Their exhibits suggest the country is tired of division
Gallery, Library and Museum in Doncaster feels the need to explain something to visitors to one of its exhibitions. “A trade union”, a screen in the gallery informs them, “is an organisation of members who are employees in a particular industry or service”. The gallery goes on to explain what coal is, and provides a lump of the stuff for illustration. It seems odd, until you realise how few Britons are now members of unions and how very little coal is mined or burnt in the country.
An easy way to commemorate the strike is to depict it as a clash between plucky, principled miners and the mighty British state, led by Margaret Thatcher. Curators at the National Coal Mining Museum near Wakefield considered that approach, and rejected it. Instead, in November, the museum asked people whose stories have rarely been heard to get in touch. It particularly wanted to hear from miners who kept working, known to strikers as “scabs”.
Even the children of striking miners speak of their confusion and regret. One, who was 15 during the strike, remembers feeling ashamed by the poverty into which the household sank. Another remembers a father who stayed on strike but understood why others could not. “Looking back, the strike achieved absolutely nothing,” argues another. “All it did was hurt families.” The National Union of Mineworkers and its leader, Arthur Scargill, are not remembered fondly by everyone who walked out.
The exhibits also nod to the stifling environment for women in pit towns, which the strike helped to dislodge. “We’ve had to challenge all the ideas and arguments that say ‘our place is in the home’,” wrote a group of Yorkshire women after the strike. “Well—we are not going back!” The Danum Gallery, which has objects from former miners and local people, displays a pair of smart women’s shoes from the 1980s. It points out that the decline of heavy industry and the rise of office work suited many.
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