Our place to talk – an independent website for supporters of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK.

The most-read independent website by and for Lib Dem supporters. Not paid for by trade unions or millionaires.

Advert

Tag Archives: miners strike

The Miners’ Strike forty years on

By Geoff Reid | Tue 20th February 2024 - 9:33 am

Embed from Getty Images
The fortieth anniversary of the start of the Miners’ Strike that began on 5th March 1984 is almost upon us but Channel 4 and BBC2 have already offered their acts of remembrance. I remember the start and had the television permanently on during the Battle of Orgreave, but some of my sharpest personal memories are about the ending and the aftermath.

Throughout the strike I was living and working opposite the Yorkshire National Union of Mineworkers(NUM) Headquarters in Barnsley. Arthur Scargill and his colleagues regularly appeared on the other side of Victoria Road. Our Communist next door neighbour was high up in the Engineering union. Roy Mason, the right wing Labour MP and former member of a Labour cabinet, lived round the corner. I had been the Liberal Alliance candidate for Barnsley Central in the 1983 General Election (where alas my 19.2% still holds the record vote share). So it could be seen as a highly politicised corner of the town centre!

Continue reading »

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged arthur scargill and margaret thatcher | 13 Comments

Most Read

Op-eds

Words matter, use them carefully! (Leon Duveen)
Tom Arms’ World Review (Tom Arms)
Lib Dem Women: Amplifying women’s voices at Conference (Donna Harris)
Christine Jardine to stand down as MP at next election (The Voice)
Observations of an Expat: When Donald met Xi (Tom Arms)

Advert

Recent Comments

Drew Durning
Conference stopped being supreme the day Ed Davey became leader. Conference had voted (albeit with provisos on timing) to rejoin the EU. Just about Ed's first p...
Jason Connor
Please clarify specifically how they miss the mark? Christine is a very popular and highly capable Lib Dem MP, if not one of the most popular. If she is ous...
David Blake
If Alex Cole-Hamilton has anything to do with this he should resign....
Steve Trevethan
Thank you for an interesting and relevant article. Might the rise of extreme right, populist parties be a/an (unsurprising) consequence of Neoliberalism, aka...
Alison Smith
Christine Jardine is a highly respected MP of national stature so this concerns Lib Dems far outside the boundaries of Edinburgh West. Furthermore, if other Sco...