title: Ray Milland

text: Returning to filming, Milland was assigned to a Mitchell Leisen-directed historical drama called "Kitty" (1945), opposite Paulette Goddard. He was meant to follow it with "Olympia".


title: Ray Milland

text: Instead, he did a romantic comedy, "The Well-Groomed Bride" opposite Olivia de Havilland. Many of the crew members on "The Well-Groomed Bride" had also worked on "The Lost Weekend", and Milland recalled an encounter with a sound mixer, who told him that he had seen a rough cut of "Weekend" and thought Milland was not only sure to be nominated for an Academy Award, but he would probably win. Milland had not considered himself worthy of an award, but over the next few months, he thought of little else, and was desperate to be nominated. After the first preview, reaction was mixed, but Brackett stated that they had produced "something really worthwhile". Milland found the initial feedback to his role congratulatory but hushed, leading him to feel that the film would bomb as a piece of cinema and would be seen as a social document. When the film was released in New York, the favourable reviews took both Milland and the studio by surprise. Milland was lauded, and he not only won that year's Academy Award for Best Actor, but also the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor–Drama, the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor, the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor. He was the first Welsh actor to win an Oscar, and when he collected the award from Ingrid Bergman, he gave one of the shortest acceptance speeches of any Oscar winner. His performance was so convincing, Milland was beleaguered for years by rumours that he actually was an alcoholic. He steadfastly asserted that he was not.


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland's success in "The Lost Weekend" resulted in his contract being rewritten, and he became Paramount's highest-salaried actor. When the film was premiered across Europe, Milland was sent to attend each opening. When he appeared in Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, he was given the keys to the city.


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland continued working as a leading man after his Oscar win, and stayed contracted to Paramount until the early 1950s. He was teamed with Teresa Wright in "The Imperfect Lady" (1946), directed by Lewis Allen. He replaced Alan Ladd in a Western with Barbara Stanwyck, "California" (1947), directed by John Farrow, which was a big hit.


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland was reunited with Wright in "The Trouble with Women" (1947) and then starred opposite Marlene Dietrich in "Golden Earrings" (1947). He was one of many Paramount stars who made a cameo in "Variety Girl" (1947) then went to England to make "So Evil My Love" (1948), produced by Hal Wallis for director Lewis Allen.


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland made a second film for Farrow, "The Big Clock" (1948), which has become one of his most highly regarded films. He then did his third film with Allen, "Sealed Verdict" (1948), and a third with Farrow, "Alias Nick Beal" (1949), which Milland later said was his favourite film.


title: Ray Milland

text: In July 1948, Paramount suspended him for refusing a part in "The Mark of Lucretia" (which became "The Bride of Vengeance"). Milland commented, "it is a part that is out of my normal natural range as an actor."


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland then went to Fox for the comedy, "It Happens Every Spring" (1949), and then made a fourth with Farrow, "Copper Canyon" (1950). After this, Milland increasingly freelanced.


title: Ray Milland

text: At Columbia, Milland starred opposite Rosalind Russell in "A Woman of Distinction" (1950). Then, at MGM, he was directed by George Cukor in "A Life of Her Own" (1950) alongside Lana Turner, replacing Wendell Corey, who had quit the film just three days into filming.


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland was directed by Jacques Tourneur in RKO's "Circle of Danger" (1951), set in the United Kingdom; it was the only time he filmed in his home country of Wales. At MGM he was in "Night Into Morning" (1951) and then a comedy, "Rhubarb" (1951).


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland gave a strong performance in "Close to My Heart" (1951) at Warner Bros., in which he and Gene Tierney starred as a couple trying to adopt a child. His next film, "Bugles in the Afternoon" (1952), was a Western also at Warners. "Something to Live For" (1952) was another study of alcoholism at Paramount, with Joan Fontaine.


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland had a contract to make one film a year with Paramount (who released Pine-Thomas films). He was wanted by producer Harold Popkin to make "The Thief" but Paramount insisted he make "Jamaica Run" under their contract instead. The impasse was resolved by the intervention of Milland's agents at MCA and filming for "Jamaica Run" was pushed back. For "The Thief" (1952), his role was without dialogue, and he was nominated for a second Golden Globe. He later remarked that he was proud of the film.


title: Ray Milland

text: He then starred opposite Grace Kelly and Robert Cummings in Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder" (1954), originally shot in three dimensions. Although never admitted by either, rumours were rife at the time that Kelly and Milland were engaged in an affair, fuelled by notorious gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.


title: Ray Milland

text: He starred with Phyllis Avery and Lloyd Corrigan in the CBS sitcom, "Meet Mr. McNutley," from 1953 to 1955. He appeared in the role of an English (and later Drama) professor at the fictitious Lynnhaven College. The sitcom was renamed "The Ray Milland Show" in its second season. Milland directed some episodes, and he soon had ambitions to direct features.


title: Ray Milland

text: After leaving Paramount, Milland concentrated on directing. In his first directorial effort, a Western entitled "A Man Alone" (1955), Milland cast himself in the leading role. His co-stars included Mary Murphy and Ward Bond. The story depicts the aftermath of a stagecoach robbery. He did the film for a lesser fee in exchange for a chance to direct and a percentage of the profits


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland starred in a TV adaptation of "Markheim" (1956) directed by Fred Zinnemann then starred in and directed "Lisbon" (1956), alongside Maureen O'Hara and Claude Rains. Like "A Man Alone," it was distributed by Republic Pictures.


title: Ray Milland

text: He directed episodes of "The Ford Television Theatre" and "Schlitz Playhouse" and starred in the features "Three Brave Men" (1956), "The River's Edge" (1957), a Western directed by Allan Dwan for Benedict Bogeaus, and "High Flight" (1957), an air force melodrama for Warwick Pictures in England.


title: Ray Milland

text: He appeared in episodes of "Suspicion" and "General Electric Theater", directing episodes of both. His third feature as director was "The Safecracker" (1958), which was shot in England.


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland then retired for six months before deciding to go back to work, commenting, "my wife told me I'd better get a job of some kind because I was making her a nervous wreck ... hanging around the house."


title: Ray Milland

text: From 1958 to 1960, Milland starred in the CBS detective series, "Markham", originally called "Crisis".


title: Ray Milland

text: During the making of the show Milland remarked, "it's becoming more and more of an effort to go on acting. I know it's a wonderful way to make a living but any job you don't like becomes difficult and I just don't like acting. I never have. I do it because I can't make a living any other way. Standing in front of a crew playing love scenes embarasses me. I'm as self conscious as hell and I want to get it over with. You get up too early and you finish too late and you feel like a lackey."


title: Ray Milland

text: The show failed to capture the expected significant audience, even though it followed the western "Gunsmoke".


title: Ray Milland

text: He retired again, this time to the French Riviera in 1960. However, he soon became bored and started acting again.


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland appeared in two Roger Corman AIP pictures. The first was "The Premature Burial" (1962) – the third of Corman's 'Poe Cycle'. He then portrayed Dr. Xavier in the well-received "" (1963).


title: Ray Milland

text: Also for AIP, he starred in the self-directed, apocalyptic science-fiction drama, "Panic in Year Zero!" (1962).


title: Ray Milland

text: He continued to guest star on shows like "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour," and he appeared in "Quick, Let's Get Married "(1964).


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland decided to return to the stage and appeared in a touring version of "My Fair Lady". He enjoyed the experience, and in 1966, he took the lead role as Simon Crawford QC in the Broadway play, "Hostile Witness", directed by Reginald Denham.


title: Ray Milland

text: The play ran in New York from February until July of that year, after which Milland took the play on the road. In 1968, he reprised the role in a film of the same title, which he also directed. It was the last feature film he directed.


title: Ray Milland

text: He returned as a film character actor in the late 1960s and the 1970s, appearing in such films as "Daughter of the Mind" (1969), a television film which reunited him with Gene Tierney.


title: Ray Milland

text: In the late 1960s, Milland hosted rebroadcasts of certain episodes of the syndicated Western anthology series, "Death Valley Days," under the title "Trails West"; the series' original host had been Ronald Reagan. He also guest-starred on "Bracken's World" and "The Name of the Game" as well as in TV movies like "Company of Killers" (1970), "River of Gold" (1971) and "Black Noon" (1971).


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland was in his biggest box office success in many years when he played Oliver Barrett III in "Love Story" (1970). In 1978 Milland reprised his Role as Oliver Barrett lll in Oliver’s Story, also written by Erich Segal


title: Ray Milland

text: In 1970, he said he worked only two to three months a year acting and spent the rest of the year relaxing, although he admitted that he had suffered some financial troubles since the sale of his yacht in 1964.


title: Ray Milland

text: In 1972, Milland starred in two horror films. One was "Frogs", co-starring Sam Elliott and Joan Van Ark, in which Milland played a wealthy, cantankerous plantation owner who dumps waste materials in a swamp, causing an enormous disruption of nature. The second, "The Thing with Two Heads", is considered a cult classic. Milland plays a brain surgeon with a terminal illness who transplants his head onto a healthy body—that of an American prisoner. The following year he was in "The House in Nightmare Park" (1973), a comedy chiller, and had the lead in "Terror in the Wax Museum" (1973) for TV.


title: Ray Milland

text: He also turned in an appearance as a hand surgeon in the "Night Gallery" episode, "The Hand of Borgus Weems". He guest-starred in two episodes of "Columbo", as a grieving widower in "Death Lends a Hand" (1971) and as a suspect in "The Greenhouse Jungle" (1972).


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland was in action films—"The Big Game" (1974), "The Student Connection" (1974), and "Gold" (1974), the last of which was opposite Roger Moore—and then did another TV horror film, "The Dead Don't Die" (1975). He then appeared in "Escape to Witch Mountain" (1975) for Disney and guest starred on shows like "Cool Million" and "Ellery Queen".


title: Ray Milland

text: Around this time, Milland said that he planned on moving to Europe and that he accepted "the parts I figure I can get some enjoyment out of."


title: Ray Milland

text: In 1975, Milland was the subject of an episode of the British biographical TV series, "This Is Your Life".


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland had a significant success with the TV miniseries, "Rich Man, Poor Man" (1976), receiving an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actor.


title: Ray Milland

text: He also had roles in "The Swiss Conspiracy" (1976), "Aces High" (1976), "Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby" (1976), "Mayday at 40,000 Feet!" (1976), "The Last Tycoon" (1976), "Seventh Avenue" (1976), "Oil" (1977), "Testimony of Two Men" (1977), "The Uncanny" (1977), "Slavers" (1977), and "The Pyjama Girl Case" (1978), an Italian giallo set in Australia.


title: Ray Milland

text: He starred in "Cruise Into Terror" (1978), "The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries", "Blackout" (1978), and "The Darker Side of Terror" (1979).


title: Ray Milland

text: He guest-starred as Sire Uri in "Saga of a Star World" (1978")", the pilot episode of the original "Battlestar Galactica" television series. He reprised his role as Ryan O'Neal's father in "Oliver's Story" (1978) and appeared in some action films, including "Spree" (1979) and "Game for Vultures" (1979).


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland guest-starred on several Aaron Spelling-produced shows, such as "Fantasy Island", "The Love Boat", "Charlie's Angels" and "Hart to Hart". In the latter, he appeared twice as Jennifer Hart's father.


title: Ray Milland

text: He was top billed in "The Attic" (1980), but more commonly had support roles in TV films like "The Dream Merchants" (1980), "Our Family Business" (1981), "The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana" (1982), "" (1983), "Cave In!" (1983), and "The Masks of Death" (1984), a Sherlock Holmes adventure starring Peter Cushing and John Mills.


title: Ray Milland

text: His last appearances were in "The Sea Serpent" (1985) and "The Gold Key" (1985). The latter was a mystery made specifically for video.


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland was married to Muriel Frances Weber from 30 September 1932 until his death on 10 March 1986. They had one biological son and one adopted daughter. Their son, Daniel, appeared in several minor acting roles in the 1960s and died of an apparent suicide in March 1981, at the age of 41.


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland became a naturalised American citizen in the 1940s. He supported the Republican Party and publicly backed Thomas E. Dewey in the 1944 United States presidential election


title: Ray Milland

text: Milland died of lung cancer at the Torrance Memorial Medical Center in Torrance, California, on 10 March 1986. He was 79 years old. In line with his instructions, no funeral was held. His body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Redondo Beach, California.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The Bill of Rights 1689 is an Act of the Parliament of England, which sets out certain basic civil rights and clarifies who would be next to inherit the Crown, and is seen as a crucial landmark in English constitutional law. It received Royal Assent on 16 December 1689 and is a restatement in statutory form of the Declaration of Right presented by the Convention Parliament to William III and Mary II in February 1689, inviting them to become joint sovereigns of England.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: Largely based on the ideas of political theorist John Locke, the Bill sets out certain constitutional requirements of the Crown to seek the consent of the people as represented in Parliament. As well as setting limits on the powers of the monarch, it established the rights of Parliament, including regular parliaments, free elections, and freedom of speech. It also listed individual rights, including the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and the right not to pay taxes levied without the approval of Parliament. Finally, it described and condemned several misdeeds of James II of England.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: In the United Kingdom, the Bill is considered a basic document of the uncodified British constitution, along with Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act 1679 and the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949. A separate but similar document, the Claim of Right Act 1689, applies in Scotland. The Bill was one of the models used to draft the United States Bill of Rights, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. Along with the Act of Settlement 1701, it remains in effect within all Commonwealth realms, as amended by the Perth Agreement.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: During the 17th century, there was renewed interest in the Magna Carta. The Parliament of England passed the Petition of Right in 1628 which established certain liberties for subjects. The English Civil War (1642–1651) was fought between the King and an oligarchic but elected Parliament, during which the notion of long-term political parties took form with the New Model Army Grandees and humble, leveller-influenced figures debating a new constitution in the Putney Debates of 1647. Parliament was largely cowed by the executive during the Protectorate (1653–1659) and most of the twenty-five years of Charles II's English Restoration from 1660. However, it, with the advantage of the growth in printed pamphlets and support of the City of London, was able to temper some of the executive excess, intrigue and largesse of the government, especially the Cabal ministry who signed a Secret Treaty of Dover that allied England to France in a prospective war against, oft-allies, the Dutch Republic. It had already passed the Habeas Corpus Act 1679, which strengthened the convention that forbade detention lacking sufficient cause or evidence.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: Objecting to the policies of King James II of England (James VII of Scotland and James II of Ireland), a group of English Parliamentarians invited the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau (William of Orange) to overthrow the King. William's successful invasion with a Dutch fleet and army led to James fleeing to France. In December 1688, peers of the realm appointed William as provisional governor. It was widely acknowledged that such action was constitutional, if the monarch were incapacitated, and they summoned an assembly of many members of parliament. This assembly called for an English Convention Parliament to be elected, which convened on 22 January 1689.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The proposal to draw up a statement of rights and liberties and James's violation of them was first made on 29 January 1689 in the House of Commons, with members arguing that the House "cannot answer it to the nation or Prince of Orange till we declare what are the rights invaded" and that William "cannot take it ill if we make conditions to secure ourselves for the future" in order to "do justice to those who sent us hither". On 2 February a committee specially convened reported to the Commons 23 Heads of Grievances, which the Commons approved and added some of their own. However, on 4 February the Commons decided to instruct the committee to differentiate between "such of the general heads, as are introductory of new laws, from those that are declaratory of ancient rights". On 7 February the Commons approved this revised Declaration of Right, and on 8 February instructed the committee to put into a single text the Declaration (with the heads which were "introductory of new laws" removed), the resolution of 28 January and the Lords' proposal for a revised oath of allegiance. It passed the Commons without division.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: On 13 February the clerk of the House of Lords read the Declaration of Right, and the Marquess of Halifax, in the name of all the estates of the realm, asked William and Mary to accept the throne. William replied for his wife and himself: "We thankfully accept what you have offered us". They then went in procession to the Great Gate at Whitehall. In a ceremony in the Banqueting House, Garter King of Arms proclaimed them King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland, whereupon they adjourned to the Chapel Royal, with the Bishop of London preaching the sermon. They were crowned on 11 April, swearing an oath to uphold the laws made by Parliament. The Coronation Oath Act 1688 had provided a new coronation oath, whereby the monarchs were to "solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of this kingdom of England, and the dominions thereunto belonging, according to the statutes in parliament agreed on, and the laws and customs of the same". They were also to maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant Reformed faith established by law. This replaced an oath which had deferred more to the monarch. The previous oath required the monarch to rule based on "the laws and customs ... granted by the Kings of England".


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The Declaration of Right was enacted in an Act of Parliament, the Bill of Rights 1689, which received the Royal Assent in December 1689. The Act asserted "certain ancient rights and liberties" by declaring that:


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The pretended power of suspending the laws and dispensing with laws by regal authority without consent of Parliament is illegal; the commission for ecclesiastical causes is illegal; levying taxes without grant of Parliament is illegal; it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal; keeping a standing army in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law; Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law; election of members of Parliament ought to be free; the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament; excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted; jurors in trials for high treason ought to be freeholders; promises of fines and forfeitures before conviction are illegal and void; for redress of all grievances, and for the amending, strengthening and preserving of the laws, Parliaments ought to be held frequently.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The Act declared James's flight from England following the Glorious Revolution to be an abdication of the throne. It listed twelve of James's policies by which James designed to "endeavour to subvert and extirpate the protestant religion, and the laws and liberties of this kingdom". These were: by assuming and exercising a power of dispensing with and suspending of laws and the execution of laws without consent of Parliament; by prosecuting the Seven Bishops; by establishing the court of commissioners for ecclesiastical causes; by levying taxes for the use of the Crown by pretence of prerogative as if the same was granted by Parliament; by raising and keeping a standing army within this kingdom in time of peace without consent of Parliament; by causing Protestants to be disarmed at the same time when papists were both armed and employed contrary to law; by violating the freedom of election of members to serve in Parliament; by prosecutions in the Court of King's Bench for matters and causes cognizable only in Parliament, and by divers (diverse) other arbitrary and illegal courses; by employing unqualified persons on juries in trials, and jurors in trials for high treason which were not freeholders; by imposing excessive bail on persons committed in criminal cases against the laws made for the liberty of the subjects; by imposing excessive fines and illegal and cruel punishments; by making several grants and promises made of fines and forfeitures before any conviction or judgment against the persons upon whom the same were to be levied;


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: In a prelude to the Act of Settlement to come twelve years later, the Bill of Rights barred Roman Catholics from the throne of England as "it hath been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a papist prince"; thus William III and Mary II were named as the successors of James II and that the throne would pass from them first to Mary's heirs, then to her sister, Princess Anne of Denmark and her heirs (and, thereafter, to any heirs of William by a later marriage).


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The Bill of Rights was later supplemented by the Act of Settlement 1701, which was agreed to by the Parliament of Scotland as part of the Treaty of Union. The Act of Settlement altered the line of succession to the throne laid out in the Bill of Rights. However, both the Bill of Rights and the Claim of Right contributed a great deal to the establishment of the concept of parliamentary sovereignty and the curtailment of the powers of the monarch. These have been held to have established the constitutional monarchy, and, along with the penal laws, settled much of the political and religious turmoil that had convulsed Scotland, England and Ireland in the 17th century.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The Act reinforced the Petition of Right and the Habeas Corpus Act 1679 by codifying certain rights and liberties. Described by William Blackstone as "Fundamental Laws of England", the rights expressed in these Acts became associated with the idea of the rights of Englishmen. The Bill of Rights directly influenced the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, which in turn influenced the Declaration of Independence.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: Although not a comprehensive statement of civil and political liberties, the Bill of Rights stands as one of the landmark documents in the development of civil liberties in the United Kingdom and a model for later, more general, statements of rights; these include the United States Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the European Convention on Human Rights. For example, as with the Bill of Rights 1689, the US Constitution prohibits excessive bail and "cruel and unusual punishment". Similarly, "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" is banned under Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The Bill of Rights remains in statute and continues to be cited in legal proceedings in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms, particularly Article 9 on parliamentary freedom of speech. Following the Perth Agreement in 2011, legislation amending the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement 1701 came into effect across the Commonwealth realms on 26 March 2015 which changed the laws of succession to the British throne.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The Bill of Rights is incorporated into Australian law. The ninth article, regarding parliamentary freedom of speech, was inherited by Federal Parliament in 1901 under section 49 of the Australian Constitution. It was incorporated into the "Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987" which "preserves the application of the traditional expression of this privilege, but spells out in some detail just what may be covered by the term 'proceedings in Parliament'".


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: In Canada, the Bill of Rights remains in statute, although it has been largely superseded by domestic constitutional legislation. The ninth article on parliamentary freedom of speech remains in active use.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The application of the Bill of Rights to the Kingdom of Ireland was uncertain. While the English Parliament sometimes passed acts relating to Ireland, the Irish Patriot Party regarded this as illegitimate, and others felt that English acts only extended to Ireland when explicitly stated to do so, which was not the case for the Bill of Rights. The Crown of Ireland Act 1542 meant the Bill's changes to the royal succession extended to Ireland. Bills modelled on the Bill of Rights were introduced in the Parliament of Ireland in 1695 and 1697 but not enacted. After the Acts of Union 1800, provisions relating to the rights of Parliament implicitly extended to Ireland, but provisions relating to the rights of the individual were a grey area. Some jurists regarded the bill not as positive law but as declaratory of the common law, and as such applicable to Ireland.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The Constitution of the Irish Free State, and the subsequent Constitution of Ireland, carry over laws in force in the former United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to the extent they were not repugnant to those constitutions. The Bill of Rights was not referred to in subsequent Irish legislation until the Statute Law Revision Act 2007, which retained it, changed its short title to "Bill of Rights 1688" and repealed most of section 1 (the preamble) as being religiously discriminatory, which included: all words down to "Upon which Letters Elections having been accordingly made"; Article 7, which allowed Protestants to bear arms; and all words from "And they doe Claime Demand and Insist".


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Act 2013 repealed Article 9 on "freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament" as part of a consolidation of the law on parliamentary privilege.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The Bill of Rights is part of the laws of New Zealand. The Act was invoked in the 1976 case of "Fitzgerald v Muldoon and Others", which centred on the purporting of newly appointed Prime Minister Robert Muldoon that he would advise the Governor-General to abolish a superannuation scheme established by the New Zealand Superannuation Act 1974, without new legislation. Muldoon felt that the dissolution would be immediate and he would later introduce a bill in parliament to retroactively make the abolition legal. This claim was challenged in court and the Chief Justice declared that Muldoon's actions were illegal as they had violated Article 1 of the Bill of Rights, which provides "that the pretended power of dispensing with laws or the execution of laws by regal authority ... is illegal."


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The Bill of Rights applies in England and Wales; it was enacted in the Kingdom of England which at the time included Wales. Scotland has its own legislation, the Claim of Right Act 1689, passed before the Act of Union between England and Scotland. There are doubts as to whether, or to what extent, the Bill of Rights applies in Northern Ireland, reflecting earlier doubts as regards Ireland.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: The requirement that jurors be freeholders in cases of high treason was abolished in England and Wales by the Juries Act 1825, and in Northern Ireland (to the extent it applied) by the Statute Law Revision Act 1950.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: Natural justice, the right to a fair trial, is in constitutional law held to temper unfair exploitation of parliamentary privilege. On 21 July 1995 a libel case, "Neil Hamilton, MP v The Guardian", collapsed as the High Court ruled that the Bill of Rights' total bar on bringing into question anything said or done in the House, prevented "The Guardian" from obtaining a fair hearing. Hamilton could otherwise have carte blanche to allege any background or meaning to his words, and no contradicting direct evidence, inference, extra submission or cross-examination of his words could take place due to the tight strictures of the Bill of Rights. Equally the highest court decided that absent a 1996 statutory provision, the Bill of Rights's entrenched Parliamentary Privilege would have prevented a fair trial but to Hamilton in the 2001 defamation action of "Hamilton v Al-Fayed" which went through the two tiers of appeal to like effect. Section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996 was then enacted and permits MPs to waive their parliamentary privilege and thus cite and have examined their own speeches if relevant to litigation.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: Following the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum in 2016, the Bill of Rights was cited by the Supreme Court in the "Miller" case, in which the court ruled that triggering EU exit must first be authorised by an act of Parliament. It was cited again by the Supreme Court in its 2019 ruling that the prorogation of parliament was unlawful. The Court disagreed with the Government's assertion that prorogation could not be questioned under the Bill of Rights 1689 as a "proceeding of Parliament"; it ruled that the opposite assertion, that prorogation was imposed upon and not debatable by Parliament, and could bring protected parliamentary activity under the Bill of Rights to an end unlawfully.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: Two special designs of commemorative two pound coins were issued in the United Kingdom in 1989 to celebrate the tercentenary of the Glorious Revolution. One referred to the Bill of Rights and the other to the Claim of Right. Both depict the Royal Cypher of William and Mary and the mace of the House of Commons, one also shows a representation of the St Edward's Crown and the other the Crown of Scotland.


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: In May 2011, the Bill of Rights was inscribed in UNESCO's UK Memory of the World Register recognizing that:


title: Bill of Rights 1689

text: As part of the Parliament in the Making programme, the Bill of Rights was on display at the Houses of Parliament in February 2015 and at the British Library from March to September 2015.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The miners' strike of 1984–1985 was a major industrial action within the British coal industry in an attempt to prevent colliery closures. It was led by Arthur Scargill of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) against the National Coal Board (NCB), a government agency. Opposition to the strike was led by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who wanted to reduce the power of the trade unions.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The NUM was divided over the action and many mineworkers, especially in the Midlands, worked through the dispute. Few major trade unions supported the NUM, primarily because of the absence of a vote at national level. Violent confrontations between flying pickets and police characterised the year-long strike, which ended in a decisive victory for the Conservative government and allowed the closure of most of Britain's collieries. Many observers regard the strike as "the most bitter industrial dispute in British history". The number of person-days of work lost to the strike was over 26 million, making it the largest since the 1926 general strike. The journalist Seumas Milne said of the strike, "it has no real parallel – in size, duration and impact – anywhere in the world".


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The NCB was encouraged to gear itself towards reduced subsidies in the early 1980s. After a strike was narrowly averted in February 1981, pit closures and pay restraint led to unofficial strikes. The main strike started on 6 March 1984 with a walkout at Cortonwood Colliery, which led to the NUM's Yorkshire Area's sanctioning of a strike on the grounds of a ballot result from 1981 in the Yorkshire Area, which was later challenged in court. The NUM President, Arthur Scargill, made the strike official across Britain on 12 March 1984, but the lack of a national ballot beforehand caused controversy. The NUM strategy was to cause a severe energy shortage of the sort that had won victory in the 1972 strike. The government strategy, designed by Margaret Thatcher, was threefold: to build up ample coal stocks, to keep as many miners at work as possible, and to use police to break up attacks by pickets on working miners. The critical element was the NUM's failure to hold a national strike ballot.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The strike was ruled illegal in September 1984, as no national ballot of NUM members had been held. It ended on 3 March 1985. It was a defining moment in British industrial relations, the NUM's defeat significantly weakening the trade union movement. It was a major victory for Thatcher and the Conservative Party, with the Thatcher government able to consolidate their economic programme. The number of strikes fell sharply in 1985 as a result of the "demonstration effect" and trade union power in general diminished. Three deaths resulted from events related to the strike.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The much-reduced coal industry was privatised in December 1994, ultimately becoming UK Coal. In 1983, Britain had 175 working pits, all of which had closed by the end of 2015. Poverty increased in former coal mining areas, and in 1994 Grimethorpe in South Yorkshire was the poorest settlement in the country.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: While more than 1,000 collieries were working in the UK during the first half of the 20th century, by 1984 only 173 were still operating and employment had dropped from its peak of 1 million in 1922, down to 231,000 for the decade to 1982. This long-term decline in coal employment was common across the developed world; in the United States, employment in the coal-mining industry continued to fall from 180,000 in 1985 to 70,000 in the year 2000.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Coal mining, nationalised by Clement Attlee's Labour government in 1947, was managed by the National Coal Board (NCB) under Ian MacGregor in 1984. As in most of Europe, the industry was heavily subsidised. In 1982–1983, the operating loss per tonne was £3.05, and international market prices for coal were about 25% cheaper than that charged by the NCB. The calculation of these operating losses was disputed.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: By 1984, the richest seams of coal had been increasingly worked out and the remaining coal was more and more expensive to reach. The solution was mechanisation and greater efficiency per worker, making many miners redundant due to overcapacity of production. The industry was restructured between 1958 and 1967 in cooperation with the unions, with a halving of the workforce; offset by government and industry initiatives to provide alternative employment. Stabilisation occurred between 1968 and 1977, when closures were minimised with the support of the unions even though the broader economy slowed. The accelerated contraction imposed by Thatcher after 1979 was strenuously opposed by the unions. In the post-war consensus, policy allowed for closures only where agreed to by the workers, who in turn received guaranteed economic security. Consensus did not apply when closures were enforced and redundant miners had severely limited employment alternatives.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The NUM's strike in 1974 played a major role in bringing down Edward Heath's Conservative government. The party's response was the Ridley Plan, an internal report that was leaked to "The Economist" magazine and appeared in its 27 May 1978 issue. Ridley described how a future Conservative government could resist and defeat a major strike in a nationalised industry. In Ridley's opinion, trade union power in the UK was interfering with market forces, pushing up inflation, and the unions' undue political power had to be curbed to restore the UK's economy.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The mining industry was effectively a closed shop. Although not official policy, employment of non-unionised labour would have led to a mass walkout of mineworkers.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) came into being in 1945 and in 1947 most collieries in Britain were nationalised (958 nationalised, 400 private). Demand for coal was high in the years following the Second World War, and Polish refugees were drafted to work in the pits. Over time, coal's share in the energy market declined relative to oil and nuclear. Large-scale closures of collieries occurred in the 1960s, which led to migration of miners from the run-down coalfields (Scotland, Wales, Lancashire, the north-east of England) to Yorkshire and the Midlands coalfields. After a period of inaction from the NUM leadership over employment cuts, there was an unofficial strike in 1969, after which many more militant candidates were elected to NUM leadership. The threshold for endorsement of strike action in a national ballot was reduced from two-thirds in favour to 55% in 1971. There was then success in the national strike in 1972, an overtime ban, and the subsequent strike in 1974 (which led to the Three-Day Week). The NUM's success in bringing down the Heath government demonstrated its power, but it caused resentment at their demand to be treated as a special case in wage negotiations.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The NUM had a decentralised regional structure and certain regions were seen as more militant than others. Scotland, South Wales and Kent were militant and had some communist officials, whereas the Midlands were much less militant. The only nationally coordinated actions in the 1984–1985 strike were the mass pickets at Orgreave.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: In the more militant mining areas, strikebreakers were reviled and never forgiven for betraying the community. In 1984, some pit villages had no other industries for many miles around. In South Wales, miners showed a high degree of solidarity, as they came from isolated villages where most workers were employed in the pits, had similar lifestyles, and had an evangelical religious style based on Methodism that led to an ideology of egalitarianism. The dominance of mining in these local economies led Oxford professor Andrew Glyn to conclude that no pit closure could be beneficial for government revenue.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: From 1981, the NUM was led by Arthur Scargill, a militant trade unionist and socialist, with strong leanings towards communism. Scargill was a vocal opponent of Thatcher's government. In March 1983, he stated "The policies of this government are clear – to destroy the coal industry and the NUM". Scargill wrote in the NUM journal "The Miner": "Waiting in the wings, wishing to chop us to pieces, is Yankee steel butcher MacGregor. This 70-year-old multi-millionaire import, who massacred half the steel workforce in less than three years, is almost certainly brought in to wield the axe on pits. It's now or never for Britain's mineworkers. This is the final chance – while we still have the strength – to save our industry". On 12 May 1983, in response to being questioned on how he would respond if the Conservatives were re-elected in the general election, Scargill replied: "My attitude would be the same as the attitude of the working class in Germany when the Nazis came to power. It does not mean that because at some stage you elect a government that you tolerate its existence. You oppose it". He also said he would oppose a second-term Thatcher government "as vigorously as I possibly can". After the election, Scargill called for extra-parliamentary action against the Conservative government in a speech to the NUM conference in Perth on 4 July 1983:


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: "A fight back against this Government's policies will inevitably take place outside rather than inside Parliament. When I talk about 'extra-parliamentary action' there is a great outcry in the press and from leading Tories about my refusal to accept the democratic will of the people. I am not prepared to accept policies elected by a minority of the British electorate. I am not prepared quietly to accept the destruction of the coal industry, nor am I willing to see our social services decimated. This totally undemocratic Government can now easily push through whatever laws it chooses. Faced with possible parliamentary destruction of all that is good and compassionate in our society, extra-parliamentary action will be the only course open to the working class and the Labour movement."


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Scargill also rejected the idea that pits that did not make a profit were "uneconomic": he claimed there was no such thing as an uneconomic pit and argued that no pits should close except due to geological exhaustion or safety.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: No mining could legally be done without being overseen by an overman or deputy. Their union, the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS) with 17,000 members in 1984, was less willing to take industrial action. Its constitution required a two-thirds majority for a national strike. During the 1972 strike, violent confrontations between striking NUM and non-striking NACODS members led to an agreement that NACODS members could stay off work without loss of pay if they were faced with aggressive picketing. Thus solidarity with striking NUM members could be shown by claims of violence preventing the crossing of picket lines even without a NACODS union vote for strike action. Initially the threshold for striking was not met; although a majority had voted for strike action, it was not enough. However, later during the strike 82% did vote for strike action.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: In January 1981, the Yorkshire area of the NUM held a successful ballot to approve strike action over any pit threatened with closure on economic grounds. This led to a two-week local strike over the closure of Orgreave Colliery, but the ballot result was later invoked to justify strikes over other closures, including Cortonwood in 1984. In February 1981, the government announced plans to close 23 pits across the country but the threat of a national strike was enough to force a back down. Coal stocks would last only six weeks, after which Britain would shut down and people would demand concessions. Thatcher realised she needed at least a six-month supply of coal to win a strike. In 1982, NUM members accepted a 9.3% pay rise, rejecting their leaders' call for a strike.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Most pits proposed for closure in 1981 were closed on a case-by-case basis by the colliery review procedure, and the NCB cut employment by 41,000 between March 1981 and March 1984. The effect of closures was lessened by transfers to other pits and the opening up of the Selby Coalfield where working conditions and wages were relatively favourable. Localised strikes occurred at Kinneil Colliery in Scotland and Lewis Merthyr Colliery in Wales. The industry's Select Committee heard that 36,040 of the 39,685 redundancies between 1973 and 1982 were of men aged 55 and over, and redundancy pay was increased substantially in 1981 and 1983.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The NUM balloted its members for national strikes in January 1982, October 1982 and March 1983 regarding pit closures and restrained wages and each time a minority voted in favour, well short of the required 55% majority. In protest at a pay offer of 5.2%, the NUM instituted an overtime ban in November 1983, which remained in place at the onset of the strike.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Prime Minister Thatcher expected Scargill to force a confrontation, and in response she set up a defence in depth. She believed that the excessive costs of increasingly inefficient collieries had to end in order to grow the economy. She planned to close inefficient pits and depend more on imported coal, oil, gas and nuclear. She appointed hardliners to key positions, set up a high level planning committee, and allocated funds from the highly profitable electrical supply system to stockpile at least six months’ worth of coal. Thatcher's team set up mobile police units so that forces from outside the strike areas could neutralise efforts by flying pickets to stop the transport of coal to power stations. It used the National Recording Centre (NRC), set up in 1972 by the Association of Chief Police Officers for England and Wales linking 43 police forces to enable police forces to travel to assist in major disturbances. Scargill played into her hands by ignoring the buildup of coal stocks and calling the strike at the end of winter when demand for coal was declining.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: In 1983, Thatcher appointed Ian MacGregor to head the National Coal Board. He had turned the British Steel Corporation from one of the least efficient steel-makers in Europe to one of the most efficient, bringing the company into near profit. Success was achieved at the expense of halving the workforce in two years and he had overseen a 14-week national strike in 1980. His tough reputation raised expectations that coal jobs would be cut on a similar scale and confrontations between MacGregor and Scargill seemed inevitable.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: On 19 April 1984 a Special National Delegate Conference was held where there was a vote on whether to hold a national ballot or not. The NUM delegates voted 69–54 not to have a national ballot, a position argued for by Arthur Scargill. Scargill states: "Our special conference was held on 19 April. McGahey, Heathfield and I were aware from feedback that a slight majority of areas favoured the demand for a national strike ballot; therefore, we were expecting and had prepared for that course of action with posters, ballot papers and leaflets. A major campaign was ready to go for a "Yes" vote in a national strike ballot." McGahey said: "We shall not be constitutionalised out of a strike...Area by area will decide and there will be a domino effect".


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Without a national ballot, most miners in Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, South Derbyshire, North Wales and the West Midlands kept on working during the strike, along with a sizeable minority in Lancashire. The police provided protection for working miners from aggressive picketing.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: On 6 March 1984, the NCB announced that the agreement reached after the 1974 strike was obsolete, and that to reduce government subsidies, 20 collieries would close with a loss of 20,000 jobs. Many communities in Northern England, Scotland and Wales would lose their primary source of employment.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Scargill said the government had a long-term strategy to close more than 70 pits. The government denied the claim and MacGregor wrote to every NUM member claiming Scargill was deceiving them and there were no plans to close any more pits than had already been announced. Cabinet papers released in 2014 indicate that MacGregor wished to close 75 pits over a three-year period. Meanwhile, the Thatcher government had prepared against a repeat of the effective 1974 industrial action by stockpiling coal, converting some power stations to burn heavy fuel oil, and recruiting fleets of road hauliers to transport coal in case sympathetic railwaymen went on strike to support the miners.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Sensitive to the impact of proposed closures, miners in various coalfields began strike action. In Yorkshire, miners at Manvers, Cadeby, Silverwood, Kiveton Park and Yorkshire Main were on unofficial strike for other issues before official action was called. More than 6,000 miners were on strike from 5 March at Cortonwood and Bullcliffe Wood, near Wakefield. Neither pit's reserves were exhausted. Bullcliffe Wood had been under threat, but Cortonwood had been considered safe. Action was prompted on 5 March by the NCB's announcement that five pits would be subject to "accelerated closure" in just five weeks; the other three were Herrington in County Durham, Snowdown in Kent and Polmaise in Scotland. The next day, pickets from Yorkshire appeared at pits in Nottinghamshire and Harworth Colliery closed after a mass influx of pickets amid claims that Nottinghamshire was "scabland in 1926". On 12 March 1984, Scargill declared the NUM's support for the regional strikes in Yorkshire and Scotland, and called for action from NUM members in all other areas but decided not to hold a nationwide vote which was used by his opponents to delegitimise the strike.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The strike was almost universally observed in South Wales, Yorkshire, Scotland, North East England and Kent, but there was less support across the Midlands and in North Wales. Nottinghamshire became a target for aggressive and sometimes violent picketing as Scargill's pickets tried to stop local miners from working. Lancashire miners were reluctant to strike, but most refused to cross picket lines formed by the Yorkshire NUM. Picketing in Lancashire was less aggressive and is credited with a more sympathetic response from the local miners.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The 'Battle of Orgreave' took place on 18 June 1984 at the Orgreave Coking Plant near Rotherham, which striking miners were attempting to blockade. The confrontation, between about 5,000 miners and the same number of police, broke into violence after police on horseback charged with truncheons drawn – 51 picketers and 72 policemen were injured. Other less well known, but bloody, battles between pickets and police took place, for example, in Maltby, South Yorkshire.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: During the strike, 11,291 people were arrested, mostly for breach of the peace or obstructing roads whilst picketing, of whom 8,392 were charged and between 150 and 200 were imprisoned. At least 9,000 mineworkers were dismissed after being arrested whilst picketing even when no charges were brought.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: After the 1980 steel strike, many hauliers blacklisted drivers who refused to cross picket lines to prevent them obtaining work, and so more drivers crossed picket lines in 1984–1985 than in previous disputes. Picketing failed to have the widespread impact of earlier stoppages that led to blackouts and power cuts in the 1970s and electricity companies maintained supplies throughout the winter, the time of biggest demand.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: From September, some miners returned to work even where the strike had been universally observed. It led to an escalation of tension, and riots in Easington in Durham and Brampton Bierlow in Yorkshire.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: In April 1984, NACODS voted to strike but was short of the two-thirds majority that their constitution required. In areas where the strike was observed, most NACODS members did not cross picket lines and, under an agreement from the 1972 strike, stayed off work on full pay. When the number of strikebreakers increased in August, Merrick Spanton, the NCB personnel director, said he expected NACODS members to cross picket lines to supervise their work threatening the 1972 agreement which led to a second ballot. Ian MacGregor suggested that deputies could be replaced by outsiders as Ronald Reagan had done during the 1981 airline strike. In September, for the first time, NACODS voted to strike with a vote of 81% in favour. The government then made concessions over the review procedure for unprofitable collieries, much to the anger of Ian MacGregor, and a deal negotiated by North Yorkshire NCB Director Michael Eaton persuaded NACODS to call off the strike action.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The results of the review procedure were not binding on the NCB, and the NUM rejected the agreement. Reviews for Cadeby in Yorkshire and Bates in Northumberland concluded that the pits could stay open but the NCB overruled and closed them. The abandonment of strike plans when most of their demands had not been met led to conspiracy theories on the motives of NACODS leaders.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: MacGregor later admitted that if NACODS had gone ahead with a strike, a compromise would probably have been forced on the NCB. Files later made public showed that the government had an informant inside the Trades Union Congress (TUC), passing information about negotiations.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: In 2009, Arthur Scargill wrote that the settlement agreed with NACODS and the NCB would have ended the strike and said, "The monumental betrayal by NACODS has never been explained in a way that makes sense."


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: In the first month of the strike, the NCB secured a court injunction to restrict picketing in Nottinghamshire, but the Energy Minister Peter Walker forbade Ian MacGregor from invoking it as the government considered it would antagonise the miners and unite them behind the NUM. Legal challenges were brought by groups of working miners, who subsequently organised as the Working Miners' Committee. David Hart, a farmer and property developer with libertarian political beliefs, did much to organise and fund working miners. On 25 May, a writ issued in the High Court by Colin Clark from Pye Hill Colliery, sponsored by Hart, was successful in forbidding the Nottinghamshire area from instructing that the strike was official and to be obeyed. Similar actions were successful in Lancashire and South Wales.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: In September, Lord Justice Nicholls heard two cases, in the first, North Derbyshire miners argued that the strike was illegal both at area level, as a majority of its miners had voted against, and at national level, as there had been no ballot. In the second, two miners from Manton Colliery, in the Yorkshire area but geographically in North Nottinghamshire, argued that the area-level strike in Yorkshire was illegal. Miners at Manton had overwhelmingly voted against the strike, but police had advised that their safety could not be guaranteed. The NUM was not represented at the hearing. The High Court ruled that the NUM had breached its constitution by calling a strike without holding a ballot. Although Justice Nicholls did not order the NUM to hold a ballot, he forbade the union from disciplining members who crossed picket lines.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The strike in Yorkshire relied on a ballot from January 1981, in which 85.6% of the members voted to strike if any pit was threatened with closure on economic grounds. The motion was passed with regard to the closure of Orgreave Colliery, which prompted a two-week strike. The NUM executive approved the decision in Yorkshire to invoke the ballot result as binding on 8 March 1984. Mr Justice Nicholls ruled that the 1981 ballot result was "too remote in time [with]... too much change in the branch membership of the Area since then for that ballot to be capable of justifying a call to strike action two and a half years later." He ruled that the Yorkshire area could not refer to the strike as "official", although he did not condemn the strike as "illegal" as he did in the case of the national strike and the North Derbyshire strike.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Scargill referred to the ruling as "another attempt by an unelected judge to interfere in the union's affairs." He was fined £1,000 (paid by an anonymous businessman), and the NUM was fined £200,000. When the union refused to pay, an order was made to sequester the union's assets, but they had been transferred abroad. In October 1984, the NUM executive voted to cooperate with the court to recover the funds, despite opposition from Scargill, who stated in court that he was only apologising for his contempt of court because the executive voted for him to do so. By the end of January 1985, around £5 million of NUM assets had been recovered.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: A Court of Session decision in Edinburgh ruled that Scottish miners had acted within their rights by taking local ballots on a show of hands and so union funds in Scotland could not be sequestered. "During the strike, the one area they couldn't touch was Scotland. They were sequestering the NUM funds, except in Scotland, because the judges deemed that the Scottish area had acted within the rules of the Union" – David Hamilton MP, Midlothian


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Scargill claims "It was essential to present a united response to the NCB and we agreed that, if the coal board planned to force pit closures on an area by area basis, then we must respond at least initially on that same basis. The NUM's rules permitted areas to take official strike action if authorised by our national executive committee in accordance with Rule 41."


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The Nottinghamshire NUM officially supported the strike, but most of its members continued to work and many considered the strike unconstitutional given their majority vote against a strike and absence of a ballot for a national strike. As many working miners felt the NUM was not doing enough to protect them from intimidation from pickets, a demonstration was organised on May Day in Mansfield, in which the representative Ray Chadburn was shouted down, and fighting ensued between protesters for and against the strike.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: In NUM elections in summer 1984, members in Nottinghamshire voted out most of the leaders who had supported the strike, so that 27 of 31 newly elected were opposed to the strike. The Nottinghamshire NUM then opposed the strike openly and stopped payments to local strikers. The national NUM attempted to introduce "Rule 51", to discipline area leaders who were working against national policy. The action was nicknamed the "star chamber court" by working miners (in reference to the Star Chamber in English history). It was prevented by an injunction from the High Court.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Working miners in Nottinghamshire and South Derbyshire set up a new union: the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. It attracted members from many isolated pits in England – including Agecroft and Parsonage in Lancashire, Chase Terrace and Trenton Workshops in Staffordshire, and Daw Mill in Warwickshire.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Although most Leicestershire miners continued working, they voted to stay in the NUM. Unlike Nottinghamshire, the leadership in Leicestershire never attempted to enforce the strike, and an official, Jack Jones, had publicly criticised Scargill. At some pits in Nottinghamshire, Ollerton, Welbeck and Clipstone, roughly half the workforce stayed in the NUM.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The TUC neither recognised nor condemned the new union. The Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) was eventually "de facto" recognised when the NCB included it in wage negotiations. Ian MacGregor strongly encouraged the UDM. He announced that NUM membership was no longer a prerequisite for mineworkers' employment, ending the closed shop.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The number of strikebreakers, sometimes referred to perjoratively as scabs, increased from the start of January, as the strikers struggled to pay for food as union pay ran out. They were not treated with the same contempt by strikers as those who had returned to work earlier but in some collieries, fights broke out between hunger scabs who had been active pickets, and those who had broken the strike earlier.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The strike ended on 3 March 1985, nearly a year after it had begun. The South Wales area called for a return to work on condition that men sacked during the strike would be reinstated, but the NCB rejected the proposal when its bargaining position was improved by miners returning to work. Only the Yorkshire and Kent regions voted against ending the strike. One of the few concessions made by the NCB was to postpone the closure of the five pits: Cortonwood, Bullcliffe Wood, Herrington, Polmaise and Snowdown.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The issue of sacked miners was important in Kent, where several men had been sacked for a sit-in at Betteshanger Colliery. Kent NUM leader Jack Collins said after the decision to go back without any agreement of amnesty for the sacked men, "The people who have decided to go back to work and leave men on the sidelines are traitors to the trade-union movement." The Kent NUM continued picketing across the country, delaying the return to work at many pits for two weeks. Some sources claim that the Scottish NUM continued the strike alongside Kent.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: At several pits, miners' wives groups organised the distribution of carnations, the flower that symbolises the hero, at the pit gates on the day the miners went back. Many pits marched back to work behind brass bands, in processions dubbed "loyalty parades". Arthur Scargill led a procession accompanied by a Scots piper, back to work at Barrow Colliery in Worsborough but then it was stopped by a picket of Kent miners. Scargill said, "I never cross a picket line," and turned the procession away.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The role of ballots in NUM policy had been disputed over a number of years, and a series of legal disputes in 1977 left their status unclear. In 1977, the implementation of an incentive scheme proved controversial, as different areas would receive different pay rates. After the NUM's National Executive Conference rejected the scheme, NUM leader Joe Gormley arranged a national ballot. The Kent area who opposed the scheme sought a court injunction to prevent it, but Lord Denning ruled that "the conference might not have spoken with the true voice of all the members and in his view a ballot was a reasonable and democratic proposal". The scheme was rejected by 110,634 votes to 87,901. The Nottinghamshire, South Derbyshire and Leicestershire areas resolved to adopt the incentive scheme as their members would benefit from increased pay. The Yorkshire, Kent and South Wales areas sought an injunction to prevent these actions on the grounds of the ballot result. Mr. Justice Watkins ruled that, "The result of a ballot, nationally conducted, is not binding upon the National Executive Committee in using its powers in between conferences. It may serve to persuade the committee to take one action or another, or to refrain from action, but it has no great force or significance."


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Scargill did not call a ballot for national strike action, perhaps due to uncertainty over the outcome. Instead, he started the strike by allowing each region to call its own strikes, imitating Gormley's strategy over wage reforms; it was argued that 'safe' regions should not be allowed to ballot other regions out of jobs. The decision was upheld by a vote by the NUM executive five weeks into the strike.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The NUM had held three ballots on national strikes: 55% voted against in January 1982, and 61% voted against in October 1982 and March 1983. Before the March 1983 vote, the Kent area, one of the most militant, argued for national strikes to be called by conferences of delegates rather than by ballot, but the proposal was rejected. As the strike began in 1984 with unofficial action in Yorkshire, there was pressure from strikers to make it official, and NUM executives who insisted on a ballot were attacked by pickets at an executive meeting in Sheffield in April. In contrast, a sit-in down the pit was held by supporters of a ballot at Hem Heath in Staffordshire. Although the Yorkshire area had a policy of opposing a national ballot, there was support for a ballot expressed by Yorkshire branches at Glasshoughton, Grimethorpe, Shireoaks and Kinsley.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Two polls by MORI in April 1984 found that the majority of miners supported a strike. Ken Livingstone wrote in his memoirs that Scargill had interpreted a "Daily Mail" poll that suggested a comfortable majority of miners favoured a national strike to be a trick and that he would actually lose a national ballot.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: In ballots in South Wales on 10 March 1984, only 10 of the 28 pits voted in favour of striking, but the arrival of pickets from Yorkshire the next day led to virtually all miners in South Wales going on strike in solidarity. The initial vote against strike action by most lodges in South Wales was interpreted as an act of retaliation for a lack of support from Yorkshire in years when numerous pits in Wales were closing, especially following the closure of the Lewis Merthyr colliery in March 1983 and only 54% of Yorkshire miners voting for a national strike that month, a full 14% below the vote for a national strike in both South Wales and Kent.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Area ballots on 15 and 16 March 1984 saw verdicts against a strike in Cumberland, Midlands, North Derbyshire (narrowly), South Derbyshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire (with around 90% against), Nottinghamshire and North Wales. The Northumberland NUM voted by a small majority in favour, but below the 55% needed for official approval. NUM leaders in Lancashire argued that, as 41% had voted in favour of a strike, all its members should strike "in order to maintain unity".


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher enforced a law that required unions to ballot members on strike action. On 19 July 1984, Thatcher said in the House of Commons that giving in to the miners would be surrendering the rule of parliamentary democracy to the rule of the mob. She referred to union leaders as "the enemy within" and claimed they did not share the values of other British people; advocates of the strike misinterpreted the quote to suggest that Thatcher had used it as a reference to all miners.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Thatcher on 19 July 1984 delivered a speech in which she spoke to backbench MPs and compared the Falklands War to the strike:


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: She claimed that the miners' leader was making the country witness an attempt at preventing democracy.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: On the day after the Orgreave picket of 18 June, which saw five thousand pickets clash violently with police, she remarked:


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: I must tell you... that what we have got is an attempt to substitute the rule of the mob for the rule of law, and "it must not succeed". "[cheering]" It must not succeed. There are those who are using violence and intimidation to impose their will on others who do not want it... The rule of law must prevail over the rule of the mob.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Neil Kinnock supported the call for a national ballot in April 1984. Scargill's response to the Orgreave incident was:


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: We've had riot shields, we've had riot gear, we've had police on horseback charging into our people, we've had people hit with truncheons and people kicked to the ground... The intimidation and the brutality that has been displayed are something reminiscent of a Latin American state.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: At the Battle of Orgreave on 18 June 1984, the NUM pickets failed to stop the movement of lorries amid police violence and subsequent retaliation by the pickets, with the footage controversially reversed by the BBC on their news broadcast. The violence was costing the NUM public support in the country as a whole, as a Gallup poll showed 79% disapproval of NUM methods. While it was now clear that the government had the equipment, the forces, the organisation, and the will to prevail against pickets, the strong pro-strike solidarity outside of the Midlands and the possibility of extended strike action by other trade unions, especially the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS) which could shut down every pit in the country if NACODS members went on strike, was a constant threat for the government and had the outcome of who would be likely to win the miners' strike dispute hanging in the balance for many months.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The table shows a breakdown by area of the results of strike ballots of January 1982, October 1982 and March 1983, and the results of area ballots in March 1984. The table is taken from Callinicos & Simons (1985). Cases from 1984 where lodges voted separately (as in South Wales and Scotland) are not shown.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The government mobilised police forces from around Britain including the Metropolitan Police in an attempt to stop pickets preventing strikebreakers from working. They attempted to stop pickets travelling from Yorkshire to Nottinghamshire which led to many protests. On 26 March 1984, pickets protested against the police powers by driving very slowly on the M1 and the A1 around Doncaster. The government claimed the actions were to uphold the law and safeguard individual civil rights. The police were given powers to halt and reroute traffic away from collieries, and some areas of Nottinghamshire became difficult to reach by road. In the first 27 weeks of the strike, 164,508 "presumed pickets" were prevented from entering the county. When pickets from Kent were stopped at the Dartford Tunnel and preventing from travelling to the Midlands, the Kent NUM applied for an injunction against use of this power. Sir Michael Havers initially denied the application outright, but Mr Justice Skinner later ruled that the power may only be used if the anticipated breach of the peace were "in close proximity both in time and place".


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: On 16 July 1984, Thatcher convened a ministerial meeting to consider declaring a state of emergency, with the option to use 4,500 military drivers and 1,650 tipper trucks to keep coal supplies available. This backup plan was not needed and was not implemented.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: During the strike 11,291 people were arrested and 8,392 were charged with breach of the peace or obstructing the highway. In many former mining areas antipathy towards the police remained strong for many years. Bail forms for picketing offences set restrictions on residence and movement in relation to NCB property. Tony Benn compared the powers to the racial pass laws in South Africa.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Welfare benefits had never been available to strikers but their dependents had been entitled to make claims in previous disputes. Clause 6 of the Social Security Act 1980 banned the dependents of strikers from receiving "urgent needs" payments and applied a compulsory deduction from the benefits of strikers' dependents. The government viewed the legislation not as concerned with saving public funds but "to restore a fairer bargaining balance between employers and trade unions" by increasing the necessity to return to work. The Department of Social Security assumed that striking miners were receiving £15 per week from the union (equivalent to £49 in 2019), based on payments early in the strike that were not made in the later months when funds had become exhausted.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The Director General of MI5 from 1992 to 1996, Dame Stella Rimington, wrote in her autobiography in 2001 that MI5 'counter-subversion' exercises against the NUM and striking miners included tapping union leaders' phones. She denied the agency had informers in the NUM, specifically denying its chief executive Roger Windsor had been an agent.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: According to John Campbell "though there was widespread sympathy for the miners, faced with the loss of their livelihoods, there was remarkably little public support for the strike, because of Scargill's methods". When asked in a Gallup poll in July 1984 whether their sympathies lay mainly with the employers or the miners, 40% said employers; 33% were for the miners; 19% were for neither and 8% did not know. When asked the same question during 5–10 December 1984, 51% had most sympathy for the employers; 26% for the miners; 18% for neither and 5% did not know. When asked in July 1984 whether they approved or disapproved of the methods used by the miners, 15% approved; 79% disapproved and 6% did not know. When asked the same question during 5–10 December 1984, 7% approved; 88% disapproved and 5% did not know. In July 1984, when asked whether they thought the miners were using responsible or irresponsible methods, 12% said responsible; 78% said irresponsible and 10% did not know. When asked the same question in August 1984, 9% said responsible; 84% said irresponsible and 7% did not know.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: "The Sun" newspaper took a very anti-strike position, as did the "Daily Mail", and even the Labour Party-supporting "Daily Mirror" and "The Guardian" became hostile as the strike became increasingly violent. The "Morning Star" was the only national daily newspaper that consistently supported the striking miners and the NUM.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Socialist groups saw the mainstream media as deliberately misrepresenting the miners' strike, with Mick Duncan of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty saying of "The Sun"s reporting of the strike: "The day-to-day reporting involved more subtle attacks, or a biased selection of facts and a lack of alternative points of view. These things arguably had a far bigger negative effect on the miners' cause".


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Writing in the "Industrial Relations Journal" immediately after the strike in 1985, Professor Brian Towers of the University of Nottingham commented on the way the media had portrayed strikers, stating that there had been "the obsessive reporting of the 'violence' of generally relatively unarmed men and some women who, in the end, offered no serious challenge to the truncheons, shields and horses of a well-organised, optimally deployed police force."


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The stance of the "Daily Mirror" varied. Having initially been uninterested in the dispute, the paper's owner Robert Maxwell took a supportive stance in July 1984 by organising a seaside trip for striking miners and meeting with NUM officials to discuss tactics. However, Maxwell insisted that Scargill should condemn the violence directed against strike-breakers, which he was unwilling to do. The "Daily Mirror" then adopted a more critical stance, and journalist John Pilger published several articles on the violence directed against strike-breakers.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: As the courts seized the NUM's assets, it began to look abroad for money, and found supplies in the Soviet bloc and, it was mistakenly thought, also from Libya. These countries were highly unpopular with the British public. The Soviet Union's official trade union federation donated £1.5 million to the NUM.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Media reports alleged that senior NUM officials were personally keeping some of the funds. In November 1984, it was alleged that senior NUM officials had travelled to Libya for money. Cash from the Libyan government was particularly damaging coming seven months after the murder of policewoman Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London by Libyan agents. In 1990, the "Daily Mirror" and TV programme "The Cook Report" claimed that Scargill and the NUM had received money from the Libyan government. The allegations were based on allegations by Roger Windsor, who was the NUM official who had spoken to Libyan officials. Roy Greenslade, the editor of the "Mirror", said 18 years later he was "now convinced that Scargill didn't misuse strike funds and that the union didn't get money from Libya." This was long after an investigation by Seumas Milne described the allegations as wholly without substance and a "classic smear campaign".


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: MI5 surveillance on NUM vice-president Mick McGahey found he was "extremely angry and embarrassed" about Scargill's links with the Libyan regime, but did not express his concerns publicly; however he was happy to take money from the Soviet Union. Stella Rimington, wrote, "We in MI5 limited our investigations to those who were using the strike for subversive purposes."


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Polish trade union Solidarity criticised Scargill for "going too far and threatening the elected government", which influenced some Polish miners in Britain to oppose the strike. Scargill opposed Solidarity as an "anti-socialist organisation which desires the overthrow of a socialist state". The supply of Polish coal to British power stations during the strike led to a brief picket of the embassy of Poland in London.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The strike was the most violent industrial dispute in Britain of the 20th century. Strikes in the British coal industry had a history of violence, but the 1984–1985 strike exceeded even the 1926 strike in the levels of violence. Nevertheless, the majority of pickets lines were non-violent. Instances of violence directed against working miners were reported from the start. The BBC reported that pickets from Polmaise Colliery had punched miners at Bilston Glen Colliery who were trying to enter their workplace on 12 March. Property, families and pets belonging to working miners were also attacked. Ted McKay, the North Wales secretary who supported a national ballot before strike action, said he had received death threats and threats to kidnap his children. The intimidation of working miners in Nottinghamshire, vandalism to cars and pelting them with stones, paint or brake fluid, was a major factor in the formation of the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Occasionally, attacks were made on working members of NACODS and administrative staff. In March 1984 the NCB announced it would abandon Yorkshire Main Colliery after a deputy engineer suffered a split chin from being stoned and administrative staff had to be escorted out by the police. Some pits continued working without significant disruption. In Leicestershire only 31 miners went on strike for the full 12 months and in South Derbyshire only 17, but these areas were not targeted by pickets in the same way as Nottinghamshire.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: On 9 July 1984 pickets at Rossington Colliery attempted to trap 11 NCB safety inspectors inside the colliery. Camera teams were present as two police vans arrived to assist the safety inspectors and were attacked by missiles from the pickets.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Following the breakdown of relations between the NUM and the ISTC (Iron and Steel Trades Confederation), NUM pickets threw bricks, concrete and eggs full of paint at lorries transporting coal and iron ore to South Wales. In September 1984, Viv Brook, assistant chief constable of South Wales Police, warned that throwing concrete from motorway bridges was likely to kill someone. Taxi driver, David Wilkie, was killed on 30 November 1984 while driving a non-striking miner to Merthyr Vale Colliery, in South Wales. Two striking miners dropped a concrete post onto his car from a road bridge and he died at the scene. The miners served a prison sentence for manslaughter. Police reported that the incident had a sobering effect on many of the pickets and led to a decrease in aggression.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: In Airedale, Castleford where most miners were on strike, a working miner, Michael Fletcher, was savagely beaten in November 1984. A masked gang waving baseball bats invaded his house and beat him for five minutes, whilst his pregnant wife and children hid upstairs. Fletcher suffered a broken shoulder blade, dislocated elbow and two broken ribs. Two miners from Wakefield were convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and four others were acquitted of riot and assault.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Scargill said in December 1984 that those who returned to work after taking the NCB's incentives for strikebreaking should be treated as "lost lambs" rather than traitors. When questioned by the media, Scargill refused to condemn the violence, which he attributed to the hardship and frustration of pickets, with the one exception being the killing of David Wilkie. There was criticism of picket-line violence from lodges at striking pits, such as the resolution by the Grimethorpe and Kellingley lodges in Yorkshire that condemned throwing bricks.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Even amongst supporters, picketing steel plants to prevent deliveries of coal and coke caused great divisions. Local branches agreed to deals with local steel plants on the amounts to be delivered. In June 1984, the NUM area leader for South Wales, Emlyn Williams, defied orders from Scargill to stop deliveries of coal by rail to steel plants, but he capitulated after a vote by the national executive to end dispensations.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Violence in Nottinghamshire was directed towards strikers and supporters of the NUM national line. NUM secretary Jimmy Hood reported his car was vandalised and his garage set on fire. In Leicestershire, "scab" was chanted by the working majority against the few who went on strike, on the grounds that they had betrayed their area's union.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Two pickets, David Jones and Joe Green, were killed in separate incidents, and three teenagers (Darren Holmes, aged 15, and Paul Holmes and Paul Womersley, both aged 14) died picking coal from a colliery waste heap in the winter. The NUM names its memorial lectures after the pickets. Jones's death raised tensions between strikers and those who continued to work. On 15 March 1984, he was hit in the chest by a half-brick thrown by a youth who opposed the strike when he confronted him for vandalising his car, but the post-mortem ruled that this had not caused his death and it was more likely to have been caused by being pressed against the pit gates earlier in the day. News of his death led to hundreds of pickets staying in Ollerton town centre overnight. At the request of Nottinghamshire Police, Scargill appeared and called for calm in the wake of the tragedy. Several working miners in Ollerton reported that their gardens and cars had been vandalised during the night. Ollerton Colliery closed for a few days as a mark of respect for Jones.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Policing was extensive from the start, a policy to avoid the problems of 1972, when the police were overwhelmed by the number of pickets at the Battle of Saltley Gate. Many families in South Yorkshire complained that the police were abusive and damaged property needlessly whilst pursuing pickets.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: During the Battle of Orgreave, television cameras caught a policeman repeatedly lashing out at a picket on his head with a truncheon but no charges were made against the officer, identified as a member of Northumbria Police. The heavy-handed policing at Orgreave, including from some senior officers was criticised. At the 1985 Police Federation conference, Ronald Carroll from West Yorkshire Police argued that, "The police were used by the Coal Board to do all their dirty work. Instead of seeking the civil remedies under the existing civil law, they relied completely on the police to solve their problems by implementing the criminal law." A motion at the 1984 Labour Party conference won heavy support for blaming all the violence in the strike on the police, despite opposition from Kinnock.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Union funds struggled to cover the year-long strike, so strikers had to raise their own funds. The Kent area's effective fundraising from sympathisers in London and in continental Europe was resented by other areas. The Yorkshire area's reliance on mass picketing led to a neglect of fundraising, and many Yorkshire strikers were living in poverty by the winter of 1984. A soup kitchen opened in Yorkshire in April 1984, for the first time since the 1920s. Wakefield Council provided free meals for children during school holidays. The Labour-dominated councils of Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Wakefield reduced council-house rents and local tax rates for striking miners, but the Conservative Selby Council refused any assistance, although the Selby pits had higher numbers of commuters.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: In Leicestershire, the area's NUM made no payments to the few who went on strike, on the grounds that the area had voted against industrial action. Fundraising for the so-called "Dirty Thirty" striking Leicestershire miners was extensive and they redirected some of their excess aid to other parts of the NUM. Many local businesses in pit villages donated money to NUM funds, although some claimed they were threatened with boycotts or vandalism if they did not contribute.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners held "Pits and Perverts" concerts to raise money which led the NUM to become supportive of gay rights in subsequent years. Some groups prioritised aid to pits in South Wales, as they felt that Scargill was distributing donations to his most favoured pits in Kent and Yorkshire. The ISTC donated food parcels and toys during the summer, but gave no money as they did not want to be accused of financing the aggressive picketing.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Chesterfield FC gave discounted tickets to striking miners until the start of 1985, when it abandoned the policy as most North Derbyshire miners had returned to work.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Bruce Springsteen donated $20,000 to the Northumberland and Durham Miners Support Group in the aftermath of the strike.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: In the early weeks of the strike, the media reported that miners' wives in Nottinghamshire were encouraging their husbands to defy the flying pickets and were against the strike. In response, a group of miners' wives and girlfriends who supported the strike set up a network that became known as Women Against Pit Closures. The support groups organised collections outside supermarkets, communal kitchens, benefit concerts and other activities. The strike marked an important development in the traditional mining heartlands, where feminist ideas had not been strong.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The figures below are given in Richards (1996). The figures of working and striking miners were an issue of controversy throughout the dispute, and some other sources give figures that contradict Richards's table.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Some of the above areas were large and had high internal variances. Within the large geographical Yorkshire area, there was still something of a regional variation in observing the strike despite the still high 97.3% overall Yorkshire solidarity rate in observing the strike in November 1984, as miners from South Yorkshire were considerably more militant than miners from North Yorkshire. This was something which became clearer still in the last three months of the strike with the number of North Yorkshire miners drifting back to work.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: At the South Leicester colliery, there was reportedly only one miner who stayed on strike for the full 12 months.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: A number of reasons have been advanced for the lack of support by the Nottinghamshire miners for the strike. It was compared to the return to work led by George Spencer in Nottinghamshire during the 1926 coal strike, but Nottinghamshire had gone on strike alongside other regions in 1972 and 1974. Other explanations include the perception that Nottinghamshire pits were safe from the threat of closure, as they had large reserves, and the area-level incentive scheme introduced by Tony Benn caused them to be amongst the best-paid in Britain.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: David Amos noted that some pits in Nottinghamshire closed in the early 1980s. He argues that Nottinghamshire miners reacted in the same way in 1984 as they did to the unofficial strikes in 1969 and 1970, both of which saw blockading of Nottinghamshire pits by striking miners from South Yorkshire and both of which were regarded as unconstitutional under NUM rules.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: As the Nottinghamshire collieries had attracted displaced miners from Scotland and the north-east in the 1960s, it has been argued that they were reluctant to strike to stop pit closures when there had been no action to save their home pits from closure. A large Polish community in Nottinghamshire (especially Ollerton) had been alienated by Scargill's policy of supporting the Communist government in Poland against the Solidarity union, which the NUM previously had supported. David John Douglass, a branch delegate at Hatfield Colliery dismissed the suggestions as the Doncaster pits also had large numbers of displaced and Polish miners, yet it was amongst the most militant areas of the NUM.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Nottinghamshire NUM executive Henry Richardson argued that the Nottinghamshire miners would have probably voted for strike had they not been subjected to so much intimidation within days of the walk-out in Yorkshire, which prompted many to defy the Yorkshire pickets as a matter of principle. At some pits, most miners initially refused to cross picket lines formed by Welsh miners but returned to work when more aggressive pickets arrived from Yorkshire. After the strike, Mick McGahey, one of the most prominent voices against a national ballot, said that he accepted "some responsibility" for alienating the Nottinghamshire miners through aggressive picketing. Jonathan and Ruth Winterton have suggested that the greater success of picketing in Lancashire, a region with little tradition of mining militancy but where the majority of its miners were on strike for the majority of the 1984–85 national strike, might be ascribed to the more diplomatic tactics of the North Yorkshire NUM pickets that went to Lancashire, and to the North Yorkshire NUM officials who worked with the Lancashire NUM to coordinate more respectful picketing, in contrast to the aggressive tactics adopted by South Yorkshire pickets in Nottinghamshire. The Marxist academic Alex Callinicos has suggested that the NUM officials had failed to make the case to their members adequately and believes that the Nottinghamshire miners were simply ignorant of the issues.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The opposition Labour Party was divided in its attitude, its leader Neil Kinnock, whose late father had been a miner, was critical of the government's handling of the strike, but distanced himself from the leadership of the NUM over the issues of the ballot and violence against strikebreakers. Kinnock later said that it was "the greatest regret of [his] whole life" that he did not call for a national ballot at an earlier stage. He condemned the actions of pickets and police as "violence", which prompted a statement from the Police Federation that some officers would struggle to work under a Labour government. He appeared on a picket line on 3 January 1985, after having said in November that he was "too busy".


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Kinnock appeared at a Labour Party rally alongside Scargill in Stoke-on-Trent on 30 November 1984 – the day of the killing of David Wilkie. His speech developed into an argument with hecklers who saw him as having betrayed the NUM by failing to support the strike. Kinnock began by saying, "We meet here tonight in the shadow of an outrage." When interrupted, Kinnock accused the hecklers of "living like parasites off the struggle of the miners." As Kinnock denounced the lack of the ballot, violence against strikebreakers and Scargill's tactical approach, he was asked by hecklers what he had done for the striking miners. Kinnock shouted back, "Well, I was not telling them lies. That's what I was not doing during that period." It was a thinly-veiled attack on Scargill, whom he later admitted that he detested.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: Former party leader and prime minister James Callaghan said that a ballot was needed to decide when to end the strike and return to work. Tony Benn was vocal in support of Scargill's leadership during the strike. In addition, 12 left-wing MPs refused to sit down in the Commons in January in an attempt to force a debate on the strike.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The Communist Party supported the strike and opposed Thatcher's government, but expressed reservations about Scargill's tactics. Peter Carter said that Scargill had "the idea that the miners could win the strike alone through a re-run of Saltley Gate". The 39th congress of the party passed a motion that the strike could not succeed without sympathy from the wider public and other unions, and that the aggressive picketing was dividing the working class and alienating public support.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: In contrast to the close cooperation with the Trades Union Congress in the 1970s, the NUM never asked the TUC to support the strike and wrote at the outset to say that, "No request is being made by this union for the intervention or assistance of the TUC." Scargill disliked Len Murray and blamed the TUC for the failure of the 1926 General Strike. Part way through the strike, Norman Willis took over from Murray as general secretary of the TUC. He attempted to repair relations between Scargill and Kinnock, but to no avail. When speaking in a miners' hall in November 1984, Willis condemned the violence and advocated a compromise, which led to a noose being lowered slowly from the rafters until it rested close to his head.


title: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

text: The NUM had a "Triple Alliance" with the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (ISTC) and the railway unions. Solidarity action was taken by railway workers and few crossed picket lines, but the NUM never asked the railway unions to strike. In contrast, Scargill demanded that steel workers not cross miners' picket lines and only work to keep furnaces in order. Bill Sirs of the ISTC felt that Scargill was reneging on an agreement to deliver coke. British Steel was planning to close a steel plant and steel workers feared that support for the strikers might make closure more likely.