Coal, community and the 1984-85 miners' strike | Amanda Powell | TEDxNantymoel

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What can the heartrending stories which emerge from the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike tell us about community today? That’s the question posed by award-winning journalist and author Amanda Powell in this moving talk, illustrated by her husband Richard Williams’ compelling archive photographs.
Through the powerful experiences of people her husband photographed at the time of the year-long strike, Amanda takes us on a journey into the history of coal-mining in the South Wales Valleys until its demise under the National Coal Board.
The memories and thoughts of these ex-miners and their families demonstrate the hardships they endured but also celebrate their hope as adversity drew people together. Amanda shares three powerful messages about how we could draw on this tumultuous period in Welsh and British history to strengthen our own communities today, wherever we might live. Award-winning writer Amanda Powell (amandapowellmedia.co.uk/) has a long career as a journalist and editor. Originally from a coalmining family in the Rhymney Valley, she became a graduate trainee at what was then Thomson Regional Newspapers and began her career as a junior reporter at the Glamorgan Gazette in the early 1980s. It was here she met her photographer husband Richard Williams where they covered events of the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike together in the valleys around Bridgend. Amanda then moved to the South Wales Argus in Newport and after that took up senior roles as a journalist, producer and editor at the BBC with 30 years in the news, sport and factual TV departments in Wales.
In recent years, Amanda returned to her roots in print as a feature writer for the Western Mail Saturday Magazine and has also co-authored a book of her husband’s photographs called "Coal and Community in Wales: Including Images of the Miners’ Strike" published by Y Lolfa in Spring 2024. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx

Опубликовано:

12 дек 2023

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Комментарии : 40

@briantheminer 6 месяцев назад

I’m in one of the stills at Garw, I worked with Jeff, a true legend

@amandapowell8876 5 месяцев назад

Couldn't agree more - very impressive that he was awarded an MBE in 2003 for the voluntary work he did in the years after the strike.

@carolewilliams3572 6 месяцев назад

One thing not shown, was the photograph of the death of the taxi driver, taking a working miner ( my husband ) to work.

@amandapowell8876 6 месяцев назад

That was truly terrible tragedy, my heartfelt condolences. I've written about what happened to your husband, but as you rightly point out, it's not covered in this talk.. There is so much more to tell that will be reflected during this 40th anniversary year.

@inghog666 4 месяца назад

Scab

@MarkHarrison733 2 месяца назад

@@inghog666 The strike was illegal.

@gavinwilliams3140 Месяц назад

@@inghog666that’s my fuvking DAD your talking about 🥊😡

@inghog666 Месяц назад

@@gavinwilliams3140 And your fuvking DAD was a scab or have I missed something ?

@williamlee9102 5 месяцев назад

.The world has changed a lot since 1984 , for the better or not I think the latter. Great speech.

@amandapowell8876 5 месяцев назад

Thank you!

@wotdoesthisbuttondo 5 месяцев назад

Does she make sure to avoid mentioning that labour closed much more mines than Thatcher?

@KeithWilliamMacHendry 5 месяцев назад

Completely irrelevant, there was no intention to replace the industry or manufacturing, the government at the behest of their corporate masters goal was to turn this island into a low wage low skill nation with an economy built on access to debt. Deskilling trades & increasingly relying on imported engineering skills. They can't build stuff anymore, ie; nuclear power stations & a whole range of engineering plant. Who are people like you kidding? Unbelievable!

@amandapowell8876 5 месяцев назад

'She' (i.e. me!) didn't go into the ins and outs of the politics in this talk - it would take more than 18 minutes - but that's in our book with a chapter about what happened when Thatcher came to Wales in June 1984.

@wotdoesthisbuttondo 5 месяцев назад

@@amandapowell8876Fair enough, i was a kid then and suffered the following strike this time with teachers, UK national strike 1985-7, we were put on a 2 day schoolweek to start with for 3 months when prelim studies started then periodically got told of "the next wave" over and over again which brought plenty de ja vu being periodically told that in 2 year lockdown lemme tell you. Our drama teacher burst into tears having to tell us of another "wave" profusely apologising saying a bunch of strangers turned up able to vote and swung it against the good teachers clearly hijacked probably by ex miners worming into the profession to "sacrifice us for the cause" as one put it. You can understand me having an extremely dim view of such politicised disruption dressed up as some "cause" by likes of Scargill.

@amandapowell8876 5 месяцев назад

@@wotdoesthisbuttondo There were certainly no winners :(

@MarkHarrison733 2 месяца назад

@@KeithWilliamMacHendry Labour introduced net zero and the Climate Change Act.

@OlafProt Месяц назад

The miners strike was a grinding, shocking, dreadful metaphor, for the reality of what Thatcher did to this entire country, top to bottom. And we're still paying the price, North, South, East or West. As someone that grew up in Surrey, we were taught that miners were the enemy. I knew nothing of what these communities went through, and the news and the government just made them out to be trouble makers, moaning union trouble makers. Having left Surrey in 1993, and I grew up, I now know how beyond horrendous this was, and the lies. You wouldn't treat dogs like these people were. I blame no-one but her, Thatcher, for the state this country is in now. This wasn't "just jobs / just industry / modernisation" this was entire communities, lives, ways of living. indefensible. Selling the country's soul and assets in its desperate desire to be America, and push capitalism. Now we're are on a road to nowhere. When its all out of living memory, when we're all long gone, I hope history's books actually see what that harridan of a Prime Minister, and her henchmen, did. The death of heavy industry took away pride, took away belonging, identity. Working for Tesco doesnt replace that.

@MarkHarrison733 23 дня назад

Two world wars and Lend-Lease caused deindustrialisation. Germany and the United States had surpassed Britain by 1890.

@MarkHarrison733 10 дней назад

Lord Kinnock confirmed in 1993 that Scargill was to blame for the closure of the coal mines.

@JamesRichards-mj9kw 6 месяцев назад

Coal mining should have been phased out during the 1960s.

@KeithWilliamMacHendry 5 месяцев назад

What would you have replaced it with? There was never any intention to reinvent manufacturing & raise the standard of education & make quality goods, everyone just wants to swanny about in a suit & tie & dink dink dink a keyboard. A nation of unskilled manual workers selling imported goods & continuously raising the national debt. Short term agendas whilst the corporate elites live wherever they want in the planet as nations states & communities or society itself means nothing to these wretched greedy people.

@JamesRichards-mj9kw 5 месяцев назад

@@KeithWilliamMacHendry People were not going to buy coal from the UK when they could buy it much more cheaply from elsewhere.

@philipmilner9638 5 месяцев назад

Both the miners and Mrs Thatcher were wrong in their aproach to the strike, many other people lost their jobs (especially in the service industries and village communities). If Mrs Thatcher had made it possible for other industries to move into the mining areas, the blow wouldn't have been half as bad. Arthur Scargill wanted a strike no matter what the cost or consequences to his union members. To prove his power.

@MarkHarrison733 5 месяцев назад

The self-described "Stalinist" Scargill destroyed the NUM by starting a fight he could not win.

@scarletharlot69 4 месяца назад

Thatcher was at the time Satan's Emissary on Earth.

@yorkshiremgtow1773 2 месяца назад

Why? For reducing the basic rate of income tax, leaving tens of millions of workers better-off?

@MarkHarrison733 5 месяцев назад

The coal industry in the UK had steadily declined from 1910 onwards. Twice as many coal mines had closed under the Soviet agent Wilson than under Thatcher.

@maxpowerii7368 Месяц назад

Twice as many mines but only 43% of mining jobs. 80% of mining jobs were lost under Thatcher and in the years of Tory rule since UK mining continued to decline and now pretty much entirely dead. Why would any union agree to further jobs loses only 10 years after agreeing to significant mine closes and job losses under the Labour government? Your own point makes it clear it was about Thatcher deliberately antagonising trade unions for political campaigning reasons.

@MarkHarrison733 Месяц назад

@@maxpowerii7368 Coal mining should have been phased out during the 1960s.

@maxpowerii7368 Месяц назад

@@MarkHarrison733 and replaced by what exactly? the imported gas that is causing much of today’s present energy crisis you mean?

@MarkHarrison733 Месяц назад

@@maxpowerii7368 Once North Sea oil and gas were on tap it was over for mining. It's all about green energy now. Labour has publicly committed to increasing net zero.

@maxpowerii7368 Месяц назад

@@MarkHarrison733 not really. majority of natural gas consumed in UK is foreign import gas.

@ElJay2412 3 дня назад

There doesn't seem to be much mention here of the fact that the South wales coalfield voted against strike action. they were not in favour of going on strike to support Yorkshire for a variety of reasons, and were actually brought out by devious means by people such as Kim Howells- unelected characters working at the heart of the NUM- although who exactly he was working for has never been properly established. The strike was doomed from the moment that Scargill et al refused to hold a national ballot - in doing so they instantly lost the support of the TUC and the labour party. The so called scabs on here are simply people abiding by the results of a democratic decision, made in accordance with NUM rules. It is my opinion that the South wales miners were hung out to dry by the people at the top of the NUM, and used as pawns in the game of chess between 2 megalomaniacs- Scargill and Thatcher. It's mentioned here that the union was not aware of the amount of preparation the government had done before the strike- they were- but when the figures came back saying how much coal was stockpiled, Scargill refused to believe it, saying they were somehow fake.