The little cousin of miners’ strikes forces Tory U-turn
Furor over coal mine closures puts Conservative polling further in the pits.
In 2018, David Miliband sat down to interview John Major at the annual South Shields Lecture and immediately asked “why did you agree to come and do this event”. The moment generated chuckles from the audience, but it was an appropriate first question.
Major had overseen the closure of the last mines in the North East, causing immeasurable pain to local miners and their families. He brushed the question off with the quip, “at my age, you don’t get many invitations,” but it was a bold decision to take to the stage in a region known for its proud industrial past and long memory.
In the weeks after Black Wednesday in 1992, there was a palpable sense that the country was turning against the Conservatives. Yet, less than a month after Britain crashed out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), in mid-October, the Tory government announced it would close 31 coal pits, over half of the county’s pit mines—a figure that would put 30,000 miners out of work and trigger another 70,000 job losses in industries servicing the mining sector.
Tories believe in markets…. just not those markets
The origins of the announcement can be traced to the privatisation of 12 regional electricity companies in December 1990. The newly privatised firms quickly began substituting British-mined coal for cheaper imported coal and gas sources in an attempt to cut costs and expand profits. The domestic market for British coal shrank.
The Conservative government determined that the only way to bolster sales and keep British coal competitive would be to reduce the price through temporary subsidies to the sector while the industry improved productivity. The government was unwilling to take such a step, citing their conviction that market forces should determine prices, not government intervention.
I’m a Marxist, the trouble is Michael Portillo is a Marks and Spencerist.—Arthur Scargill, BBC Question Time, Oct 1, 1992.
In its unwavering defence of free markets, the government had failed to mention its own market interventions that had contributed to the pivot away from British coal. The Tory government had imposed a 10.6 percent levy on fossil fuels in 1991 (increased to 11 percent in 1992), which generated more than £1.1 billion in its first year. 99 percent of the revenues were distributed to the nuclear power sector to keep nuclear power competitive. Notably, the axing of this generous subsidy was not considered as part of the efforts to save the coal industry and support domestic coal demand.
If the decision to close the pits wasn’t driven by pure free market economics, why wouldn’t the government help the coal industry? Several factors likely influenced the decision (spoiler: environmental concerns do not appear to have been a high priority).
Don’t tell us it’s market forces! If market forces applied to the farming industry, half of the farms in Britain would have closed years ago… I’m not in favour of applying market forces to farms. You can’t close a farm one year and open it the next. But the miners’ haven’t had set aside grants where they’re given money not to produce coal.—Tony Benn
Firstly, Britain was in a long-running recession and the Tories were devoted to the notion that austerity and cutting government spending was the only way out. Further subsidies to help the British coal industry out of a crisis of the Conservatives’ own making was an expense they believed Britain couldn’t afford.
Demographic change may have also been on the Major government’s mind. The British working class was shrinking. The share of UK households that earned their income from manual labour was falling—from over 60 percent in the 1980s, to around 50 percent in the mid-1990s. Major may have believed that with an already emaciated mining workforce, a shrinking working class, and strong incentives not to strike, he could implement large scale pit closures with minimal pushback from the electorate.
John’s major miscalculation
John Major clearly did not anticipate the scale of public outcry following the closure announcement on October 13. The following week, the government received more than 20,000 letters of protest. Several Tory backbenchers came out against the plans. Even the Conservative press expressed sympathy with the miners, including the Daily Mail.
Demonstrations sprung up across the country, not just in mining towns but in places like Cheltenham, where middle class voters joined the Socialist Workers, Liberal Democrats, and church leaders in the streets. The demonstrations were the first opportunity for the public to express their anger at the government after Black Wednesday, and the miners found support in more demographics than they otherwise might have.
On October 19, 100,000 miners and their sympathisers descended on London as the cabinet discussed the crisis. Six days later on the 25th, a national demonstration organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) drew a crowd of 200,000.
“We captured Chelsea and Kensington for Labour today. I have never seen so many people hanging out of windows, including those at the Kensington Gardens hotel—and by Christ is it posh! The people were cheering us on.”—Dennis Skinner, the House of Commons, Oct 21, 1992.
In the face of overwhelming public outcry, the next day the government announced a freeze of its closure plans while the Department of Trade and Industry carried out a review of the mining sector to determine whether new markets could be found for British coal. Although this was at a time when U-turns were not as entrenched in Tory vocabulary as they have since become, significant damage had been done.
Before Black Wednesday, Gallup polling gave the Conservatives a 2-point lead. After Black Wednesday, Labour took the lead, with polls showing the Conservatives at between -4 and -9 points. The week after the pit closures were announced, Gallup released a poll showing Conservative support at -22.
On October 21, the Labour opposition introduced a measure to Parliament that would halt the pit closures. The move forced Conservative MPs to either publicly back the proposal or help Labour sink it. The Major government won by just 13 votes. 6 Conservative MPs voted against the proposal.
British Coal went to the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) with a compromise which would see 13 colliers spared if the union agreed to miners undertaking longer work shifts in order to increase mine productivity. The NUM roundly rejected the offer.
A badly timed, badly framed, and badly executed policy
Not only was the proposal poorly timed, coming on the back of a deep recession with nearly 2.9 million Britons out of work, and badly framed as a selective defence of free markets, but its execution was calamitous.
On December 21, the High Court of Justice found that no miners had been consulted during the decision-making process, putting the closure proposals in breach of employment law. The ruling ordered no mines to be closed before a full statutory review had been completed.
The government completed its about-face with the publication of its review on March 25, 1993. The publication laid out plans to subsidise the industry to the tune of £500 million to help explore new markets and granted £200 million in regional aid to areas worst affected by closures. 18 pits would still be closed imminently, but 13 would get a two-year reprieve. The proposal passed a parliamentary vote with only 4 Conservative MPs voting against the proposal.
Thatcher’s anti-union legislation complicated action
The TUC resisted calls for a general strike over fears the government would use new powers created under the Thatcher government to retaliate against striking unions. Legislation introduced in the 1980s made solidarity strikes illegal. A general strike involving workers from across industry could invite legal action that would have allowed the courts to seize union funds. The TUC made clear the miners were on their own if they wanted to strike.
As such, strike action was limited and cost the unions more than they gained. The NUM voted for a one-day strike on April 2, then a second two weeks later. In retaliation, British Coal ended the opt-out system whereby miners’ dues were automatically deducted from their wages. The NUM would now need to use its own time and resources collecting dues from members, and NUM membership began to decline.
A new era for industrial action
The 1992 protests bridge the traditional industrial action of the 1970s and 80s with the social movements we have today. Unlike its older cousins, the 1992 conflict saw no picketing and only a minor role for strike action. The bulk of the demonstrations occurred away from the mines, in town centres or on the streets of the capital. Celebrities joined the protests and encouraged people to put candles in their windows and turn their lights off in unison for 5 minutes in gestures of solidarity with the miners.
Part of the transition away from strikes and industrial action was a necessary result of Thatcher’s anti-union legislation. But there were other factors at play. The poll tax protests in 1990 across UK towns and cities had proven that mass movements on the streets could severely weaken the government’s position. Given the UK’s reduced reliance on British coal, miner strikes were less potent than they had been almost a decade earlier.
The fact that the miners didn’t resort to traditional industrial action and picket lines may also have improved their support among the middle class, for whom street demonstrations was a cut above picket line violence. When the NUM did finally resort to strike action, support from the Conservative media was less forthcoming and 2 backbench Conservatives pulled their opposition in the next parliamentary vote.
There were no winners
In May, the High Court reversed its decision after finding that the Conservative government had carried out “genuine consultations” with the unions since the initial announcement. The miners had been defeated.
It was a hollow victory for Major’s government though. They’d been discredited again. Major had been seen to severely misjudge the mood of the public and had also shown that he wasn’t as much of a break with his predecessor as Britons had been led to believe.
The residents of South Shields may have taken some satisfaction in hearing Major admit to David Miliband in 2018 that he had misjudged the situation. “The announcement came at the end of a recession, so people were still raw,” he conceded. The plan had supposedly always been to use the money saved by closing the mines to reinvest in the economy. “I can only say that we were not a bunch of monsters with vile intentions.” Maybe not monsters, but tone deaf and woefully out-of-touch politicians, and in some circles, there is little difference between the two.