The moral economy of the Scottish industrial community: new perspectives on the 1984-5 miners’ strike

"This paper makes a contribution to debates about the economic framework of industrial politics by examining aspects of the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike in Britain, focusing on developments in Scotland. It focuses on the material and moral resources available to the strikers. The strike against pit closures is generally understood in terms of peak level relations between the Conservative government, the National Coal Board (NCB) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and the shifts in energy supply that decisively weakened the miners’ bargaining position. It is also often portrayed as a top-down imposition on the workforce and the industry by the ‘politically-motivated’ union leadership, and as a public order issue, with many arrests and prosecutions arising from the picketing of mines, steel works and other economic units."