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 […]

Bristol Miners Support Campaign – 1984-85

  The 1984/85 miners strike was arguably the most significant labour dispute in British history. Before the strike began, Arthur Scargill (President of the 200,000 strong National Union of Mineworkers) told his members and anybody else who would listen, that the future of the coal industry, and the people and communities whose futures depended on it were at stake. This was perfectly summarised in the strike slogan COAL NOT DOLE. The Tory Government used a combination of starvation, police […]

Bristol Miners Support Campaign Archive: Appeal for Artefacts

Looking back to the Miners’ Strike and the Bristol Miners Support Group In March 1984 the publicly owned National Coal Board provoked Britain’s miners into a year-long strike by announcing the closure of twenty of Britain’s 173 coal mines. The strike was defeated and within 20 years Britain’s last deep coal mine had closed. 200,000 jobs were lost and hundreds of working-class communities were laid waste. Looking back 40 years later, it is easy to think that, despite the high price paid by the […]