Travelling across the region you can find old remnants of our mining past.
Perhaps one of your grandparents will point at a now redeveloped area and say 'you know, there used to be a pit around here', making reference to the some 230 which were in operation across County Durham until the 1990s.
You'll nod, unable to picture an urbanised area filled with miners flooding the streets marked black from a day's work and heading to the working men's pub for a well-deserved pint. Now, it seems, it's a world away.
Other times you'll spot miners' cottages and sculptures of working pit men and boys static as time and our world moves around them, further away from our mining past - unaware that the industry they signify is rooted deep into the hearts and minds of each North East resident.
It is 40 years since the 1984 miners' strike began and whilst there are reminders of how the strikes affected our region through statues and buildings, there are a handful of pop-culture references including TV shows and movies which capture the heart of mining in the North East.
But first, how did it all begin?
The 1984 strike began early in the year, when Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced her plans to close 20 coal pits.
After this, poor working conditions and pay prompted miners started to strike to shut down the British coal industry as they desperately tried to prevent colliery closures.
Led by Arthur Scargill of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) against the National Coal Board (NCB), the strike involved nearly 150,000 mine workers in an attempt to prevent colliery closures.
Smash hit film and later musical Billy Elliot is one pop culture reference that has become renowned for its depiction of life during the strike in the North East.
Set in the fictional Everington during the 1984 strike, (thought to be based on mining communities in Easington and Seaham) young Billy Elliot gains an interest in dancing and ballet after he spots a group dancing in the gym where he was sent to learn boxing.
Whilst the film is focused on Billy and the discovery of his gift for dance, the film is littered with references and signifiers of the strike and the way it affected local people.
Billy’s world is inherently within the world of the strike – he walks obliviously beside posters which scream ‘Strike Now’, officers patrol with riot gear often unnoticed in long shots and his father and brother argue about their work at the local pit.
“The whole world will be on that picket line this morning”, says Billy’s brother Tony in the first few minutes of film which almost immediately cements the world of these characters and in such few words brings importance to the 1984 strike and how the community responded.
Later, a montage set to smash hit London Calling by The Clash depicts officers chasing down and clashing with strikers through the streets, rushing through houses.
Perhaps one of the most interesting depictions of the 1984 strike in Billy Elliot is that it is seen through a child’s eyes.
The violence and struggle between officers and strikers are depicted in the film yet the hardships of the miners are not explored to give as well a rounded narrative of what the strikers were like for those striking themselves.
It is, after all, all about Billy and his journey.
A more raw and sober telling of the 1984 strike can be found in Ken Loach’s 1984 documentary Which Side Are You On?
Deemed too politically partial for The South Bank Show, Loach’s film was finally shown on Channel 4 on January 9, 1985, and delves into striking communities from Durham, Yorkshire and Wales.
A solemn, North East narrator reads “Black, eerie, cold and empty – that’s how she’ll always be. Cold, bleak and neglected miles beneath the sea.
“The silent still cold faces, machines no longer in use. The timbers bending with weight, the girders working loose. Maybe the ghosts of men lost in the bowels of the earth through trying to make a future but now what is it worth?
“All for the sake of money, it is gone and closed for good, leaving behind the misery, just like they knew it would.”
Later shots come from meetings in town halls, chats between women in their own homes confessing their sobering reality down to how the strikes affected day-to-day life.
You see families confessing that they struggle to feed their children, striking miners lining up for food in Easington Colliery’s kitchen speaking of their worries, fears, their anxiety over whether they would be able to eat.
A woman reads: “Mummy, I need new clothes. How will I get them? Nobody knows.”
Further into the documentary comes Easington’s ‘black Friday’ – August 24, 1984.
Horden, Easington and the colliery itself were cordoned off by police according to accounts from Loach’s film. “I have never seen anything like it in my life”, one woman recalled.
Video footage depicts the hoard of officers clashing with strikers, black and white photographs of men being arrested as the muffled sounds of disagreement cloud the background.
“It’s a police state”, one miner points to a car park, claiming that police went in and ‘incited’ a peaceful picket to violence.
Recommended:
- How Keith Pattison got his photographs from the Miners' Strike
- Miners' Strike 1984 - Durham women behind the miners
- How the Miners' Strike unfolded 40 years ago in Durham
It’s easy to see now that 40 years on the communities, struggles, minds and thoughts of those who lived through the 1984 strikes lives on in the film world, their deepest desires and worries for their livelihoods endure.
So, although we walk about the North East often oblivious to the ghost of mining past that arguably lives in a bygone generation, the legacy of miners and the strike they fought for will never be extinguished.
Want to look at more? Here are just a few more pop culture references which are based on and encapsulate the feel and world of the 1984 strikes.
- Which Side Are You On? (1985) by Ken Loach
- Billy Elliott (2000)
- Brassed Off (1996)
- Our Friends In The North "1984" episode (1996)
- The Big Man (1990), starring Liam Neeson
- Pride (2014)
- Miners’ Strike: A Frontline Story (2024) - BBC
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