成人快手

When miners in West Yorkshire, and throughout the country, went back to work on March 5th, 1985, they had been on strike for 364 days, but this was not the only long strike in their history. The General Strike of 1926 saw workers in many different industries taking industrial action - it lasted nine days but it was nine months before the miners returned to work. The 2005 exhibition at the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield, 'Strike: Not The End Of The Story' looked at strikes and lockouts by colliery owners from the 19th century to the present day and examined how actions like this have both brought together and divided those involved.

Part of the exhibition in Wakefield

Exhibits ranged from the 'Coal Not Dole' posters from two decades ago to a pair of trays from the 1893 lockout. There were objects from West Yorkshire such as the Royston Drift workers' banner and from further afield. Tracey Bradley, Curator of Social and Oral History at the museum explained: "The exhibition looks at some of the common themes and issues surrounding strikes including wages, working conditions and the effects on ordinary people鈥ccompanied by a background soundtrack of mining folk songs, this exhibition is interesting for those people who lived through the mining strikes and also to those who have no memory of the strikes."

In a reconstructed picket hut you could hear men and women speaking about picket lines, rallies and marches, or listen on the telephone in the "home area" to people remembering soup kitchens, food parcels and the terrible debts they were left with after being on strike. Here were memories of events which happened as far back as 1906.

The consequences of strike action could last for decades. Jack Sunley remembered: "Dad died when I was two years of age and I worked at the same pit, well I was born in 1925, so that's 1927. I started work on September 3rd or 4th, 1939, and out of my first week's wages they stopped a week's rent, and half a week's rent, for the arrears of my dad during the 1926 strike. During the 1926 strike obviously he hadn't worked, and it was six months, and they didn't turn people out but they were all in debt with rent, and for the first two or three years of my working life I was paying a week-and-a-half's rent鈥ff my dad's arrears."

Mounted police at Denby Grange pit

Amongst the recordings, one Denby Grange miner recalled what happened when the buses brought working miners into the pit. He described the personal pressures he was under to return to work and how the remaining strikers carried their banner when they went back on March 5th. Even after the return to work, ill-feeling between those who stayed on strike until the end and those who had returned to work earlier continued.

Nor were the reminiscences confined to one side of the picket line. A policeman recalled in some detail what went through his mind when he saw ranks of miners with sticks approaching and the police action that followed.

It is such personal testimony, together with the badges, posters and photos on display, which can hopefully add to our understanding of these events.

The exhibition, 'Strike: Not The End Of The Story' ran at the National Coal Mining Museum in 2005.