New exhibition remembers the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike

Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) are putting an exhibition dedicated to the 1984/85
Miners’ Strike on display at Bristol Central Library this December.

The exhibition celebrates the work of the Bristol Miners’ Support Campaign during the year long dispute. Over the last eighteen months BRHG has sponsored a project to collect and preserve documents and other materials from the campaign, one of many around the country that aimed to support the communities that were at the forefront of the strike.

It is now forty years since the strike, the bitterest industrial dispute in post-war Britain. Across the country a network of solidarity groups emerged during the course of 1984. Hundreds of thousands of people contributed money, food and other kinds of support, the best known of which may well be Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, as depicted in the 2014 film, Pride.

As we know, the NUM (National Union of Miners) were defeated in the dispute and the Thatcher government proceeded with a series of pit closures that marked the beginning of the end for the coal industry in the UK. The strike was marked by heavy and, at times, brutal policing: 11,000 miners were arrested. The exhibition coincides with the start of a public inquiry to be held in Sheffield, announced by the government earlier this year, into police operations during the strike.

The exhibition does not mark the completion of BRHG’s project. Indeed, we are still keen to hear from anyone who may have materials relating to the Bristol Miners’ Support Campaign lurking somewhere in their lofts. At the end of the exhibition’s run at the Library, all materials will be deposited in the Bristol Archives in B Bond Warehouse where they will be open to the public and to future historians.

In addition to the exhibition, BRHG have published a new pamphlet, Coal Not Dole, which examines Bristol’s support for the miners during the 1980s. It is written from first-hand accounts, by the people who were there and involved in the Miners’ Support Campaign.