‘You’ll do what MacGregor couldn’t, you’ll shut the ‘Craig’: steelworkers, the NUM and the 1984–85 miners’ strike

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.