Least we forget

posted by: Nick Lowles | on: Thursday, 5 March 2009, 15:20

Twenty five years ago today one of the most bitter and devastating disputes erupted. Miners in South Yorkshire went out on strike, quickly followed by their colleagues across the country. For over a year mining communities were ripped apart, starved of money and, for many, their liberty, in an attempt to save their industry.

As we all know, they were not successful and their defeat destroyed whole communities. There were 187,000 miners in 1984; today there are just a couple of thousand. Mining communities were devastated and it is hardly a surprise that the BNP has enjoyed significant success in these areas in more recent times.

However, as we remember the anniversary of the Great Strike, it is also important to recall the attitude of the BNP at the time. The BNP bitterly opposed the National Union of Mineworkers and on several occasions called for the army to be brought to defeat the strikers. It was also an aristocratic BNP member, the late Lady Jane Birdwood, that helped back the breakaway miners who refused to join the strike. She funded their legal challenges and even bought a private coalmine in County Durham in the hope to drawing the NUM into a legal dispute which, she hoped, would eventually bankrupt the union.

The BNP claim to be on the side of working people but in one of the greatest disputes of the last century they sided with Thatcher and the authorities.

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