As Conservative MP for Darlington, Michael Fallon became the North-East face of the Thatcher Government during the 1984-5 Miners’ strike. Twenty-five years later, he spoke to Mark Tallentire about “a very uncomfortable time.”

ASKED whether the miners’ defeat in the 1984-5 strike was, in the long term, of benefit to the North-East and its economy, Tory Michael Fallon takes a lengthy pause.

The 56-year-old MP has had 25 years to reflect on a period which saw him threatened and, on one occasion, assaulted.

Now Member of Parliament for the safe Conservative seat of Sevenoaks, in Kent, he could be forgiven for considering the strike a world away – but it is clear that his feelings remain raw.

“I don’t think you can say it was a positive move,” he concludes, finally.

“The price was too high for those who lost their jobs. It did enormous damage to social cohesion.”

Mr Fallon is now a prominent backbencher and deputy chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, a position which placed him at the centre of the Northern Rock affair and Parliamentary inquiries into the recent banking collapse.

Back in 1984, he was a 32- year-old MP with only a year’s experience and the most visible face of Thatcherism in the North-East.

Mr Fallon insists he remains a Thatcherite, but admits the strike was a big part of his political education.

“I learned a lot from the North-East – I was there ten years. I understood more fully the importance of cohesion in communities – the need, if you’re going to change a region, to build a consensus first – and that wasn’t there.

“The miners on strike were absolutely solid. They were very tough men, fighting for something they deeply believed in and I’ll never forget that.”

A Scots-born graduate of the University of St Andrews, Mr Fallon became MP for Darlington in June 1983, defeating Labour’s Ossie O’Brien by just over 2,400 votes. He held the seat until 1992.

But, he said, no one could have predicted the strife which would come during his first two years as MP.

“I don’t think anybody foresaw what was going to happen in the middle of 1984.

“It was a bitter period that divided communities right across the North, because there were those who wanted to go back to work and those who had to work.

“I was constantly defending the Government.

As one of the few Conservative MPs in the region I was always in the firing line.”

With the unenviable task of defending a Prime Minister deeply unpopular in a mining region, while trying to maintain constituency support, Mr Fallon had a difficult balance to achieve.

“The region didn’t feel its case was being understood,”

he said. “Mining was much more important to the region than it was to other regions.

“There was a real feeling that the collieries would all go – that all of them were vulnerable. It was seen as the region’s fight.

“I realised the North-East had to change. The region was too dependent on coal, steel, shipbuilding and heavy industry.

“I constantly urged ministers to help the region change. Bringing Nissan and the pharmaceutical companies in was part of that, but also small business formation lagged way behind the rest of the country.

“I emphasised it wasn’t enough to win the fight about coal subsidies. We had to show the Government was supporting the region in changing and paying for the necessary infrastructure.”

Mr Fallon was publicly critical of Durham County Council, which in May 1984 agreed to give £25,000 to the National Union of Mineworkers.

But what seems to have angered him as much was the idea that children should follow their fathers into the pits – an aspiration he insists had to be changed. I didn’t want people to follow their fathers down the mine, working lying on their back.

There had to be another way to earn a living.

“It was a very difficult time,” he recalls, “And, ultimately, very sad, because all the collieries did close.

“The mistake was not focusing on the pits that were going to be profitable.

The whole coalfield was lost by trying to defend every pit.”

He knew the legacy would be long-lasting, but prefers to highlight the development of the region since.

“I recall visiting Wearmouth Colliery a couple of years later, and the names of those who had worked through the strike were still scratched onto the work shafts. I spoke at Sunderland Polytechnic and was assaulted – I think because of the miners’ strike.

“But looking back, the region has changed. Some communities were devastated, but there are new industries, small businesses and enterprise. It was a catalyst for change, but, socially and politically, a very expensive catalyst.”

■ TOMORROW: “We were never Thatcher’s boot boys.”

– Lord Mackenzie.