So, it's now twenty five years since the start of the miners' strike and unsurprisingly the anniversary has prompted widespread media coverage. Unfortunately, it seems that particularly within the BBC positions are still as entrenched as they were in 1984.
So far the only truly balanced report I have seem was by Roy Hattersley for The One Show. The former deputy leader of the Labour Party made the observation that the longer the dispute went on the more it became a battle of egos between Margaret Thatcher on the one side and Arthur Scargill on the other, with everyone else caught in between.
Another late night discussion, featured the film maker Ken Loach and Nigel Lawson. Both chose to trot out the same old arguments. Tory conspiracies to provoke the strike versus the militant left's attempts to overthrow democratic government. The language had changed so little in the intervening quarter century that I found myself glancing at my reflection in the living room window to make sure I wasn't still wearing my Farahs and sporting a mullet to a Tears for Fears soundtrack.
What genuinely worries me is that as time goes by it becomes all too easy to romanticise what was a very bitter and hard fought conflict and in so doing to gloss over unpalletable facts.
The reason the strike still holds a fascination in the public consciousness is that it formed a watershed between the old Britain of heavy industry which had existed since the 18th century, and what we have now. The miners had been the big battalions of the labour movement for over a century. If Thatcherism was going to reshape the nation their power had to broken.
The dispute was also different in its' motivation. Most strikes are clearly for self gain, an extra few percent here, a few less hours there. In '84 things were different. This was a strike to try and safeguard an industry's future. To secure a future for families and communities.
At this time I should declare an interest in as much as I do live and work in an ex mining area which in the aftermath of the return to work in 1985 was absolutely traumatised by multiple pit closures. I remember how angry I felt when on the twentieth anniversary of the strike, Sir Bernard Ingham, Thatcher's press secretary was interviewed on breakfast TV. When asked what changes had occurred in mining areas since the end of the strike, he flippantly answered, "Well they're certainly greener".
Of course things are never black and white. As Andrew Marr states in his excellent History of Modern Britain, the miners had never been "the enemy within" (as Thatcher would have had us believe). Most were fundamentally law abiding people, doing some of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in the country. The trouble was they had allowed themselves to be led by a deluded insurrectionist.
The one and only aim of any trade union leader should be to represent his or her members and to gain for them a fair deal. By pursuing his own political agenda, Scargill deserted his fundamental responsibilities. Further one of the founding principles of the trade union movement was to further workers' rights through collective action along democratic principles.
The denial of a ballot by Scargill and his inner circle could be reasonably said to have cost them the strike, since it gave the Nottinghamshire area a valid argument for refusing to come out. This in turn led to the need for flying picketing, the subsequent violence playing into the hands of those in the government who were trying to paint the strikers as bully boys and fuelling the myth of "the enemy within".
The seeds had been sown twelve years before when he and his band of followers marched down the road to Saltley coking plant in the West Midlands, thereby guaranteeing the NUM's victory. To see Scargill talking of the magnificent feeling of witnessing the power of mass picketing (some would say orchestrated public disorder)is a study in hubris. Two years later a second strike, coming hard on the heals of the oil crisis, provoked by the Yom Kippur War, caused the three day week and the fall of the Heath government. This sent tremors through the conservative establishment. Planning for a future dispute, following a Tory return to power began.
Of course one could argue that the Thatcherites were so intransigent that any attempt at compromise would have fallen on deaf ears. Afterall the steelworkers had faired little better in 1981. However, by electing Scargill and pursuing the route of confrontation the NUM ultimately sealed its' own fate and put the lie to their own slogan, "The miners united, will never be defeated". Whilst the WORKERS united, may never be defeated, the miners were unfortunately comprehensively defeated. Across huge swathes of the north, communities are still paying the price. Indeed anyone working in a non-unionised industry is still paying the price and it will only get worse now we are in the grip of the credit crunch.