Those who are for you and those against - naming the supporters and opponents of the national miners' strike.

Arthur Scargill, President of the National Union of Mineworkers, addresses the crowd at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester with a speech taking aim at the opponents of the miners' strike. These include the 'piranha fish' of the newspapers in Fleet Street, the financial institutions of the City of London, and the government of Margaret Thatcher. Special mention is made of Ian MacGregor, an American industrialist brought in to run the National Coal Board, the body running the coal mining industry. Scargill also praises the women of the mining communities for taking their rightful place alongside the men in the struggle but bemoans the patchy response from some quarters of the trade union movement for the miners' action.

On 6th March 1984, the National Coal Board announced that it intended to close 20 pits in Britain, the first being Cortonwood Colliery in South Yorkshire. This announcement was the catalyst for the miners' strike which lasted for a year. When Arthur Scargill, President of the National Union of Mineworkers, called for the strike against pit closures, there had been no national ballot of NUM members. This, some claimed, made the strike technically illegal. From the start, the industrial action was hard-fought, sometimes violent, and often bitterly divisive, as in Nottinghamshire, where some miners continued to work despite calls for solidarity. There was much support for the strikers within their own communities, with women setting up local action groups to provide food and other necessities for families facing real hardship. Elsewhere, miners from the South Wales collieries gave their full support, and the strike received international media coverage with Christmas presents for the children of striking miners being sent over from Europe. The country's coal stocks were high, however, and without strong support from other large trade unions, the strike could not continue indefinitely. On 3rd March 1985, the NUM's National Executive voted narrowly in favour of calling an end to the action. The miners returned to their workplaces, marching proudly behind their banners and with the support of their families. The failure of the strike was followed by a programme of pit closures carried out by the Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher, causing huge upheaval in mining areas where the coal industry had been the major source of employment for local workers. In these areas the effects of the miners' strike can still be felt today.