The 1972 Miners Strike | Yorkshire Miners | industrial Action | This Week | 1972 

I remember my Dad being on strike in Teesside approx 72 , although he was not a miner he had great belief in the working mans rights etc , i will ALWAYS remember his words to my Mam " Betty i will NOT break this strike cos theyre treating men like shite" he was out for 7 weeks without a single penny coming into the house , we even burnt the back fence on the fire just to keep warm , men t like that and the one in the video are a rare breed to find nowadays , full respect to my Dad and the couple in the video

The video looks like it was filmed yesterday; excellent quality.

250000 miners on strike, now we have nothing

People seemed to treat each other better then.

Hard dirty job, but it paid the bills, it was all they had, these people got old before ther time, good honest grafters.

Yessss ThamesTV more like this!

I can barely comprehend that this was a mere 50 years ago. Easily within the living memory of a huge number of people. It feels like centuries ago in how different everything was.

3:00 disagreement vocal but reasonable and within the law. Just a better community spirit back then.

I can’t imagine how difficult being a miner would be, you don’t start getting paid until you are your work station, so you have to travel down without being paid. The work was really physical, dirty, dangerous and in hot and stuffy conditions.

Prophetic words at the end. Because of the defeat of the workers' movement in the 70s and 80s, the UK is now a workers' nightmare, with wages never lower, zero hour contracts and conditions never been worse meanwhile the bosses are getting fatter and richer like never before. But the workers are starting to wake up again that's why I'm optimistic. You can't get away with exploiting workers forever.

It's nice hearing the very young Peter Taylor in this!!! He is a fantastic journalist for the BBC.

Thanks for posting this.

Thanks for posting, good documentary which you wouldn't see the likes of on ITV nowadays.

That looked like mad frankie frazer in armthorp club, my dad stopped out the full year in 84 85 ,we pulled together as a family and got through it.

What brilliant reporting stays neutral, let's them say their piece, dosnt enforce his own opinion watching this is sad it brings home how are country has been taken from us and given away to the 3rd world

Reminds me of my granddad, he was an out of work lamplighter waiting for gas light to make a comeback. 😁

thank you for these vids thamestv....probably the most important source of english history at home for this period. and so much nicer to watch than the shite that is pedalled out as documentaries these days

Fascinating insight to life in 1972

Solidarity!

A lost industry and way of life

Would be interesting to see what happened to this guy, and how his life unfolded.

Loved the car chase best, especially when the Corvette nearly ploughs into the truck......oh sorry, wrong video.

Fantastic footage but I have mixed feelings about it. The working man can now have the cars, foreign holidays and luxury items that the miner craved but are we any happier? I’m not so sure.

"If you're fighting for something, if you believe in it, then you've got to go out and do something about it. That's all there is to it. If it's worth fighting for, that's it." Take notes kiddies.

6.07 bez off the Happy Monday’s.

"A government determined to hold down wages" - Same Old Tories, back in 1972. Nothing ever changes.

My late granddad was a miner and he said it was very hard hot dangerous underpaid work.

I worked down this pit for 10 years in the 70's knew lots of the people in it including Tommy. Knew the 2 pigeon fancier lads, went to school with the little one's brother, the pit manager's daughter was in my class through secondary school. Lived 400 yards from the pit gates. That brought back memories, brilliant. It was shit but something special, I sometimes have one of those dreams that seems real where I'm back down there, it scares the living daylights out of me. 😂😂😂

My father with all the other miners were told there was coal to be mined for three hundred years, that there would be jobs for them, their children, and their children’s children, the miners lived in strong, gritty, and a unified community. The pits were invested in back the 1970’s and 80’s, new collieries built, and the old ones redeveloped. Within a few years the tide turned, they were told the pits were being subsidised, had no future and would be closed, this was in the mid 80’s. Those communities degraded, many miners moved away, the communities became drug addled and the smaller satellite businesses struggled and closed. These satellite businesses was not just the local shops, it was the large engineering companies that built the machinery, wire rope manufacturers, office supplies that looked after both the Pits and engineering companies. This snowballing run through many industries, and affected more communities than that of just miners. It slaughtered British industry as a whole. Today you’re told that coal cannot be used because of pollution, this is absolute bullshit, the technology for the cleaning of pollutants is there. Power stations today are oil fired, reliant on the petro-chemicals industry, this wasn’t accidental, it was a greed and power play, just like the closing of post war railways when McAlpine “won” the contracts for road building.

I was listening to this not watching till past halfway- and it just did not make sense. I thought it was about 84 /85 Not 1972 / how things change 72 was about making things better 84/85 was just about surviving.

Who is singing dont go down the mine dad? I cant find it anywhere

Poor blighters.

How right they turned out to be

aye the candles in yer living room then i was 14 in 1972 power cuts

Very good to see the media covering these issues.

Interesting discussion with that scab lorry driver. I’m not sure I would have been so polite:

what an amazing young man what is his name

I think this was the pitt my grandad worked at before he, moved to Bettshanger pitt in Kent in 1949

One of my formative events was when in the family car driving back to London from Scotland, the M6 and M1 were both closed and we were diverted somewhere in Yorkshire and I was a young lad watching out the window the police kick the stuffing out of this one miner, I mean a proper six blokes full on kicking and that horrible sight never left me. It caused a massive row too in the car with my dad being anti-union and my mum being a mother of chapel for both the NUJ and SOGAT/Natsopa, horrible times :(

£30 a week in 1972 is £398 in 2021 It's just a bit less than I earn and I work in an office

5.50 I heard she made the big time voice of an absolute angel 🤣🤣 the miners had my respect part of my heritage awesome 👌

some heros on there, Tommy Mullanny, hatfield delegate and EC member and Sammy Thompson

Is that an older Bubble's from Trailer Park Boys driving that crane at 15.54? Probably pays more than stealing and repairing broken shopping trolleys LOL.

Much better intro

This is who the Labour Party used to represent, not anymore.

Did they win?

they lost just like 84

Fascinating to see an even handed treatment of the miners by Thames TV in 1972. I remember how skewed the reporting of the miners strike 10 years later was and cannot but think something happened to the press in the intervening period though I suppose it is possible that TTV were atypical in their approach.

This reminds me of the movie Billy Elliot ¿is this the same conflict that the one represented on the movie? Maybe not on the same period of time but may be the same context

Candles every night wind up radio and beano books and being starving my mam crying all the time and my Dad being on strike and on the picket line those were the days.

I had an uncle that worked there I went to Danum school just up the road happy days till they closed It

They worked in awful conditions 😩

No loo roll. Right lads all out! That's the way it was. Constant strike action.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee the owld days,it was better then mind.

i'm american my dad was in the uk back in the 70's he said alot of people there dressed like americans did in the 50's and looking at this i think he was right.

It was a Pyrrhic victory; they won in the short term, but lost in the long.

Oil, Coal makes these type of documentaries look so pre-historic along with the 1984 "Coal Wars" never mind referring to them as "Strikes"!!!!!!!!

Look at zero hour contracts town centres emptying. Many millions were unemployed in the 80s. They were only fighting for there lives and families

true

The best thing to ever happen to Britain was the closing down of the coal mines. It was rough for the miners, but burning coal for industry, home heating, and cooking was causing levels of pollution and health problems far in excess of the value of the coal mined. The North Sea oil and natural gas discoveries free Britain from a 19th century energy supply and moved it into the 20th century.

Did he say 30 pound in 72 . I thought it would be 150 to 200.

Fast forward to 2019 the 1970s has still left it's mark on this country, mainly sinkholes and lung disease.

15:53 / im stealing this as a meme

Yes hard Times

D O N C A S T E R.

Thatcher stockpiled coal at power stations BEFORE she picked a fight with the NUM... Premeditated and ruthless. To put balance on it Scargill was just as bad, he was offered a good deal and turned it down.

Proper folk

I never understood the miners strikes. They were striking for more money but got no pay while striking. They would never make the money they lost up again.

Very sad to see what the country has become today

Just like in the thames tv 1984/85 miners strike, everything was brown, grey and so dreary. Lack of colour and sunshine must've been so depressing. Unfortunately coal mining was a double edged sword, increased pay increased costs and ruined profitability, investment in technology modernised pits but at the cost of jobs, closures removed work safety hazards and environmental pollution but destroyed communities and livelihoods

The modern day bell man social media.

We miners NSW AUSTRALIA levied millions of dollers to UK miners , all lost In transit

Wild cat strikes.

The workers made a mistake. They were too English and believed too much in the idea of British decency. They should have taken up arms. Alas, they lost to better tactics and more sensible men.

Giz-a Job !..

AND ALL IS HISTORY, good was closed down , big drama but all is past

Proper grafters

Britain was still a developing country then like Russia is now!!!

These men were on the left, but they loved their country and believed in strong borders - they were patriotic. What would these men say about the current British hating Labour Party? You only know how valuable something is even it’s gone. We always thought the Labour Party would love Britain, but they turned their backs on our culture, heritage, customs, traditions, anthem and way of life.

Whatever the rights and wrongs and there were in my opinion as a right winger on both sides,it was probably inevitable that mines would close down and as we now see we have none or very little mining left. And in my opinion and I am not from a miners family though I live in an area where there was a coal mine the miners who lost their jobs did not get the care and help they should have got along with the communities that were devastated by pit closures.That is frankly a disgrace and something the country as a whole should be ashamed of.It is one thing shutting down industry but another in providing care and help to those affected.

The mine owners in WW2 were making money hand over fist , a numerous strikes occurred because of their attitude. miners wages were pitifully low despite the hardships of hewing 4 tons of coal per man per day. It was the public that supported the miners which ultimately led to post war nationalisation, and better conditions and better pay. Governments have/had too much power over the legitimate miners' grievances and most governments do not support the man in the street. Then Thatcher destroyed the mining industry rather than encouraging a very successful UK mining industry. Thatcher's shorted sighted political revenge, over the Heath government's defeat, was not financially logical nor sensible, or in the interests of the U.K. PLC. The government then rubbed salt in the wounds and wasted £10million on a state funeral for Thatcher, rather than building jobs, in the devastated parts of the UK. Her government was bent on pushing Britain back two centuries in cultural and social development and industrial relations . Investment in UK industry is needed, but instead the UK is importing cheap labour to keep the UK using old machinery compared to her competitors, forcing the UK working class on the dole. Enough globalisation, a new party that is genuinely interested in the UK population, rather than just profits and power is required. Even the UK's MPs have their noses in the trough and their heads in the sand, and are not entrepreneurially backing Britain. Remember it was the very rich Andrew Carnegie, who showed the way to cultural and social progress. He used his wealth to build schools and libraries. It was he who said if a rich man dies rich( instead of investing in the people) he dies disgraced. The wealthy nowadays display no such morality, nor any intention of investing in the country of their birth, are they therefore foreigners, who must be schooled where to put there investments?

Arthur scargill for pm

I was a police officer in the 1972 strike and I was there at Thorpe Marsh power station and several pits... I was spat on every day and pushed under the wheels of an articulated lorry... I kept the lights on in the hospitals ... I was 23 with 2 children... When the miners got violent, I preferred they did it at the end of a shift so I could get overtime while I processed them... We were based at Doncaster police station so we could be deployed quickly... Every day, I got home to North Yorkshire (30 miles each way), and showered all the spit off and changed my uniform...

And now there are no mines...

So what did the establishment do, .... Get rid of the mines no more miners no more strikes , it's how the bastards treat the working class.

Looking at old footage from 1972 because it's the last time we weren't in the EEC or EU!

Pip Pip Cheerio Bob’s your Uncle

People today would'nt live 2 fucking minutes in them days that's a fact

The mines were struggling to recruit enough people to become miners at this time, they couldn't get the new ones in and people were leaving the industry for higher paid jobs with better working conditions

The boss's got their way, husband and wife now have to go to work, which made labour cheaper, working people are slaves to big industry

My main regret in this life, was that thatcher didn't get it, when the hotel went up in Brighton, i was gutted, she hated normal working people having anything, like now the rich are bent on most people being in poverty and strife, they don't give a fk for the country or people.

the one dude smokin' with his kid's face right next to his. i imagine general knowledge about second hand smoke and its effects were pretty limited back in '72. or shall i say non-existent.

People complain about Fracking what about coal mining?

Armthorpe was quite a left wing area in terms of the NUM and elections. It even had communist members of the local council back in those days.

I empathize with struggling workers but picketing is illegal

no money but they always meet in the pub and have drinks and smoke

Closing the coal mines was a good thing.

The unions killed it all. greed.

Terrible time. Turned the working class against each other. People caught between standing for what they believed in or continue to try and keep and roof over their families and food on a table.

DIDN'T WIN DID YA ! ! ! ! The only winners were the police officers who got big fat wage packets with overtime ! Some of them paid their mortgages off early ... HAPPY DAYS xxxxx