'We had a community, now we don't': The Miners Strike changed a Greater Manchester village forever
05.03.2024 - 06:43
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
'Once a miner always a miner' reads the sign hung on the wall in Derek Doherty's living room. The 66-year-old was just a teenager when he followed his dad and grandad down the pit at Golborne Colliery in Wigan.
As an underground fitter he had a good job and a trade he could fall back on. But, 40 years ago this week, he would make a decision which would change his life forever.
On March 5, 1984, miners at Cortonwood Colliery near Barnsley, South Yorks, walked out in protest at the proposed closure of the pit. It was the start of the Miners Strike, the longest and most bitter industrial dispute in British history.
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The next day it was announced 20 pits were set for closure. Strikes were called at mines across Yorkshire, then, on March 12, NUM president Arthur Scargill called for national action, beginning nationwide walk-outs.
"It was about two or three days after [the miners walked out at Cortonwood] that the first picket arrived at Golborne," said Derek. "The pit was only a mile away from home so if it was nice I'd walk to work, but it was raining, so I drove.
"The pickets were from Yorkshire. I stopped the car and they asked me for my support. I said 'I'll not cross a picket line,' and that was that. I didn't go back to work for another 12 months."
At Golborne roughly two thirds of the 800 National Union of Mineworkers members walked out. But, across the Lancashire coalfield, an official ballot was held which saw the miners narrowly voting to stay in.
"We'd had two tastes of what the Tories were like in the