Talk:UK miners' strike (1984–1985)

Courts

There should be more details on the employers use of the courts to seize union funds. It was an important part of the battle. Can anyone help? Johncmullen1960 (talk) 08:01, 2 November 2008 (UTC) I might have something on that Chaikney (talk) 18:27, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Re-arrangement

It seems to me that the "History" section is long and muddled. Arguably the whole article is "history", innit. I'm thinking of splitting it into "Timeline" (or "Sequence of major events") and "Issues" (like the "Question of a ballot".

But if people have better ideas, I would like to hear them Chaikney (talk) 18:27, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I did the re-arranging, there's probably still rough bits. Also did some big offline rewriting. Be bold and all that... Chaikney (talk) 01:14, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Useful resources

From the BBC South Yorkshire website here Chaikney (talk) 18:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Football hooliganism

I removed the follwing section as I cannot find any sources to support this:

Football hooliganism, another big social issue of the mid-1980s in England, became a venue for proxy conflicts between supports of clubs located in areas that were on different sides of the strike. As most Nottinghamshire miners did not strike, supporters of the county's football teams often became the bitter enemies of supporters of Yorkshire and Derbyshire teams; the local derby between Chesterfield (Derbyshire) and Mansfield Town (Nottinghamshire) often saw running battles between the supporters, with Mansfield nicknamed 'scabs' by many Chesterfield fans, which continues to the present day. There was also rivalry in the divide between Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, as Sheffield Wednesday and Nottingham Forest were the biggest and best supported clubs in that area.

Feel free to add it back in once reliable sources are found --DFS454 (talk) 10:12, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Let's go for Class A

I have been shocked to learn that Encyclopedia Britannica has literally nothing on this topic. Wikipedia is definitely ahead of the game here. However, I can understand why this is still only Class B. We need to cut out all unverified comments. There have been a few programmes on about the strike recently, so I expect that some others on here have some new information to add. I think that there needs to be more on the years just before the strike: for example, about how Scargill had called national ballots for strikes in the five years beforehand, but they had always returned "No" votes. Epa101 (talk) 12:47, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

ITV

Does anyone know more about ITV reversing the timeline of events at Orgreave on their news bulletin? Lapsed Pacifist (talk) 17:43, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Punctuation

There were some inconsistencies in the punctuation of this article; I went through and changed some of the punctuation. Hope it's OK? Sw258 (talk) 01:01, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Introduction

The introduction to this article says nothing about why the strikes took place. I think it needs to be a little clearer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.222.167.125 (talk) 16:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Police brutality in the United Kingdom

"Violence flared after police on horse-back charged the miners with truncheons drawn and inflicted serious injuries upon several individuals. In 1991, the South Yorkshire Police were forced to pay out £425,000 to thirty-nine miners who were arrested in the events at the incident.[10] Other less well known, but equally bloody police attacks took place, for example, in Maltby, South Yorkshire.[11] These confrontations contained organised police lines including charges by police and police mounted on horseback. In some cases miners organised themselves against this."

This passage makes clear that there was brutality by the police in this strike and therefore I will reinstate the Category:Police brutality in the United Kingdom.BorisAndDoris (talk) 23:52, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Dead link

Link 50, to Jeremy Deller's re-enactment is dead because the website has since been redesigned. I won't change due to a COI (work for Artangel) but if anyone wants to correct it the updated link is http://www.artangel.org.uk/projects/2001/the_battle_of_orgreave —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.208.83.130 (talk) 16:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks - I have replaced the link. Keith D (talk) 21:06, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Bias

I find this whole article somewhat biased towards the left. Plenty on the subject of police brutality but not a word on the activites of the flying pickets and their violence towards miners who wished to go to work. Remember it was an unballoted strike, nothing peculiar at all about the NUM rules as you suggest, he manipulated the rule book (rules 41 &nd 43 ) to suit his own ends. There are many recorded cases of working miner's houses having bricks thrown through their windows and worse, working miners beaten up, their wives and children terrified but no mention here. Amongst all of the other things that could be mentioned Arthur Scargill argued that no pit should ever be closed anywhere ever unless exhausted or had safety problems and only then with the agreement of the NUM. He further proposed that in the event of a disagreement between the NUM and the NCB over any pit closure that this should go to an independant body and the NCB should be bound by this! No small wonder the industry was in the state it was then. This man had no agenda at the time beyond bringing down the (tory) government and as such his activities were an affront to democracy. Ytongs (talk) 13:44, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Cultural effect

I have read that the miners' strike was a major influence on the generation of British comics who came of age in the 1980s. (Linda Smith comes to mind.) Can this be substantiated? 121a0012 (talk) 20:05, 17 December 2011 (UTC)