The 1984-85 miners’ strike was a defining time for many people, marking the triumph of prime minister Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative government over mass collective action by workers as Britain made the painful transition industry, flying pickets and figures such as National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) president Arthur Scargill are largely unfamiliar for younger generations.
So how are museums and galleries marking the 30th anniversary of the miners’ strike, which started in March 1984, in a way that is meaningful to everyone?
Experience Barnsley is holding one of the most important exhibitions and is also running a year-long programme of events that will mirror the original timeline of the strike.
Coal Not Dole: Women Against Pit Closures, which opened last month and runs until 1 June, was developed by an all-female youth panel that was created specifically for the exhibition.
It tells the story of the women who set up soup kitchens, raised funds and joined the men on the picket line during the strike, as well as looking after their families.
Alternative welfare system
“The strike was 30 years ago and excludes a whole generation, so we wanted to bring together the two generations of women and gain new perspectives and give the women the opportunity to share stories and experiences,” says Barnsley.
Museums community heritage curator Jemma Conway. “It was important to us that we encouraged discussion about the strike, particularly for intergenerational learning.”
Many of the exhibition’s youth panel were interested in developing filmmaking skills, so they worked with a documentary filmmaker and animator.
They interviewed women who were on the picket lines, ran the soup kitchens, and operated a kind of alternative welfare system by collecting money and delivering food parcels.
“Many striking miners and their families lived in poverty for a year and it was a heartbreaking time,” Conway says. “Some of the women we interviewed found strong friendships through their activities during the strike and felt that they were ‘liberated’.
"It was important for us to work closely with the NUM, women and trade unions to tell these stories in the gallery to those visitors who may have no memory of the miners’ strike.”
Community scars
Rowan Brown, the director of the National Mining Museum Scotland, is also concerned about how organisations such as hers stay relevant when there are a handful of UK mines still open and fewer people who remember when coal was a major industry.
“There are still a huge amount of scars in post-mining communities, which need to be healed, plus open-cast mining is still a going concern – we have a new site opening up less than seven miles away,” Brown says.
“Much of the independence debate is predicated on our energy portfolio and 40% of UK electricity still comes from coal-powered power stations, it’s just that we import 75% of it now.”
Last year the National Mining Museum Scotland opened a memorial centre as a place to remember the victims of the industry, but also to help people understand mining (see box overleaf).
Others have chosen to look at coalmining and the 1984-85 strike through the eyes of artists. The AV Festival of international art, music and film took place in north-east England last month under the theme of Extraction.
As well as projects covering everything from neolithic rock to glacial erosion, a number of artists examined the legacy of industries such as coalmining.
AV Festival director/curator Rebecca Shatwell says the Extraction theme allowed the event to have a dialogue with the region but also positioned it internationally, with artists able to address issues such as the global exploitation of material resources.
For the AV Festival, Lara Almarcegui focused on the last coal extraction and surface mining in Newcastle city centre, while Rossella Biscotti and Kevin van Braak recast a bronze statue of a famous Russian coalminer, Alexey Stakhanov, as part of their ongoing work transforming figurative socialist sculptures into minimalist objects.
Environmental awareness
The project most explicitly linked to the 1984-85 miners’ strike was also the closing event of the AV Festival. This took place at Dunston Staiths, which was built on the river Tyne in 1893 to ship coal from the Durham coalfields.
The three-night event, which audiences watched from boats, saw industrial music group Test Dept create a living monument to the historic struggles of British miners.
The group, which got back together for the AV Festival after disbanding in 1997, collaborated with the South Wales Striking Miners Choir during the strike in 1984. Another project developed for the 30th anniversary of the strike is Song for Coal at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield.
This video commission by Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson, part of a collaboration with the National Coal Mining Museum for England, will explore the physical and cultural properties of coal, including its impact on climate change.
It will be screened in the autumn in the park’s newly restored St Bartholomew’s Chapel.
The impact that coalmining continues to have on the environment is largely absent from displays in heritage sites related to the industry.
Coalmining is still a massive global concern and contributes to deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and the pollution of soil and water. Addressing some of these concerns might be a way of making the issue relevant to younger audiences.
Gareth Hoskins, a lecturer in human geography at Aberystwyth University, believes that mining heritage sites, including coalmining museums, often conceal continuing inequality and ecological disaster.
“Wales is among the many nations that link a former era of mining-related economic boom to its collective character and national psyche,” he wrote in an article published recently in Planet magazine.
“Such heritage can foster social cohesion and community belonging but there is something more worrying at play, especially when the world’s mining memories become officially designated and made visitable.”
Hoskins says that most mining heritage sites are too celebratory and fail to acknowledge that mining continues elsewhere.
Selective memories
“Mining memories of coal in Wales are as selectively organised as the gold-mining memories of California and the diamond-mining memories of South Africa,” argues Hoskins.
“The celebration of each steers our attention away from the ecological and social damage that continues long after that formative period of discovery and initial boom.”
So what’s the answer? Hoskins believes that mining sites could be repositioned as sites of environmental conscience that tackle globalisation and climate change.
“They need to reset the clock – that storyline about being heroic and technologically innovative is programmed into their DNA,” he says. “You have to think about a completely different narrative arc.”
Coal Not Dole: the Miners’ Strike 1984/1985, a book of photographs by Michael Kerstgens, is published by Peperoni Books, €32, ISBN: 978-3-941825-61-1
Just after 8am on 14 October 1913, an explosion at the Senghenydd pit in Glamorgan, Wales, led to the deaths of 439 miners and a rescuer. It is still Britain’s worst mining disaster.
One hundred years after the event a memorial was unveiled to the men and boys who lost their lives. It joined the hundreds of other memorials that have been created by mining communities all over the UK to honour those who have died while working in this dangerous and dirty industry.
Last year the National Mining Museum Scotland opened the National Mining Memorial Centre, which provides a place to understand and commemorate the industry.
The facility was unveiled on 7 September, on the anniversary of the 1950 Knockshinnoch Castle Colliery disaster when 129 men were trapped underground for several days at the Ayrshire mine. A remarkable 116 were rescued although 13 died.
The centre features an area for ceremonies, a storytelling space and a learning centre where there are collections and archives. It also includes a photographic display of every mining memorial in the country.
“We are developing packages of interpretive media around each disaster so we can give them to schools and community groups,” says Rowan Brown, the director of the National Mining Museum Scotland.
“The memorial centre is also helping to connect with other coalmining communities in Scotland and providing a resource for them.”
The National Mining Museum for England’s main summer exhibition is focusing on the theme of memorials.
Courage, Camaraderie and Community (2 June–28 September) will include displays on how the miners’ contribution to the two world wars have been commemorated; disaster memorials; community memorials and celebrations, such as the Durham Gala; and the recent upsurge in communities celebrating their mining past.
So how are museums and galleries marking the 30th anniversary of the miners’ strike, which started in March 1984, in a way that is meaningful to everyone?
Experience Barnsley is holding one of the most important exhibitions and is also running a year-long programme of events that will mirror the original timeline of the strike.
Coal Not Dole: Women Against Pit Closures, which opened last month and runs until 1 June, was developed by an all-female youth panel that was created specifically for the exhibition.
It tells the story of the women who set up soup kitchens, raised funds and joined the men on the picket line during the strike, as well as looking after their families.
Alternative welfare system
“The strike was 30 years ago and excludes a whole generation, so we wanted to bring together the two generations of women and gain new perspectives and give the women the opportunity to share stories and experiences,” says Barnsley.
Museums community heritage curator Jemma Conway. “It was important to us that we encouraged discussion about the strike, particularly for intergenerational learning.”
Many of the exhibition’s youth panel were interested in developing filmmaking skills, so they worked with a documentary filmmaker and animator.
They interviewed women who were on the picket lines, ran the soup kitchens, and operated a kind of alternative welfare system by collecting money and delivering food parcels.
“Many striking miners and their families lived in poverty for a year and it was a heartbreaking time,” Conway says. “Some of the women we interviewed found strong friendships through their activities during the strike and felt that they were ‘liberated’.
"It was important for us to work closely with the NUM, women and trade unions to tell these stories in the gallery to those visitors who may have no memory of the miners’ strike.”
Community scars
Rowan Brown, the director of the National Mining Museum Scotland, is also concerned about how organisations such as hers stay relevant when there are a handful of UK mines still open and fewer people who remember when coal was a major industry.
“There are still a huge amount of scars in post-mining communities, which need to be healed, plus open-cast mining is still a going concern – we have a new site opening up less than seven miles away,” Brown says.
“Much of the independence debate is predicated on our energy portfolio and 40% of UK electricity still comes from coal-powered power stations, it’s just that we import 75% of it now.”
Last year the National Mining Museum Scotland opened a memorial centre as a place to remember the victims of the industry, but also to help people understand mining (see box overleaf).
Others have chosen to look at coalmining and the 1984-85 strike through the eyes of artists. The AV Festival of international art, music and film took place in north-east England last month under the theme of Extraction.
As well as projects covering everything from neolithic rock to glacial erosion, a number of artists examined the legacy of industries such as coalmining.
AV Festival director/curator Rebecca Shatwell says the Extraction theme allowed the event to have a dialogue with the region but also positioned it internationally, with artists able to address issues such as the global exploitation of material resources.
For the AV Festival, Lara Almarcegui focused on the last coal extraction and surface mining in Newcastle city centre, while Rossella Biscotti and Kevin van Braak recast a bronze statue of a famous Russian coalminer, Alexey Stakhanov, as part of their ongoing work transforming figurative socialist sculptures into minimalist objects.
Environmental awareness
The project most explicitly linked to the 1984-85 miners’ strike was also the closing event of the AV Festival. This took place at Dunston Staiths, which was built on the river Tyne in 1893 to ship coal from the Durham coalfields.
The three-night event, which audiences watched from boats, saw industrial music group Test Dept create a living monument to the historic struggles of British miners.
The group, which got back together for the AV Festival after disbanding in 1997, collaborated with the South Wales Striking Miners Choir during the strike in 1984. Another project developed for the 30th anniversary of the strike is Song for Coal at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield.
This video commission by Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson, part of a collaboration with the National Coal Mining Museum for England, will explore the physical and cultural properties of coal, including its impact on climate change.
It will be screened in the autumn in the park’s newly restored St Bartholomew’s Chapel.
The impact that coalmining continues to have on the environment is largely absent from displays in heritage sites related to the industry.
Coalmining is still a massive global concern and contributes to deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and the pollution of soil and water. Addressing some of these concerns might be a way of making the issue relevant to younger audiences.
Gareth Hoskins, a lecturer in human geography at Aberystwyth University, believes that mining heritage sites, including coalmining museums, often conceal continuing inequality and ecological disaster.
“Wales is among the many nations that link a former era of mining-related economic boom to its collective character and national psyche,” he wrote in an article published recently in Planet magazine.
“Such heritage can foster social cohesion and community belonging but there is something more worrying at play, especially when the world’s mining memories become officially designated and made visitable.”
Hoskins says that most mining heritage sites are too celebratory and fail to acknowledge that mining continues elsewhere.
Selective memories
“Mining memories of coal in Wales are as selectively organised as the gold-mining memories of California and the diamond-mining memories of South Africa,” argues Hoskins.
“The celebration of each steers our attention away from the ecological and social damage that continues long after that formative period of discovery and initial boom.”
So what’s the answer? Hoskins believes that mining sites could be repositioned as sites of environmental conscience that tackle globalisation and climate change.
“They need to reset the clock – that storyline about being heroic and technologically innovative is programmed into their DNA,” he says. “You have to think about a completely different narrative arc.”
Coal Not Dole: the Miners’ Strike 1984/1985, a book of photographs by Michael Kerstgens, is published by Peperoni Books, €32, ISBN: 978-3-941825-61-1
Memorials for Miners
Just after 8am on 14 October 1913, an explosion at the Senghenydd pit in Glamorgan, Wales, led to the deaths of 439 miners and a rescuer. It is still Britain’s worst mining disaster.
One hundred years after the event a memorial was unveiled to the men and boys who lost their lives. It joined the hundreds of other memorials that have been created by mining communities all over the UK to honour those who have died while working in this dangerous and dirty industry.
Last year the National Mining Museum Scotland opened the National Mining Memorial Centre, which provides a place to understand and commemorate the industry.
The facility was unveiled on 7 September, on the anniversary of the 1950 Knockshinnoch Castle Colliery disaster when 129 men were trapped underground for several days at the Ayrshire mine. A remarkable 116 were rescued although 13 died.
The centre features an area for ceremonies, a storytelling space and a learning centre where there are collections and archives. It also includes a photographic display of every mining memorial in the country.
“We are developing packages of interpretive media around each disaster so we can give them to schools and community groups,” says Rowan Brown, the director of the National Mining Museum Scotland.
“The memorial centre is also helping to connect with other coalmining communities in Scotland and providing a resource for them.”
The National Mining Museum for England’s main summer exhibition is focusing on the theme of memorials.
Courage, Camaraderie and Community (2 June–28 September) will include displays on how the miners’ contribution to the two world wars have been commemorated; disaster memorials; community memorials and celebrations, such as the Durham Gala; and the recent upsurge in communities celebrating their mining past.
