This week marks the 40th anniversary of the end of the miners' strike

On March 3, 1985 the strike, the biggest industrial action in modern Britain, formally ended, without an agreement.

National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) funds were running low and a special union conference was called.

Coalfield delegates narrowly voted to end the strike and miners returned to work from March 5.

The National Coal Board (NCB) closed 25 pits in the aftermath of the strike.

Arthur Scargill, NUM president during the industrial action, was against ending the strike and remained defiant 40 years later.

At a packed Hemsworth Miners’ Social Club in Fitzwilliam to mark the anniversary he told the Express he “would have continued fighting until the strike was won”.

Paying tribute to the role that women played in the strike, he quipped that if the Women Against Pit Closures had a vote the miners would “probably still be out there”.

Reflecting on the strike, NUM general secretary Chris Kitchen there was pride in the action the mineworkers took.

He said: “The main feeling was pride that we did everything we could do in 84-85 and things went against us.

“We stood up and fought for our industries and communities.

"There is a growing sense that we were right to do so and that has built up over the years with the release of cabinet papers from the government of the time.”

He said that there was now a greater understanding of the effect the strike had not only on the miners’ jobs at the time but on successive generations.

He said: “At the time it was our jobs and income. But despite attempts to replace those jobs since then the majority of replacements were in warehousing and not the same highly paid jobs.

“The people in the pits were not academically inclined. They were fit, healthy, strong lads, who could turn their hand to anything but they were more practical than academic, and we see there are no equivalent jobs of the same quality.

"Jobs that could have been there for our kids and grandkids were lost.”

He said there was some truth that communities were damaged as the industry declined but solidarity was still present in mining communities.

“Community spirit lives on even if the communities have been decimated,” he said.

The strike began March 5, 1984, when Yorkshire miners walked out after the NCB announced the closure of Cortonwood Colliery, near Barnsley.

Within days, half the country’s miners walked out in protest at pit closures, and soon most of the UK’s 190,000 pit workers were embroiled in a daily routine of picketing collieries.

Scores of pit closures followed in the years after the strike, including 31 in 1992.

Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire closed in December 2015. It was the last deep coal mine in the UK.

Andy Lock, chief executive of the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, said: “The challenges facing the former coalfields are not consigned to the history books, they exist today and action is needed now to create a brighter future for these communities.

“The former coalfields still have a wealth of untapped opportunity and if it is realised the coalfields can play their role in helping the whole country reach its full potential.”

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