Coalfield Justice: The Miners’ Strike in Scotland

In 2022 veteran miners in Scotland won a collective pardon from the Scottish Parliament for convictions acquired during the 1984–85 miners’ strike. The Pardons Act recognised the distinct injustices facing Scottish strikers: twice as likely to be arrested as those in England and Wales and three times as likely to be sacked.

At this event Jim Phillips discusses his new book on the strike and its injustices, using thirty oral history testimonies from strike veterans and family members. They remembered the injustices of arrest, conviction and employment dismissal. They emphasised how the National Coal Board, police and courts operated as confederates of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, silencing union voice and closing pits deemed unprofitable, to maximise returns from intended privatisation. These testimonies were used in the successful campaign which secured the pardon.

Jim Phillips is Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow. He is the foremost expert on the miners’ strike in Scotland and has authored several books on the subject including Collieries, Communities and the Miners’ Strike in Scotland, 1984–85 (2012) and Scottish Coal Miners in the Twentieth Century (2019). He has researched and published widely on deindustrialisation and Scottish history.