Coalfield Communities

Cathy Jamieson Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)]

I hope to take all five minutes for my speech, Mr Speaker. I apologise for that, but though I rarely speak in the Chamber, it would be remiss of me not to speak on this subject.

I am going to put a different spin, if that is agreeable, on what has been said already. I started in the pit when I was 15 and was going down the pit at 16. I will not go over all the history, but I worked in the pit for 20 years. In Scotland, we were out on strike along with the rest of the coalfields. Major decisions were made. The judges in Scotland ruled that the strike was legal there. Scotland was the only area that had a ruling on that basis.

I would like to talk about the role that everybody played throughout that period and the strength we gathered from it. Women did not just stand behind us—by the end of the strike they were standing in front of us, usually trying to protect us because most of us had been arrested umpteen times on the picket line. Great things happened as a result. Women ended up at the forefront: they became councillors, politicians and trade unionists. Some even became MPs.

We talk about the victimisation and hardships of people who want to go to work, but let me tell you about the people who worked all their days in the pits and the sacrifices that were made. I have to disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher) on one point: I never agreed with a ballot then, and I never agree with a ballot now. That is because an older man who had been in the pit for 40-odd years would rightly want to take a redundancy payment, but the younger men were entitled to a future. If there had been a ballot, older men would be voting for younger men to lose out. We therefore had a show of hands, and we had solidarity—there was a lot of solidarity. A lot of older people in the collieries made sacrifices on behalf of the young.

There were sacrifices in my area of the Lothians: 46 men from one pit ended that strike sacked, 36 men were sacked from the pit up the road, and five were sacked from another. Let me tell you about victimisation: of the four branch officials at Monktonhall, three were sacked, and of the 12 committee members, eight were sacked, to make sure that when we went back to work we would toe the line. We should remember that before the strike started union officials up and down the country were told, “There’s your agreement.” Previous agreements were torn up and they were told, “You’re starting three shifts next week.” We were pounded for a year before the strike started, but it goes back further than that.

In 1979, that fateful year, 11 Scottish National party Members joined the Tories, brought down a Labour Government and gave us 18 years of the Tories, but has everyone forgotten the Ridley report? It recommended taking out the union movement because we would get a majority here. The trade unions had 12 million members in those days. The report identified two unions in particular: the dockers and the miners. Unfortunately, it fell to us—I wish it hadnae, but it did.

The bottom line is that we have to learn from the past to determine what will happen in the future.

[Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making a passionate and powerful case. Does he agree that there also needs to be an inquiry into the convictions in Scotland during the miners strike, and is he surprised that the Scottish Government have not agreed to such an inquiry?

[Mr Hamilton]

I am not surprised. The SNP were tartan Tories in the past and they are making a similar alliance now. The Government have not agreed an inquiry, but they should.