‘You’ll do what MacGregor couldn’t, you’ll shut the ‘Craig’: steelworkers, the NUM and the 1984–85 miners’ strike

Using oral history interviews with former Iron and Steel Trades<br/>Confederation (ISTC) activists, this article studies an important but<br/>often overlooked aspect of the 1984–85 miners strike, which was<br/>the relationship between the NUM and the ISTC. Both unions, and<br/>the NUR, were part of a triple industrial alliance and during the<br/>strike, the miners requested the ISTC reduce steelworks to safety<br/>level operation, to further pressurise the coal board and Thatcher<br/>government. Although supportive of the NUM and willing to provide<br/>financial aid, the ISTC refused this request. ISTC leaders at<br/>various levels misrepresented the NUM strategy and argued that<br/>it would threaten steelworkers’ own precarious industrial future.<br/>The oral histories reveal conflicted memories among ISTC activists.<br/>These memories document the contribution steelworkers made in<br/>support of the strike but also highlight a range of contradictory<br/>attitudes and recollections, including defensiveness, misrepresentation,<br/>and mis-memory on the central question of industrial action.<br/>The miners strike occupies a prominent place in labour history. The<br/>Left continues to lament the outcome as a milestone in the triumph<br/>of neoliberalism during and beyond the 1980s. The article concludes<br/>that it is this historical significance and outcome which<br/>underpins these difficult and contested memories.