成人快手

Arthur Wakefield in 2009

"We'd probably get a 'phone call from the Union officials or we'd go down the Miner's Institute to enquire where the picketing was going off, where we were going to go on that particular day," explains Arthur Wakefield as he describes a typical day during the 1984-85 strike. "The lads in the car, the pickets, would get two pounds each and we got about three pounds for petrol money...Then we'd go to our destination. Sometimes we'd get there, sometimes we didn't. More often than not, the police would be waiting for us."

Pickets & police at Frickley, by Arthur

This, in a nutshell, was the pattern of life for Arthur and thousands of other striking miners not only in West Yorkshire but in mining communities across the UK as the dispute rumbled on for a whole year - from March 1984 to March 1985. The causes and politics behind the strike are well-documented, but what it meant for those actually standing on the picket lines from day-to-day was that their lives were changed forever. Whatever the ins and outs of the strike, Arthur - a miner at Frickley and South Elmsall every day of his working life from 1948 to 1985 - says that certainly at the start of the strike, he felt the picket lines were the correct place to be: "The thing is, it was our duty to be there to defend our jobs for their sons and grandsons. My opinion is that we did what we had to do. That was at the beginning of the strike. We thought we possibly could win."

Pickets at South Kirkby, by Arthur

Of course, being on the picket lines meant no pay. As a result, for the striking miners the money often dried up all too soon. Arthur Wakefield admits the 1984-85 dispute was certainly not easy but the strikers, their families and supporters, pulled together to help each other through tough times: "It was hard. There were women's groups - miner's wives - with soup kitchens. There were different organisations and we got a lot of support from down London...We used to go down there collecting from time-to-time, but my first priority was on the picket line. I went down there [to London] a time or two. The Frickley Ladies' Action Group [FLAG] were collecting there because single miners got nothing. The married miners got nothing, but the single lads had nowt, so what FLAG did was to go collecting down London and with the money they gave vouchers to these here single lads."

Orgreave, June 1984

As well as financial worries, relationships were also put under tremendous strain by the strike as it dragged on. Arthur says no-one was immune: "Obviously there were fall-outs...There were a lot of families separated, marriages broke up. More so down in the Nottinghamshire area because the ones that were on strike were in the minority...The miners down in Nottinghamshire that were on strike were under more pressure than we were. They'd even got shopkeepers who wouldn't serve them because they were on strike."

Twenty five years on from the Miners' Strike, Arthur's memories of events during those troubled times are still crystal clear. He has strong views on what he sees as the rights and wrongs of the dispute and believes its legacy is still felt in former pit communities today: "It lives on with most miners who were actively involved in the strike. A few want to forget it. I wasn't forced to go on the picket lines, it was voluntary and I thought it was my duty as a union member...Without the pits, it's different. The community's not the same as it used to be - the togetherness, the closeness of the community. It hasn't gone completely, you've still got miners communicating with each other. We talk about it, but it's definitely not the same is it used to be...I think about employment for the future generations. What's for 'em? The miners were all over. I was born into a mining family. There weren't too many other jobs outside the coalmines...You wanted to get a job, went down the pit, got a wage to support your family. That's gone. That's gone now...It's all desolate. Where the pits were, they've gone. It's all gone."