Coalfield Communities

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Dugher]

I completely agree. Should the NUM have had a ballot? Yes, it should. Would it have won a ballot? Yes, it certainly would have done. Let there be no mistake about that.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Michael Dugher]

I am not giving way because it will be totally pointless. Many Opposition Members wish to speak. Government Members might be rattling around a little, but there are many on the Opposition Benches who wish to speak, so I will make some progress.

The Cabinet papers demonstrate clearly that Mrs Thatcher’s aim was to defeat the miners and destroy the industry that employed them. Tory Ministers from that time have not learned a thing. The noble Lord Tebbit recently likened the miners strike to the Falklands war. Lord Tebbit actually compared the miners strike to the military invasion of sovereign British territory by a foreign enemy. What a modern-day insight into the mentality of Conservative Ministers in the 1980s.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Michael Dugher]

I am not giving way.

Earlier this year, Labour launched our Justice for the Coalfields campaign. This is about ensuring that we have proper transparency, properly acknowledging what happened in the past and getting to the truth. Without the truth there can be no justice and without justice there can be no reconciliation. The first step is for the House to acknowledge what the 1984 Cabinet papers spell out. Just like Saville and Hillsborough, we must face up to the failures of the past. We must acknowledge the truth and we must learn from what happened. The motion today provides that opportunity and I hope that all hon. Members will take it.

The Opposition have been clear that given that the Cabinet papers show that the public were misled about the plans for pit closures, there should be a formal apology for the Government’s actions during the strike. As for the revelations in the Cabinet papers, which show that the Government did try to influence police tactics, all the details of the interactions and communications between the Government and the police at the time of the strike should now be published.

Thirty years on, we still need a proper investigation into what happened at Orgreave. It was welcome that South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, but we are still no closer to an investigation. There are serious allegations that police officers assaulted miners at Orgreave, and then committed perjury and misconduct in public office and perverted the course of justice in the subsequent prosecution of 95 miners on riot charges, all of which collapsed in court. What happened at Orgreave was not just a black day for south Yorkshire, it was a black day for this country. It is indefensible and completely shameful that there is still no investigation and the whole truth has yet to come out.

[Michael Dugher]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, born, I know, of his close personal experience. That is why we have said that we can see from the Cabinet papers that there clearly was pressure to influence police tactics. We have said, “Why do not the Government just come clean and publish all the communications between Ministers and the police at the time and clear all this up once and for all?”

What happened at Orgreave was a black day. It is indefensible that there is still no investigation, and frankly, the IPCC needs to get its act together. Opposition Members have said that if the Government cannot or will not undertake a proper investigation, they should consider initiating a swift, independent review, along the lines of the Ellison review.

As I have mentioned, the Thatcher Government’s policy chief at the time was the right hon. Member for Wokingham. In his tribute to Lady Thatcher in the House last April, he argued that all the Government had tried to do in the 1980s was modernise the industry. But the industry was not modernised or consolidated; it was completely decimated. What we saw was a systematic attempt to destroy an entire industry and an entire way of life.

What is the legacy of that? Today only three deep-pit coal mines remain open in the UK, out of the 170 in operation in 1984. Coal production is falling. It fell by 25% between 2012 and 2013, to an all-time low of 13 million tonnes. The future of Thoresby and Kellingley coal mines has now been in limbo for many months, which raises further concerns about energy security. We urgently need clarity from the Government on whether they plan to provide state aid.

[Andrew Bridgen]

rose—

[Michael Dugher]

The hon. Gentleman can jump up and down to his heart’s content, but I have already made it quite clear that I will not give way.

Following the strike, many coalfield communities were knocked to their knees, and they have been struggling to get back up ever since. When the pits closed, a whole way of life disappeared virtually overnight. It is impossible to over-estimate the trauma that caused. The entire economic system that supported those pit villages, and most of the social infrastructure, was gone. After their so-called victory over the miners was secured, the Government simply walked way, with no transition plan in place and nothing for the people in the communities they had destroyed. [Interruption.] Just take the example of Grimethorpe in my constituency—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) is still at it. He can come to Grimethorpe any day of the week if he likes—

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Dugher]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will repeat my invitation to the hon. Gentleman: he is welcome to come with me to Grimethorpe any time he chooses—I can guarantee him an interesting welcome—and share some of his views on the strike and the pit closures programme. It would certainly be an interesting meeting.

[Andrew Bridgen]

rose—

[Michael Dugher]

I am absolutely not giving way, and that is the last time I will say that to the hon. Gentleman. I can think of nothing that he could bring to these proceedings.

Within a year of its pit closing, Grimethorpe—the setting for the village of Grimley in the classic film “Brassed Off”—was officially listed by the EU as the poorest village in England, and among the most hard up in the whole of Europe. Crime increased from 30% below the national average to 20% above it. The 1981 census recorded 44% of Grimethorpe’s population working as miners. After the pit closed, unemployment was above 50% for almost the entire 1990s.

Of course, all that precipitated rocketing spending on social security benefits in the years after. Despite all the myths, the truth is that welfare dependency was central to Mrs Thatcher’s legacy in Britain. Even today, we are still dealing with first, second and third-generation unemployment. Some miners became self-employed. Others eventually got jobs, although usually far less rewarding, far less secure and far less well paid. Others simply moved away. Many never worked again.

Of course, there have been many improvements in recent years, thanks to regeneration funding from Europe, the efforts of many good local authorities and 13 years of regeneration and investment under the previous Labour Government. Over a 10-year period, from 2000 to 2010, the Government invested £1.5 billion in initiatives to support coalfield communities. The Coalfields Regeneration Trust is a great example of the good work that has been done. It has invested over £260 million over the past 15 years in projects that have made a positive difference to the lives of people in coalfield communities. The current Government have rightly continued to support the CRT, which delivers great services that help people gain new skills, achieve qualifications, find work, set up and grow new businesses and become more active in their communities. I pay tribute to people at the CRT, particularly Mr Peter McNestry, its chair, and Mick Clapham, one of my predecessors in this place and a brilliant lifelong champion of people in the coalfields.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Dugher]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

Let me take the example of my own borough. A report published in April 2014 by Barnsley council on jobs and business growth concluded that for all the progress made in recent years, Barnsley will need 45,000 new jobs to reach the average employment density for the country. It is clear that continued support is vital for all the 5.5 million people in Britain who live in former mining areas. By supporting this motion, we can send a clear message to them that we understand this and will give them the support they need.

[Andrew Bridgen]

rose—

[Michael Dugher]

I am definitely not giving way to the hon. Gentleman. If he wants to speak in the debate, he may be a fairly lonely voice on his Benches, but perhaps he could listen to the numerous Labour Members who will speak, which would certainly do him a power of good.

Those of us who lived through and grew up during the miners strike still feel a strong sense of injustice. That is certainly true for very many of my constituents in Barnsley in south Yorkshire. At the time of the strike, I was a boy living by the Yorkshire Main colliery in Edlington, then a pit village outside Doncaster. Members of my own family helped to sink that pit more than 100 years ago. In 1984, I had family and friends on strike. I remember, as a boy, proudly marching with miners from the Yorkshire Main on the day they went back to work in 1985. Like so many hon. Members far more closely involved than I was, I saw at first hand the impact the strike had, and, in particular, the impact of the pit closure programme. That sense of injustice endures today because of the failure to hold those in power to account, and because of the scars that still remain on the memories and on the landscapes of so many coalfield communities. Of course, we cannot undo the damage that was done, but we can shine a light on what happened, and we can promise to provide the necessary support still needed in coalfield communities up and down the country.

We should not forget what a massive contribution the coalfields made to our country. The communities that sprang up in the large pit villages and towns helped to sustain an industry that powered an industrial revolution which brought tremendous wealth to this country. Even by the mid-1980s, nearly 200,000 people were still employed in mining jobs, making a massive contribution to the country. Nor should we forget that many miners lost their lives, were badly injured while doing their job, or suffered debilitating illnesses later in life. That is why the previous Government secured a compensation settlement for former miners suffering from crippling bronchitis and emphysema—the largest industrial injury payout in legal history.

The sacrifices made by those who worked in the industry came home to me very recently when I visited the national mining memorial at Senghenydd with my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David). That was the site of the worst mining disaster in Britain, where, 101 years ago almost to the day, 439 miners—men and boys—together with one rescuer, were killed. This followed the previous worst ever disaster nearly 50 years before in Barnsley, when 361 miners and 27 rescuers died in 1866 in two separate explosions at the Oaks pit near Stairfoot in my constituency. It is right that we properly honour all those who died.

I think today about the immeasurable contribution that so many people made in the coal industry. There once was a time when the Labour Benches would have been full of ex-colliery workers; today there are but a distinguished few, yet they continue to bring great wisdom and an invaluable insight to the House of Commons.

I think today of my own constituents, many of whom worked in the pits, and I think about members of my own family, too. Frank Oleisky was a miner at the Yorkshire Main colliery who died in 1954 aged 47, not much older than I am today. He left a wife and six children. One of his sons went to work at the pit and was on strike in 1984. One of his daughters is my grandmother and she is watching this debate today.

As a country, we cannot do enough to mark the huge contribution and sacrifice made by those who worked in the coal industry for so many decades, but we have a chance today to ensure a brighter future and justice for the coalfields. It will come too late—far too late—for many of the former miners and their families who lived through the strike and the pit closure programme that followed. However, after the truth was so brutally exposed in the recently released official Cabinet Papers from 1984, we owe it to them and to the people who live in the coalfields today to see that justice for the coalfields is finally granted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Hancock]

The irony is that I look forward to working with the hon. Gentleman to do what we can to do just that. He will know that the first thing that I did on taking this post was to ensure that Government funding was available on a commercial basis to tackle short-term cash shortages. We are now working on a proposition to go through the EU processes, which must, under the rules, come from the company. Whatever heat and light there is around this issue, I am working on those schemes. However, it must be done within the constraints of the EU state aid rules. I would be happy to work with the hon. Gentleman to do what we can to secure the future of the pits.

[Andrew Bridgen]

As a Member of this House who represents a coal mining community, the major conurbation of which is called Coalville, and whose grandfather was a coal miner, I am not surprised that the shadow Minister did not want to take my intervention. I witnessed the intimidation of miners who wanted to work in south Derbyshire, north-west Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire during the miners’ strike. I do not share the despondency of the shadow Minister. The latest figures show that my constituency of North West Leicestershire has the highest economic growth in the country at nearly 5% and that our unemployment rate is less than 2%.

[Matthew Hancock]

I shall come on to how best to support communities that used to have a large coal mining presence. In Yorkshire, unemployment has fallen by 30% over the past four years, going by the claimant count. That demonstrates that having a long-term economic plan is the best way to help communities get through these difficult times.

The transition of an economy that was dominated by outdated heavy industry into a modern service-based economy was necessary, and it has formed the basis of the nation’s current prosperity. That is not much disputed these days.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Hancock]

Unemployment in the hon. Lady’s constituency has fallen by 30% since the election. Next time she gets up she should mention that, rather than shouting across the Dispatch Box. In south Staffordshire, unemployment has fallen by 58% since 2010. It has fallen by 51% in south Derbyshire, and as I said earlier, by 30% in Yorkshire. That goes to show the central truth that the best way to help coalfield communities now is to have a strong and healthy economy, and we cannot do that unless we have an economic plan.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Will the Minister also congratulate businesses in North West Leicestershire around Coalville, where unemployment has fallen by 60% since 2010?

[Matthew Hancock]

I absolutely will. The long-term economic plan is clearly working for Coalville, as it is for south Staffordshire, Durham, Yorkshire and all over the country. [Interruption.] The more muttering I get from Opposition Members, the more I think we should repeat the fact that unemployment is falling in every region of the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to speak in this historic debate on justice for the coalfields campaign. It is clear from the Minister’s remarks that he simply does not understand that the scars from 1984-85 are still there and will not heal until all this is properly exposed. It is hard to fully measure the impact of Government actions on communities like mine in the 1980s and the years following. Those of us who lived through them were under no illusion at the time about the way in which the Government misled the public, vilified our people and attempted to politicise the police. It is good that a light is now being shone on this.

I am not attacking the police. I have been married to the constabulary for 30 years, but that does not mean that I am under any illusions about what the Thatcher Government did to try to politicise the police in this country in 1984.

My mother ran a miners support group in 1984. It was the forerunner of today’s Tory food banks. We supported 24 families throughout the strike. The miners we supported were good, honest, decent people who did not deserve what happened to them and their communities. They certainly did not deserve to be labelled the “enemy within” by the Prime Minister and other Ministers of the day. They were standing up for their communities, for their industry and for the dignity of the work that the Tory Government were taking away from them.

I support the call for an apology from Conservative Ministers for the secret pit closure plan and for even considering the deployment of the Army against the people of this country. I cannot actually believe that I am saying that the Government were considering deploying the Army against people who were doing nothing more than standing up for their communities.

I was elected to the House in 2010, and I have sat through a number of debates in the House in which I could not believe what I was hearing. I could not believe the way in which the Government behaved in relation to the Hillsborough tragedy, for example. I also could not believe what I was hearing as I sat through the Prime Minister’s statement on the death of Pat Finucane, a shameful episode that amounted to nothing less than state-sponsored murder. Now we are considering the Government’s behaviour in the period leading up to, and during, the miners’ strike.

We need to know exactly what went on between the Prime Minister’s office, MacGregor and the police in relation not only to Orgreave but to the hundreds of other state-sponsored illegal actions by the Government. I remember when my parents and my aunt and uncle set off from the north-east to travel to a brother’s funeral in Scunthorpe. They were turned back on the A1 by the police for no reason other than that my father was a trade unionist. They were dressed for a funeral, not for the picket line. As far as I am aware, my parents have never committed a crime. They have never been arrested and they do not have a criminal record, yet their movements were restricted because my father was a trade unionist. He was not even in the NUM.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Pat Glass]

I will not give way.

This happened not in Pinochet’s Chile or in South Africa during the apartheid regime; this happened in the 1980s in Thatcher’s Britain.

--- Later in debate ---

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

The hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) referred to miners as an honest, decent, hard-working group of people, and on that point she was absolutely right. Like most other Members who have spoken in the debate, I have a direct connection with this subject. I was the first person for generations on my mother’s side of the family who was not raised in a pit village. Except for one or two men who joined the Army, I was probably the first male in the family who was not a miner. Virtually all of them were.

I am happy to speak here for those miners who wanted to work during the strike, as many of my relatives did. Disgracefully, a lot of myths have been perpetuated today. It is interesting that not one Labour Member has mentioned Arthur Scargill. The tragedy for the miners was that they were disgracefully badly led by one man who felt that he had the right to run the country. He tried to bring down the Government in 1974 and tried again for a strike in the 1980s. He balloted his members three times and lost, then brought them out on strike anyway. He was absolutely hated by many miners, as well as by many in the Labour movement. It is an open secret that the leader of the Labour party at the time, Neil Kinnock, hated Arthur Scargill. Many people in the Labour movement hated him, and the reality is that he hated them. Labour Members are all trying to line themselves up as friends of the miners now, but the reality is that Arthur Scargill would have despised the new Labour party that sits in the Chamber today as much as he hated the Tories.

[Andrew Bridgen]

My hon. Friend rightly gives the other perspective to this sad story of our country’s history: that of the areas where the miners wanted to work and the intimidation they faced, which split our communities in half. The Labour party has always supported the right to work, but what about the right to work at that time of miners who wanted to go down the pit and did not want to join the strike? How about respecting that?

[David T. C. Davies]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, because one third of the miners continued to work throughout that strike and many more would have done so had they been able to. Of course it was not just the mining union and the miners themselves who were split on this; the whole trade union movement was split on it. The steelworkers did not particularly want the strike to go ahead and the shipworkers’ unions were not in favour of it; they were all happy to turn a blind eye to coal that was still being pulled out of the ground, and they knew that they had to, because if the steel furnaces had been allowed to run down, it would not just have been miners who lost their jobs but thousands of steelworkers. But none of that was important to Arthur Scargill; he was more than happy to risk the jobs of thousands of other working people, as well as those of the miners, to try to impose his will on a democratically elected Government who had just won a very large majority.

The hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), along with many others, criticised the police and asked whether we had ever had someone spit in our face. I have had someone spit in my face, and I have also been in violent situations as a serving police officer. I know that emotions can run high and that there can be inappropriate behaviour when people are suffering extreme provocation. All those thousands of people who turned up at the Orgreave cokeworks—and had been badly led—had been taken there to stop people working, in order to prevent coke from being delivered to the steelworks. Had they succeeded, they would have destroyed thousands of jobs.