‘We were staying out, ballot or no ballot’
In the first of two features, ex-miner PAUL KELLY shares his experiences as a 24-year-old striker in the miners’ strike against pit closures of 1984-5
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I WAS born in Lower Broughton, Salford, in Sussex Street, next to Andrew Street, where Ewan McColl was born. My father, grandfather and uncles were all coalminers.
My uncle Harold worked at Bradford colliery and was a friend of the playwright Jimmy Allen. Mining and politics were my life from an early age.
I began work at Agecroft colliery in the late 1970s. My dad also worked at the pit. I took part in the strikes of 1969, 1972 and 1974 picketing with my dad — all great victories for the miners and the working class.
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In the second of two features, ex-miner PAUL KELLY records his experiences at the battle of Orgreave when police mounted an unprecedented attack on striking miners, and what he did in the aftermath of the great strike
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With solidarity coming in from across Britain and the world, PETER LAZENBY speaks to the people who made Christmas 1984 a celebration of working-class resistance in Britain’s striking coalmining communities
From repurposing a police van as the picket express to facing kidnap charges, former miner STEWART BROWN tells northern reporter Peter Lazenby tales of defiance from Bold Colliery during the 1984-85 strike
In the second of two features, ex-miner PAUL KELLY records his experiences at the battle of Orgreave when police mounted an unprecedented attack on striking miners, and what he did in the aftermath of the great strike
Britain’s coalfields were already seething with anger and lightning walkouts when the national strike against pit closures was triggered at Cortonwood colliery in Yorkshire on March 6 1984. PETER LAZENBY reports