Coalfield Communities

Lord Hain Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Spencer]

I am grateful for that intervention.

I am the only Member of Parliament in the Chamber today with a working colliery. Although I would like to say that it is a pleasure to speak in this debate, the truth is that I am quite sad to be doing so, as it is a massive missed opportunity to look at the future of our coalfields and former coalfields and how we could work together across the House to try to raise standards within those communities and support them.

We can spend lots of time looking backwards at what happened, and it gives me no pleasure to look back at some of the communities that the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Mr Hood) mentioned, which happen to be in my constituency. We can talk about how the NUM flooded Nottinghamshire with flying pickets to try to prevent my miners from working in those coalfields, and we can talk about how, if Scargill had had a ballot, the Nottinghamshire miners would have had a vote in that ballot and it would have given a lot more power to some of the arguments that we are hearing.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the former chief constable of Devon and Cornwall, John Alderson, complained officially that the Thatcher Government had used the police against the miners in a completely wrong way?

[Mr Spencer]

I am very much aware. I was there and I lived in those communities at that moment. I saw what was happening on the picket lines. There were friends of mine whose fathers were on the picket lines and whose brothers were on different sides of the argument, one in the National Union of Mineworkers and one in the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. Those scars are still there in my community and they are not helped by holding party political debates such as this one, instead of working together to try to improve those communities. I am saddened that this is more about trying to draw a groundswell of support for the Labour party at the ballot box than it is about genuinely solving the challenges we face, certainly in some of my communities in Nottinghamshire.

I say “some”, because in towns such as Hucknall and Calverton, in the former coalfields in the bottom half of Sherwood, where there is access to employment and good transport links, the communities are bouncing forward. There is very low unemployment in some of those villages, but further north, in places such as Ollerton and Clipstone, where the communication and transport networks are not as good and where there is not the same access to work, the communities face challenges in trying to aspire their way out of it. I now have families in my constituency who are third- generation welfare-dependent. The aspiration has gone from some of those kids.

We have to ask ourselves: what did the Blair Government do when they created the Coalfields Regeneration Trust? They spent far too much money on grassing down pit tips, planting trees and building women’s institute huts and scout huts, when they should have been putting in place infrastructure and transport networks and creating jobs. If someone does not have a job and their lad comes to them and says, “Dad, I want to go to scouts,” they cannot give him a tenner to go to scouts, because they cannot afford the money, even though there is a brand-new scout hut in their community. However, if they have a job and their lad comes to them and says, “Dad, my scout hut’s knackered. We’re trying to raise money for a new scout hut,” they will have a tenner to give towards that fund-raising event. That is where we went wrong in the period following the closure of those pits. We should have been putting money into infrastructure projects, apprenticeships and transport networks, to give people in those communities the opportunity to get out and get a job.

I was fortunate to have the Minister in his previous role come to Sherwood to talk about apprenticeships and to look at some of the great work being done in and around my community and at how we are moving forward. The good news is that I held a jobs fair in Sherwood about six weeks ago. There were more jobs advertised in that room than there are unemployed people in my constituency. The bad news is that there is a skills gap. Some of those communities still lack the skills to take on those roles. The Government are working flat out to try to fill the skills gap by creating apprenticeships and jobs that the kids coming out of those schools can go into. That is the way to solve the coalfield communities’ deprivation: to give them the ability to aspire out of it, the ability to work their way, and the confidence that the Government of the day are looking after their ability to move from wherever they are to any point in the social scale.

That is our mission; that is what we are trying to achieve. So what a tragedy it is that this debate is such a missed opportunity. We are going to spend three hours looking backwards, talking about flying pickets, Scargill and the good old pit days, when we should be talking about how we move forward—how we give jobs and aspiration to the next generation and how we work, whatever colour of Government, to try to solve the undoubted challenges faced in those former coalfields.

I congratulate the Minister on working with me to assist at Thoresby colliery in any way we can, working with UK Coal and the unions to try to extend the life of the colliery, which will run out of coal in 2018 anyway. I would like to get to the point where all the coal is extracted, but I am grateful for the support and the work done together. We need at some point to start thinking about the post-Thoresby period, because it will run out of coal in 2018. We should be planning for that event now, working together to make sure that the next generation—because we have missed one—has that ability to aspire.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

As a miner during the miners’ strike, I should perhaps declare an interest. Like my family, friends and colleagues in the coalfield communities and towns, I have a vested interest because we want to see justice and fairness after what happened all those years ago.

As a young man at the time, I was fairly naive and I honestly believed that the Government of the day, regardless of political persuasions, would tell the truth from the Dispatch Box. What was revealed when the Cabinet papers were released earlier this year was quite the opposite. It is not that miners did not believe or understand at the time that they were being conned by MacGregor and by Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the day. We knew that was the case. We knew, but it was good to have it confirmed in 2014. The Cabinet papers revealed something quite sinister—a Government controlling the police, insisting that the police move in against miners, insisting that the Army should be involved against miners, the likes of myself and other honourable colleagues here who worked in the coal industry. My father, my brothers, my friends, were all miners attacked by the police, yet the Government know that we were right. At the same time, Thatcher was prepared to bring the Army in against ordinary, hard-working people. What an absolute disgrace.

It was not really about economics. It was about an ideology and about destroying the coal mining industry and driving trade unionism off the face of Britain. That is what the dispute was all about. It was not an industrial dispute; it was a political dispute. As such, the miners who were arrested, incarcerated, fined or whatever should be given a complete amnesty. The whole fabric of the mining community was attacked; the heart of these communities was ripped out.

In the little time left, I want to focus on one point. Thatcher lied from that Dispatch Box. Cabinet Ministers lied from that Dispatch Box. Senior Ministers lied from that Dispatch Box. Never mind harking back and saying that somebody has died; we have a right to seek justice after a Government acted covertly, behind our backs, and deliberately misled parliamentarians and the communities they represented. We are entitled to ask for an apology.

We saw what happened in Orgreave, with the police deliberately attacking miners, but there were little Orgreaves all over the country. It was not happening only in south Yorkshire. We saw it in Ashington, where I lived; we saw it in Blythe; we saw it in Easington; we saw it all over the place where the police attacked ordinary hard-working people. Has anybody ever had someone spit in their face? I cannot say how bad it is. A policeman spat in my face, and I can tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I am never getting over that. I never will. I could take the punches and I could take the truncheons—things that were widespread during the miners’ strike. Let us have a quick look at what happened. I am not after any apologies.

[Mr Hain]

Members of the Metropolitan police who had been bussed down to Neath waved £50 notes at striking miners. The Government should have the courage to apologise now for the dastardly practice of criminalising the miners.

[Ian Lavery]

I fully agree with that, but, speaking for myself, I will not accept any apologies. I prefer to see those on the Tory Benches, the Government of the day, as the enemy within: it was not the miners but the Tories who were the real enemy within. We have three pits left. Let us get off our backsides and ensure, as soon as we possibly can, that they continue to operate, funded by state aid. Let us keep those pits working.

We need a full inquiry into the way in which the Government meddled. Their fingerprints were all over the operations of the police and the strategy of the National Coal Board during the miners’ strike. Let me say this as well. If the police had been taken to task during that dispute, we might, just might, not have seen what happened at Hillsborough, because the same police force had been at Orgeave, under the same control.

We do not want any apologies. What we want is a full inquiry, so that those miners, who are now fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers, can sleep easy at night without being convicted. They should have been given medals for what they did in standing up for mining communities, instead of being criminalised.