When thousands of Ayrshire miners downed tools on Friday March 9, 1984 they said they were fighting to preserve generations of history, a culture that held communities tightly together and a future not blighted by poverty, unemployment and hopelessness.

They believed the National Coal Board, and the government, wanted to destroy the industry.

But the government said that change was inevitable, that the industry was running at a loss, that the country did not have pockets as deep as the pits in which the men toiled.

The resulting year-long dispute was bitter. It remains bitter today. There are those who say that the government of the day intended to smash communities that did not support them. There are those who say it was the intractability of the miners and their leaders that caused the downfall of those communities.

There was right and there was wrong on both sides.

Margaret Thatcher was voted into power in 1979. They called her the Iron Lady and it was a handle she time and again proved she rightly deserved.

Some say she stepped into office with the mother of all grudges.

Her predecessor, Ted Heath, had taken on the miners and lost. During the 1974 strike, Miners’ Leader Arthur Scargill forced the Conservative government to pose the question ‘who rules the country, the government or the unions?’ This question led Heath to relinquish office and give way to a minority Labour government.

By 1979 Maggie Thatcher was determined to diminish the power of unions. Soon after, the National Coal Board revealed a hit list which would see the closure of 20 pits and a loss of 20,000 jobs. The NCB planned to develop a number of superpits producing high levels of coal using new technology and less manpower.

Only two pits were tipped to benefit - one in Yorkshire and one in Nottinghamshire.

The first to feel the pressure were Sorn and Highhouse collieries. By 1983 they were branded unviable but the miners voted with their feet and launched their own strike. Their efforts were in vain and hundreds of miners found themselves unemployed shortly after.

AND BY THE FRIDAY, MARCH 9, NUM PRESIDENT ARTHUR SCARGILL CALLED A NATIONAL STRIKE WHEN CLOSURE PLANS FOR CORTONWOOD IN YORKSHIRE WERE REVEALED.

Killoch came out at the end of the nightshift; Barony voted with a show of hands to join the strike and men at the Lugar workshop closed their doors at the end of their working week on the Friday, bringing pit operations virtually to a standstill.

Maggie Thatcher was well prepared for going head-to-head with the miners. She had been stockpiling coal ready for the conflict. The black stuff was being imported from Poland, Australia and South Africa.

To make matters worse, nature also seemed to conspire against the strikers, for Britain recorded its highest temperatures for decades, thus reducing the demand throughout the strike.

The legality of the dispute was a sticking point for many. Miners at Barony, after the first week, demanded the union hold a national ballot. They revealed they didn’t want to stop work, but would never cross the picket line. They called for a letter to be sent to NUM General Secretary Peter Healthfield to press their case.

Others felt Scargill was backed into a corner with no other possible option. Ballots had proved fruitless a few years before when the Nottingham branch reneged on a deal following a national ballot and this reduced much local confidence in their power.

Albert Wheeler, Scottish Area Director for the NCB, warned that ‘Strike action would result in heavy job losses’, forgetting the fact it was the threat of job losses that had brought the men out in the first place.

Alex Doolan, Ayrshire delegate of the NUM, and a campaign stalwart despite being dogged by illness, responded: “We are not out to destroy the pits, we are trying to protect them. If anyone is going to close the pits, it’s the NCB.” It became was the most turbulent, bitter and controversial labour dispute seen since the war.

Miner turned against miner, friend against friend, and neighbour against neighbour.

Hunterston Power station became a picketing hotspot. Men were bussed to the coast to join the pickets and at first relations between the strikers and the police were amicable. However, that didn’t last. One striker recalled the mounted police at the scene: “They were on horseback looking like medieval warriors with riot shields and large batons and there was no joking.

“The windows on some of the lorries were smashed and the bus company refused to give us buses again.” Even so, local men continued to travel to some of the fiercest pickets in the country, the scenes of worst scenes of strike-based violence ever recorded. Local men returned from the notorious Orgrieve Coking Plant in Yorkshire, battered and bruised; ribs were broken and flesh torn by barbed wire as they were chased by mounted police.

One man said at the time: “I have never been so frightened in my life.” Violence, though, came from both sides of the pickets. Reports were received of so-called ‘scab’ workers being threatened, abused, beaten up. Police officers were spat upon, injured.

In Cumnock and Doon Valley, pickets were mounted at Killoch, Barony as well as Knockshinnoch and Waterside.

A 16-man sit-in was staged in one of the surface buildings in Killoch.

One month in, miners were confident they were on their way to victory, a feeling deeply echoed by Scottish mining leader Mick McGahey as he stood before 600 people in Cumnock Town Hall and declared: “We can win our fight.” The STUC’s Day of Action in May saw thousands of people march through the streets of Cumnock in the biggest rally the area had ever seen. Factory workers came out in support.

In response the NCB took out full page advertisements in local papers ‘to keep the record straight - NCB’s side of the story’ and continued to deny the closure plans.

They claimed that it was the miners who were bringing the communities to their knees by preventing vital coal supplies from going to the needy.

The miners denied that domestic supplies, in particular those going to the elderly, schools and hospitals, were obstructed.

The picketing men themselves went into the hills to dig coal for their vulnerable neighbours. They chopped wood donated by a company in Straiton and delivered it to the old folks to keep their fires burning.

Although there was a clear divide between those working and those striking, the support from all communities was unprecedented.

Shop tills were already hit hard as families and those in the industries supporting miners, struggled to make ends meet. But this did not stop the continual selfless gestures and generosity. People handed over their last penny with overwhelming pride and whole-hearted support. Meats, fruit and vegetables were all given free to the soup kitchens operated throughout the district. Vans filled with food and clothing were donated from organisations all over Scotland, including ethnic minority associations in Glasgow.

In some of the most heart-warming moments in the strike’s history, pensioners and those on the breadline themselves brought tins of food out of their own cupboards and put their hand in their pocket.

But the mood amongst the battling miners turned dark. Talks between the NUM and the NCB broke down. There was a slow drift of workers back to the pits, pickets intensified, arrests were made, men were sacked.

As the year crept on, cracks in the campaign became all the more evident.

Men were lured back by the NCB under promises of high bonuses and generous redundancy packages. The pressure on families living on a mere £15 a week took its toll and older miners found the fight too hard and went back.

At this time one man gave a defiant interview to the Cumnock Chronicle. His house had been picketed, his car was overturned and his windows put in regularly. But he vowed this wouldn’t change his decision.

He said: “I do not believe in the way the strike was called or the ballot and I will continue to work.” Christmas approached and striking families faced more pressure. Rent arrears, although a concern, had been alleviated by Strathclyde Regional Council who vowed that no miner would be evicted for falling behind on payments and rebates were made until the end of the strike. The authority also put up £10,000 for the miners relief fund and local councillors paid for the children to see Mother Goose at the Gaiety Theatre in Ayr. The relief fund made sure that the children had the best possible Christmas they could have.

And there was still enough money in the pot to give the adults a night’s fun.

But on the picket front, the numbers were again dwindling.

By the January, the NCB publicised a 30 per cent return to work. Over 1500 men formed a human wall outside the gates of Killoch in an attempt to halt the growing number of buses breaking the picket. A sea of black figures formed a barricade as police officers hemmed in the miners at both sides of the gates. Twelve men were arrested during the struggle and days later the NCB announced a 50 per cent return to work.

Finally on Wednesday March 5, 1985 the remaining men, beaten, demoralised, dejected, voted to go back to work without any concessions.

Cumnock Chronicles lined shops helves all over the district with the simple headline, ‘It’s All Over’.

It wasn’t long before the threatened job losses began to bite.

On April 11, the men at Lugar Workshops received a redundancy note in their pay packet. And within three years, it was the same story for the rest as Scargill’s dire prophecy became a bitter reality. Deep mining would soon become part of a troubled history.

Hero or villain, Scargill said they would close and they did.

The men who stuck with the strike to the bitter end earned themselves a place in what was called the Tuesday Boys Club and the badge the 400 men received as a result is still treasured.

Thirty years later, the Miners’ Strike remains an emotive subject.

There are men who remember those days with bitterness, who say the legacies of those dark days are ruptured communities and high unemployment.

There are others who say deep mining was done, that changes had to be made.

The deep pits are gone now, replaced by opencasts, deep holes gouged from the land by dynamite and giant diggers. Even that industry has seen the number of jobs fall in the past two years, thanks to companies going under.

The days of mining villages echoing to the tramp of boots as hundreds of men made their way to the pit are gone forever.

Only the remnants of bings and the hulking dark bulk of the Barony A Frame and the winding gear at Highhouse remind us that once coal was king.

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There is also a photo gallery of archive images here: http://www.cumnockchronicle.com/photogalleries/miners-strike/