On the 25th anniversary of the day that the National Union of Mineworkers declared a national strike, North-East union leader Dave Hopper tells Mark Summers that he is still angry.

DESPITE the passage of a quarter of a century, Dave Hopper says he is still angry and bitter about the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike.

Now the secretary of the North-East National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), in 1984 he was the union’s branch secretary at Wearmouth Colliery, in Sunderland.

He believes that the miners, who were defending their livelihoods, their communities and their futures, found themselves up against the full power of a British state that had set out to neutralise their power.

“Basically, it wasn’t just an industrial dispute, it was an ideological battle,’’ he says.

“I think the Government under Thatcher really were determined to smash the union because of the grip it had on the industry.

“They were prepared to close every pit in the country to achieve that objective. It wasn’t about closing uneconomic pits – that’s a pack of lies.”

He cites the incident in which BBC news footage of the Battle of Orgreave was edited to give the impression that mounted police charged pickets after coming under a hail of stones, when in fact the charge provoked the missile- throwing.

The corporation later blamed a mistake made in the “haste” of editing, but Mr Hopper says: “I’m sure the BBC only did it under instruction.’’ He also says that smear stories about NUM leader Arthur Scargill paying off his mortgage with money from Libyan dictator Colonel Gadaffi were found to be baseless.

He said: “There wasn’t a ha’porth of truth in it, but if you run a story long enough people start to believe it.

“It was a propaganda exercise and it worked. People did believe it.

“You were getting followed, you were having your phone tapped.

“Police were arresting miners willy-nilly: walk past a pit and you could be picked up.”

Support for the miners came from all parts of the country and from trade unionists overseas. French miners sent lorry-loads of toys at Christmas to bring some cheer for the children of striking pit villages.

But Mr Hopper says one of the biggest disappointments was the lack of backing from the TUC and the Labour Party.

He said: “There were a lot of people who should have been supporting us but didn’t support us.”

He still believes the miners were right to strike and that Mr Scargill provided the strong leadership that was needed for the fight.

“The industry had been cut back and cut back,” he said.

“By 1984, it was time to stand and fight. It was a fight to the death, it wasn’t a normal dispute. The country was under siege.”

He believes that Mrs Thatcher’s legacy for the many former mining communities that have struggled to recover from the loss of their economic reason to be is unemployment, despair and, for some, drink or drugs.

“She did more damage to our communities and people than the Luftwaffe,” he said.

“You look around our area now and there are not a lot of meaningful jobs, jobs that give people dignity and with which they can build up a family, buy a home and have security.”

He also thinks that the defeat of union of power and the free-market reforms started by the Tory governments, but continued by the Blair and Brown administrations, have led to the meltdown of an unregulated banking system and a deep, painful recession.

He said: “Twenty-five years on, and I am probably more bitter because of the lies and deceit and the way they used the State against us.”