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This is Nottingham --
SINCE the mid-1980s it has been the battle-cry of all on the left of the coal industry: Arthur was right!
Thirty years after the bitter 12-month industrial war caused by the National Coal Board's colliery closure programme it emerges that miners' leader Arthur Scargill was by no means wrong.
Mr Scargill, then a controversial president of the National Union of Mineworkers, insisted that the Government and the National Coal Board intended to shut more pits than the 20 acknowledged by NCB chief Ian MacGregor.
It was a cause for which he led the NUM into an infamous strike and a bloody clash with fellow pitmen – the Nottinghamshire miners who rejected the strike call and crossed the picket lines.
"If we knew then what we know now, the outcome of the strike would have been very different," said former miner Mick Newton.
He was reacting to news that Cabinet papers released under the 30-year rule had highlighted a behind-closed-doors agreement to shut not 20 mines, but up to 75 over three years.
"After the Ted Heath Government had been defeated by the NUM [in 1974] there was a plan to take on the miners," said Mr Newton, who was an NUM rep at Edwinstowe's Thoresby Colliery, one of the most productive in Europe.
"From the numbers we knew about it, was obvious the plan was not to close each mine on economic grounds but to minimise the political impact of the miners.
"These papers show that if anything, we got it wrong – they were planning more closures than we thought."
Mr Newton, now a 50-year-old former county councillor living in Daybrook, added: "The 1984-85 strike was one of the most unselfish in history.
"We were fighting not for money, not for conditions but for the future of our industry."
Papers released to the National Archive show the determination of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to confound Mr Scargill and his union. She was prepared to...
Use 4,500 armed service drivers and 1,650 tipper lorries to shift coal to the power stations every day.
Buy land adjacent to power stations to ensure that coal stocks could be built up.
Adapt some coal-burning power stations to generate electricity by using oil instead.
Another young miner in the 1980s was Jeff Wood, a face worker at Welbeck Colliery near Worksop. He has his doubts about any impact the Army would have made.
Said Mr Wood, now 52, said: "A lot of power stations already had big stockpiles.
"As for troops being brought in, there were all sorts of rumours but it depended on which side you were on."
Mr Wood was one of the thousands of moderate Notts miners who rejected the NUM strike call and set up the independent Union of Democratic Mineworkers... of which he is now president.
Mr Newton, however, wonders if there may have been Services involvement, even if Army drivers were never asked to man the lorries.
"There was a build-up of troops at the Proteus Army Training Camp, near Ollerton," he said.
"And just after the Notts vote in 1984, a delegation of miners went to a regional Labour Party conference in Skegness.
"They returned for an emergency meeting at Berry Hill [the NUM Notts headquarters in Mansfield]. When they got back to the Ollerton roundabout, there were helicopters in the air."
Police helicopters? They were not marked as police helicopters, said Mr Newton, who also cites the appearance of police in un-numbered tunics as evidence that unidentified elements may have unofficially been involved in the dispute.
Mrs Thatcher was eventually advised that a troop deployment would have been a "formidable undertaking"– and besides, the NUM's timing had been all wrong.
After the mild winter of 1983-84, power station stocks were high when the strike began in March. There was still plenty of coal in hand when the strike ended in the spring of 1985.
The 1984 Cabinet papers also reflect the violence of the dispute, which saw its bloodiest battle between police and flying pickets at Orgreave coking plant, in South Yorkshire, in June 1984.
In Nottinghamshire, the strike's darkest days had occurred in March 1984.
Because of the controversial police tactic of halting coaches containing flying pickets, a group of striking miners heading for pits in south Notts had got off the vehicle and walked instead to the nearest colliery, Ollerton.
There, one of the visiting pickets, 24-year-old David Jones, was struck in the chest by a brick and died. Who threw the missile remains a mystery to this day.
Next day came another dangerous clash, witnessed at Thoresby Colliery by Mick Newton. "The pickets were blocking off access to th the colliery and the night shift couldn't get out," he recalled.
"A police inspector came up and asked if the strikers would let the shift out on the understanding that they would be then be allowed to block the lane again.
"But police reneged on the agreement and they let in the new shift.
"It resulted in people being pushed down an embankment. I can remember seeing two miners getting a kicking."
After the NUM returned to work in the spring of 1985, the UDM could claim to be on the "winning" side.
However, Notts miners were to be rewarded for their loyalty in the 1990s with a round of closures instigated by the Conservatives' President of the Board of Trade, Michael Heseltine.
UDM leader Roy Lynk would stage an underground protest.
There has been coal mining in Nottinghamshire for 800 years.
At the time of the 1984-85 miners' strike, some 35,000 men worked in a Notts coal industry that sustained 35 collieries.
Today, only one deep mine remains in Notts – Thoresby, employing just 700 people.
Most of its men, plus a handful from the UK's few remaining pits, form all that remains of the UDM – current membership, 600. Meanwhile, insists Mick Newton, hundreds of years' worth of coal reserves remain underground. Reported by This is 14 hours ago.
Clik here to view.
This is Nottingham --SINCE the mid-1980s it has been the battle-cry of all on the left of the coal industry: Arthur was right!
Thirty years after the bitter 12-month industrial war caused by the National Coal Board's colliery closure programme it emerges that miners' leader Arthur Scargill was by no means wrong.
Mr Scargill, then a controversial president of the National Union of Mineworkers, insisted that the Government and the National Coal Board intended to shut more pits than the 20 acknowledged by NCB chief Ian MacGregor.
It was a cause for which he led the NUM into an infamous strike and a bloody clash with fellow pitmen – the Nottinghamshire miners who rejected the strike call and crossed the picket lines.
"If we knew then what we know now, the outcome of the strike would have been very different," said former miner Mick Newton.
He was reacting to news that Cabinet papers released under the 30-year rule had highlighted a behind-closed-doors agreement to shut not 20 mines, but up to 75 over three years.
"After the Ted Heath Government had been defeated by the NUM [in 1974] there was a plan to take on the miners," said Mr Newton, who was an NUM rep at Edwinstowe's Thoresby Colliery, one of the most productive in Europe.
"From the numbers we knew about it, was obvious the plan was not to close each mine on economic grounds but to minimise the political impact of the miners.
"These papers show that if anything, we got it wrong – they were planning more closures than we thought."
Mr Newton, now a 50-year-old former county councillor living in Daybrook, added: "The 1984-85 strike was one of the most unselfish in history.
"We were fighting not for money, not for conditions but for the future of our industry."
Papers released to the National Archive show the determination of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to confound Mr Scargill and his union. She was prepared to...
Use 4,500 armed service drivers and 1,650 tipper lorries to shift coal to the power stations every day.
Buy land adjacent to power stations to ensure that coal stocks could be built up.
Adapt some coal-burning power stations to generate electricity by using oil instead.
Another young miner in the 1980s was Jeff Wood, a face worker at Welbeck Colliery near Worksop. He has his doubts about any impact the Army would have made.
Said Mr Wood, now 52, said: "A lot of power stations already had big stockpiles.
"As for troops being brought in, there were all sorts of rumours but it depended on which side you were on."
Mr Wood was one of the thousands of moderate Notts miners who rejected the NUM strike call and set up the independent Union of Democratic Mineworkers... of which he is now president.
Mr Newton, however, wonders if there may have been Services involvement, even if Army drivers were never asked to man the lorries.
"There was a build-up of troops at the Proteus Army Training Camp, near Ollerton," he said.
"And just after the Notts vote in 1984, a delegation of miners went to a regional Labour Party conference in Skegness.
"They returned for an emergency meeting at Berry Hill [the NUM Notts headquarters in Mansfield]. When they got back to the Ollerton roundabout, there were helicopters in the air."
Police helicopters? They were not marked as police helicopters, said Mr Newton, who also cites the appearance of police in un-numbered tunics as evidence that unidentified elements may have unofficially been involved in the dispute.
Mrs Thatcher was eventually advised that a troop deployment would have been a "formidable undertaking"– and besides, the NUM's timing had been all wrong.
After the mild winter of 1983-84, power station stocks were high when the strike began in March. There was still plenty of coal in hand when the strike ended in the spring of 1985.
The 1984 Cabinet papers also reflect the violence of the dispute, which saw its bloodiest battle between police and flying pickets at Orgreave coking plant, in South Yorkshire, in June 1984.
In Nottinghamshire, the strike's darkest days had occurred in March 1984.
Because of the controversial police tactic of halting coaches containing flying pickets, a group of striking miners heading for pits in south Notts had got off the vehicle and walked instead to the nearest colliery, Ollerton.
There, one of the visiting pickets, 24-year-old David Jones, was struck in the chest by a brick and died. Who threw the missile remains a mystery to this day.
Next day came another dangerous clash, witnessed at Thoresby Colliery by Mick Newton. "The pickets were blocking off access to th the colliery and the night shift couldn't get out," he recalled.
"A police inspector came up and asked if the strikers would let the shift out on the understanding that they would be then be allowed to block the lane again.
"But police reneged on the agreement and they let in the new shift.
"It resulted in people being pushed down an embankment. I can remember seeing two miners getting a kicking."
After the NUM returned to work in the spring of 1985, the UDM could claim to be on the "winning" side.
However, Notts miners were to be rewarded for their loyalty in the 1990s with a round of closures instigated by the Conservatives' President of the Board of Trade, Michael Heseltine.
UDM leader Roy Lynk would stage an underground protest.
There has been coal mining in Nottinghamshire for 800 years.
At the time of the 1984-85 miners' strike, some 35,000 men worked in a Notts coal industry that sustained 35 collieries.
Today, only one deep mine remains in Notts – Thoresby, employing just 700 people.
Most of its men, plus a handful from the UK's few remaining pits, form all that remains of the UDM – current membership, 600. Meanwhile, insists Mick Newton, hundreds of years' worth of coal reserves remain underground. Reported by This is 14 hours ago.