's possibly something waiting to be written about non-print pushing back against the propaganda machine.

planetgeli: "So sorry. We thought we were doing the right thing. Nobody there was ready for the ferocity of the "testing out" (the only thing the author gets right) of the new police tactics (in preparation for the miner's strike). We were actually winnng for...oh....10 minutes. Then the testing out began. And a lot of us fought back, briefly. What else were we supposed to do? We were getting the shit kicked out of us. "
Thanks. That sort of 'correct line' think always makes think of the quote that Ernie O'Malley nodded to in the title of his memoirs: 'easy to sleep on another man's wound'.

 

[Serge Forward]

I was involved with the Careless Talk Collective (North Staffs Potteries) which included anarchist communists and council communists. Their stuff can be found on the Splits and Fusions website and the Sparrow's Nest. My local pits in '84 were Silverdale and Wolstanton. Anyway, I dropped out of the Careless Talk group after it presented a leaflet for handing out to pickets which was incredibly defeatist. Politically (in libertarian communist terms), it was okay as it offered a fairly decent critique of trade unionism. Tactically, it was fucking dire. It was early days in the strike, and as pickets at both pits were desperately trying to block scabs from coming in to work, then it would have been quite demoralising. Shortly after, I moved to Stafford and helped out with strike support at Littleton colliery with a couple of anarchist-sympathetic mates. The main players there, though, were Militant, who had two big branches... which was odd for such a small town.

Eta: the flyer I mentioned may have been based on one produced by the Manchester Wildcat group. Don't get me wrong, both groups did some great stuff and I had good friends there. But on that occasion, they got a bit carried away.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Sorry to add to the "non-class struggle anarchist saying mad things" but I have been going through Bonanno's Insurrection magazine and found this:



It actually seemed a lot better than I expected until I read that...

Kate Sharpley there is a brief bit in Ian Bone's autobiography about selling Class War on a picket line which is at least entertaining if not exactly the sort of supportive solidarity you were after.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

There is quite an honest account of a female anarchist from Cambridge staying with striking miners in this (p12):

Alive & Kicking: Cambridge Anarchist News #1 1984

Including reports from: IWA congress, Cambridge City Council meeting on policing, visit to miners strike in Nottinghamshire, etc.

libcom.org

And page 10 of this is an unusal (and quite positive) commentary by a miner (albeit Dave Douglass) about anarchists and their role in the strike (amongst much disdain for the left):

Bores Under the Floor: A Brief Guide to the Wave of "Left" Groups and Newspapers currently invading the Pit Villages

Report on the nature and impact of socialist and anarchist groups during the 1984-85 miners' strike. Written in a personal capacity by Dave Douglass, an anarchist and the coordinator of the Doncaster NUM Strike Committee, in June 1984. Originally uploaded onto the Sparrows' Nest Archive.

libcom.org

 

[hitmouse]

On the Los Kangaroos aspect, it turns out that there is some documentation of that after all, Mayday Rooms have scans of their journal and the archive is a bit hard to navigate but it does have issue 2 which has an article called "Brick Keeps Britain Beautiful" about the miners' strike. It's all in French though and I can't read French, so no idea if it's any good though.

 

[hitmouse]

On the subject of collections, there's some interesting CP vs anarchists stuff from Glasgow I'd not heard about before - from the Workers' Playtime collection:

In a recent issue of the New Statesman Beatrix Campbell, one of the CP feminists who have been intervening strongly in the women’s support groups, wrote that “The very act of collecting has been made political by a police force which appears to be desperately improvising devices to nail any public mobilisation of support for the miners”. It’s an accurate description of the activities of her fellow CP members on Glasgow Trades Council. Here the efforts of the CP nationwide to build their own dwindling ranks through support activities can be seen in their true colours. Local collections of various kinds – some by leftist groups – but also regular street collections by Glasgow anarchists, unemployed groups and others, were being handed over direct to local pits. The trades council circulated rumours that money was being misappropriated and threatened to call in the police if collections were not stopped. In the meantime they used their influence with the Regional Executive of the NUM to try to have the collections refused. The Exec wouldn’t go that far but did insist that pits return money — which they would accept however for their own regional funds.

From Wildcat 1:

 

[hitmouse]

More occupations, from Black Flag 122 posted above, although unfortunately their typesetter got a bit mixed up:

 

[hitmouse]

Huh, another little bit of history I had no idea about, from DA 18:

Apart from anything else, never realised the IWW still had a Colorado miners branch in 84.

 

[Kate Sharpley]

Just had an idle look at the Freedom archives

Hitmouse, If you really want to see freedom for 1984 you should check out the sparrows nest The Sparrows' Nest Library and Archive - Freedom Newspaper
Though some of it is a bit grim, of course.

 

[Rob Ray]

Ugh, that reminds me I need to start to downsize/OCR both the Sparrows Nest additions and some other bits I've been sent to fill in the gaps at the Freedom archive. Too many effing projects ...

 

[Kate Sharpley]

hitmouse: more on the Glasgow strife with the CP here (I can't see the original issue of Prctical Anarchy on the sparrows nest)
Derby Agitator/Rising Free #06 erbys Revolutionary Paper.
'communist party - false friend to the miners', reprinted from practical anarchy glasgow
http://www.thesparrowsnest.org.uk/collections/public_archive/15050.pdf
ETA:
original publication in practical anarchy is in this collection from the spirit of revolt comrades
Practical Anarchy : Spirit of Revolt. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

 

[Kate Sharpley]

Pete Ridley: "We in the Direct Action Movement were pretty active with the miners’ strike, collecting funds, helping on picket lines, etc. Consequently anarcho-syndicalism (anarchism) got a good name with the miners who were sick of the so-called “Left” who only pushed their particular brand of “bossism.” The international anarcho-syndicalist unions in Spain, France, Germany, Sweden, Holland and Italy were all acting in solidarity, sending money, providing holidays for miners’ kids, organizing tours for miners delegations etc., all without the support of the Mineworkers/NUM bureaucracy."
London, England [Letter about anarchist actions in support of the miners strike; bulletin contents]
(Networks of solidarity: the London left and the 1984-5 miners’ strike by Diarmaid Kelliher mentions anarchists a little, though seems to think the idea that there were more than a few anarcho-syndicalist connections "probably wishful thinking".... Networks of solidarity: the London left and the 1984-5 miners’ strike - Enlighten Publications )

 

[Kate Sharpley]

Am I right in thinking there was something vague about Os Cancegerios(sp?) coming over for it? Exact documentation of that'd probably be hard to find though.

...

On the Los Kangaroos aspect, it turns out that there is some documentation of that after all, Mayday Rooms have scans of their journal and the archive is a bit hard to navigate but it does have issue 2 which has an article called "Brick Keeps Britain Beautiful" about the miners' strike. It's all in French though and I can't read French, so no idea if it's any good though.

Brick keeps Britain beautiful ! - [Fragments d'Histoire de la gauche radicale] there it is in words that you could ask the internet to translate

 

[Kate Sharpley]

Dave Morris says: Talking to Dave Morris about the Miners Strike, Wapping and Poland : A transcript of a conversation [April 2024]

 

[Kate Sharpley]

Things from then:
DAM What Syndicalists Think: Anarcho-Syndicalists and the Miners Strike
South Yorkshire Women in the Miners Strike
Black Flag Kinnock Pleads For Government
North East (Someone got there before us) Strike History [1984 call for information on anarchist solidarity with the miners strike]

 

[Kate Sharpley]

Early on: Miners [Report and analysis from Doncaster, 1984]
Calverton Colliery [Picketing report, 1984]
Leaflet for 5/11 day of action [5th November 1984 Day of Action in Support of the Mining Communities Leaflet]

 

[Kate Sharpley]

'Help Needed Now More Than Ever' Help Needed Now More Than Ever
Miners update: The Next Step [August 1984]