UK Miners' Strike (1984–1985)
The UK miners' strike was a major industrial action affecting the British coal industry. It was a defining moment in British industrial relations, and its defeat significantly weakened the British trade union movement. It was also seen as a major political victory for Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party. The strike became a symbolic struggle, since the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was one of the strongest unions in the country, viewed by many, including Conservatives in power, as having brought down the Heath government in the union's 1974 strike. The later strike ended with the miners' defeat and the Thatcher government able to consolidate its fiscally conservative programme. The political power of the NUM was broken permanently. Ten deaths resulted from events around the strike: six picketers, three teenagers searching for coal, and a taxi driver taking a non-striking miner to work.
Read more about UK Miners' Strike (1984–1985): Background, Sequence of Major Events, Variation in Observing The Strike, Mining and Mining Communities After The Strike
Famous quotes containing the word strike:
“There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root of the matter at once,—for the root is faith,—I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)