‘You’ll do what MacGregor couldn’t, you’ll shut the ‘Craig’: steelworkers, the NUM and the 1984–85 miners’ strike
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Using oral history interviews with former Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (ISTC) activists, this article studies an important but often overlooked aspect of the 1984–85 miners strike, which was the relationship between the NUM and the ISTC. Both unions, and the NUR, were part of a triple industrial alliance and during the strike, the miners requested the ISTC reduce steelworks to safety level operation, to further pressurise the coal board and Thatcher government. Although supportive of the NUM and willing to provide financial aid, the ISTC refused this request. ISTC leaders at various levels misrepresented the NUM strategy and argued that it would threaten steelworkers’ own precarious industrial future. The oral histories reveal conflicted memories among ISTC activists. These memories document the contribution steelworkers made in support of the strike but also highlight a range of contradictory attitudes and recollections, including defensiveness, misrepresentation, and mis-memory on the central question of industrial action. The miners strike occupies a prominent place in labour history. The Left continues to lament the outcome as a milestone in the triumph of neoliberalism during and beyond the 1980s. The article concludes that it is this historical significance and outcome which underpins these difficult and contested memories.
Source: Contemporary British History
Author: Charlie McGuire
Institution: Teesside University
Language: English
Topic: Labor Movements and Unions
Subfield: Public Administration
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4410508776