British Miners

Britain's most bitter industrial dispute of recent times started with the announcement that a Yorkshire pit at Cortonwood was to close. On 5 March 1984 miners all over Yorkshire walked out. The next day the unions would hear that Cortonwood was only the first in a wide-ranging programme of closures that would see 20 pits shut and 20,000 miners lose their jobs. The British mine strikes lasted a year, while the Thatcher government carried on its programme of closures according to plan.