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No regrets in new sharlston

Former NUM branch activist MICK APPLEYARD tells Peter Lazenby about how the strike affected his town - and why he and his comrades would do the same today

New Sharlston was a typical Yorkshire mining community located between Wakefield and Doncaster.

The pit was sunk in 1865. In 1984 it employed 1,000 miners.

The pithead gear dominated the skyline. The community thrived. The miners' welfare opposite the pit gates was a centre of organisation as well as social recreation.

Before the strike of 1984-5 there were nearly 60 pits and mining communities scattered across the huge Yorkshire coalfield, Britain's biggest. More than 50,000 miners and their families depended on the pits, and for every miner's job there were at least five in ancillary industries.

Each pit had a union branch and elected a delegate to the area council of Yorkshire Area of the National Union of Mineworkers.

When the confrontation came in 1984 with the announcement of the closure of Cortonwood colliery in South Yorkshire and four other pits, the delegates were called to a meeting of the area council in Yorkshire NUM's historic headquarters in Barnsley.

The chamber is steeped in more than 100 years of history. It has rows of maybe 200 seats, a reminder of the days when Yorkshire had that number of pits.

In this room momentous decisions have been made affecting the future not only of the mining industry in Yorkshire, but nationwide - and even the future of the country.

Its history can be felt, palpable, on entering the chamber.

The delegate from Cortonwood told the delegates that his pit was to be closed. He made an impassioned plea for action in support.

Every hand went up. The strike started the following Monday.

Among Sharlston's NUM union branch activists was Mick Appleyard, a 40-year-old miner and a communist.

He had suffered a long-term back injury underground, forcing him to take a surface job, and became the NUM rep for surface workers.

After the area council meeting the branch called a meeting of miners.

"It was a Saturday," he says. "We couldn't hold the meeting in the miners' welfare. It was nowhere near big enough.

"Nearly a thousand turned up. We had to have the meeting in a field. The union reps said we were on strike from Monday."

He has a treasured photograph of the meeting.

And the mood of the meeting?

"There were young lads there and they were champing at the bit. We took their names for picketing. They were the salt of the earth."

Early in the strike 12 carloads of Sharlston miners headed for a small pit in Lancashire which was said to be working.

Police were already surrounding militant coal fields with road blocks to turn back pickets. The convoy was stopped.

"We'd arranged our story," says Mick. "I told police that we were off to the funeral of an aunty of one of the lads. The copper went to the last car and asked where they were going. One of the lads said he was visiting his aunty in hospital.

The copper said: 'I've got bad news for you. She's died.'

"They turned us round and sent us back. But we got back in to Lancashire using back roads. Then when we got to the pit to picket they'd already come out."

Sharlston wasn't known as a particularly militant pit, but its miners were out solidly and their flying pickets suffered the same police brutality as thousands of other striking miners.

Early on in the strike it became clear that this was going to be a protracted struggle. The Thatcher government had axed state benefits available to workers on strike.

Single men - and there were many in the coalmining industry - received nothing.

And previously strikers received weekly income tax rebates because they were not earning. Tax rebates - money owed to striking miners - were withheld through new regulations withholding rebates until strike action ended.

The aim was simple, to starve strikers back to work.

These were just a couple of the Thatcher government's preparations in their war plan to take on and destroy the miners and their union.

The Sharlston miners and their families, along with more than 100,000 others nationwide, soon faced financial difficulties. It was then that support groups began to spring up in non-mining areas.

 

Sharlston was "adopted" by activists in the district of Aireborough in Leeds.

Aireborough is principally the towns of Yeadon and Guiseley, around 40 miles from Sharlston colliery. Aireborough had an active Labour Party branch which was the basis of the support group for Sharlston.

Contact with Sharlston already existed due to a link established during the 1974 strike. The nearby market town of Otley had a similar link. Teachers in Manchester sent a vanload of food to Sharlston every week.

Saturday collections involving Sharlston miners and support group volunteers were held in Yeadon High Street and in Otley. Yeadon had once been a thriving centre for the textile industry and at times a militant one. Most of the mills had gone, but the union roots remained.

After the weekly collection the Sharlston men would be bought a couple of pints at Yeadon Trades Hall, then taken to one of the supporters' homes for a roast dinner - something they did not get back at Sharlston.

There were benefit concerts at the Trades Hall. Over the course of the strike thousands of pounds were raised by the Aireborough support group, and of course the group was one of dozens, perhaps more than 100, across the country where similar solidarity action began spontaneously in the days and weeks after the needs of the miners and their families became clear.

Mick says: "There were Sharlston miners and their families who went to bed with full bellies thanks to the support groups."

When the strike ended the Sharlston miners marched back to work proudly behind their union branch banner.

Pit closures continued, but the future of Sharlston seemed secure. In the late '80s and early '90s the National Coal Board invested millions of pounds of taxpayers' money in opening up new coal reserves, millions of tons of them.

But when the Tories' final onslaught on the coalmining industry was unleashed in 1993, Sharlston was shut down, its 1,000 miners thrown onto the scrapheap, its community's economic base utterly destroyed.

One of the pithead wheels was salvaged, sliced in two and the pieces placed at either end of the road which runs through the now quiet village of Sharlston.

Dozens of other former mining communities in Yorkshire can be identified by pit wheel monuments, all that remains of their pits.

There were almost 60 mining communities in Yorkshire before the strike, and 180 nationwide.

Today Britain has three deep coalmines and around 1,200 miners. The country imports more than 40 million tons of coal a year.

Mick Appleyard, now 70, still lives in Sharlston.

He continues his commitment to the National Union of Mineworkers, advising former pitmen on benefit and pensions issues and winning compensation for industry-related health problems - and there are many.

Mick grieves the effect of closure on his community.

Sharlston's miners' welfare has been shut for years, and last week was vandalised. Opposite the welfare is the wasteland where the pit was.

"Sharlston is like any other mining community throughout Britain, from Fyfe to Kent - devastation," he said.

"The biggest industry in the coalfields now is drugs."

He's proud he fought though, and is still fighting, despite having his own health problems.

"I'd do it all again," he said. "If we hadn't gone back I'd still be out now."

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