WOMEN of the Fife Miners' Wives Action Group march during the bitter strike of 1984. The strike started in March and became one of the greatest trade union struggles since the 1926 General Strike, pitting the National Union of Mineworkers against Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government.
In Scotland a month earlier, miners at the Polmaise Colliery near Stirling became the first flashpoint north of the border when the men went on strike on hearing the pit was to close.
Up to 200,000 miners across the whole of the UK, joined by their wives and families and sometimes entire communities, campaigned for a year against pit closures, clashing with police and causing huge splits in some areas when miners started drifting back to work.
In Scotland the miners were led by Mick McGahey, with Ravenscraig in Lanarkshire the scene of some of the most violent clashes between the strikers and police.
By the end, almost exactly a year later, an industry that had once employed 150,000 men, one-tenth of the Scottish workforce, in 196 pits, had been wiped out. The last deep mine colliery in Scotland, Longannet, closed in 2002.
Walking in the footsteps of Fife’s past – this Saturday in The Herald Magazine
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