Michael Dugher
Main Page: Michael Dugher (Labour - Barnsley East)Coalfield Communities
Michael Dugher Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House acknowledges the economic legacy of the pit closure programme in coalfield communities across the United Kingdom; notes that the recent release of the relevant 1984 Cabinet papers showed that the Government at the time misled the public about the extent of its pit closure plans and sought to influence police tactics; recognises the regeneration of former coalfield areas over the last fifteen years, the good work of organisations such as the Coalfield Regeneration Trust, and the largest industrial injury settlement in legal history secured by the previous Government for former miners suffering from bronchitis and emphysema; further recognises the ongoing problems highlighted recently by the report produced by Sheffield Hallam University on The State of the Coalfields, which revealed that there are still significant problems for the majority of Britain’s coalfield communities, such as fewer jobs, lower business formation rates, higher unemployment rates, more people with serious health issues, higher numbers in receipt of welfare benefits and a struggling voluntary and community sector; and therefore calls for the continued regeneration and much needed support for coalfield communities as part of a wider programme to boost growth in Britain’s regions.
After 30 years under lock and key, the Cabinet papers and the Prime Minister’s private office correspondence, recently released under the 30-year rule, about the 1984 miners strike have exposed one of the darkest chapters in our history. Contrary to denial after denial from Conservative Ministers at the time and from the National Coal Board, the Cabinet papers show that the Government of the day did have a secret plan from as early as September 1983 to close 75 pits, run down capacity by 25 million tonnes and make 65,000 men redundant. Many people warned at the time that there was a secret plan, but it is no less shocking to see, in black and white, in official Cabinet papers, just how much the public were misled.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman apologise now to the British people for making out the Thatcher Government were the major closer of mines and the cause of lost jobs, given that the Labour Government in the ‘60s and ‘70s closed 129 more mines than the Thatcher Government and caused the loss of more than 30,000 excess jobs? Apologise now.
Michael Dugher
If the hon. Gentleman wants to come to Barnsley and across south Yorkshire—across the coalfields—and say that Labour closed all the pits, I say good luck with that. He is even more out of touch than we thought.
Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)
Let me explain to the hon. Gentleman what happened in the ‘60s. The then Government closed all the small inland pits and made the super-pits on the coast, and all the men working at the little pits went to work in the super-pits.
Michael Dugher
Of course my hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. The truth is that 43% of mining jobs did go in the 1960s as part of that consolidation, which was agreed by the National Coal Board and the unions ahead of Harold Wilson’s new plan for coal, which of course the Tories immediately cancelled. There is absolutely no comparison between the consolidation we saw in the immediate aftermath of the second world war and the complete destruction and decimation of the coal industry that we saw in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
One of the Cabinet documents was a record of a meeting the then Prime Minister held in Downing street on 15 September 1983. It states absolutely clearly that Mr MacGregor, the chairman of the NCB,
“had it in mind over the three years 1983-85 that a further 75 pits would be closed”.
The final paragraph of the document reads:
“It was agreed that no record of this meeting should be circulated.”
What a surprise.
We know that significant pressure was placed on the Home Secretary to step up police measures against striking miners to escalate the dispute, which again is something that is denied. Released documents from 14 March 1984 show that Ministers at the time pressured the Home Secretary to ensure that chief constables adopted
“a more vigorous interpretation of their duties.”
At the time, it was claimed that the police were acting entirely on their own constitutional independence—what a joke.
Earlier this year, the National Union of Mineworkers, led by the excellent General Secretary Chris Kitchen, produced an impressive report, drafted by Mr Nicky Stubbs, following months of forensic analysis of the recently released Cabinet papers. The report has brought even more disturbing details to light. It shows that Ministers were even prepared to override normal judicial processes, and ensure that local magistrate courts dealt with cases arising from the dispute in a much quicker fashion. It also outlines how Ministers conspired to cover up the extent of their plans for the mining industry. There are numerous quotations contained in the Cabinet papers. For example, one said:
“No other papers should be circulated for that meeting…and that discussion of coal strategy at the meeting should be avoided”.
It also asked
“how to arrange these meetings so that as little as possible of the more sensitive aspects”—
that will be the pit closure programme—
“is committed to paper.”
In addition, it was decided that instead of plans being written down, Ministers would give “a short oral briefing”. I am sure they did. Possibly the most shocking revelation from the Cabinet papers was that the Conservative Government of the day were willing to go so far as to declare a state of emergency and to deploy the Army against the miners to gain victory during the strike.
It is extraordinary to think that, all these years later, a British Government would seriously consider deploying British armed forces against their own people—ordinary, hard-working, decent, law-abiding, tax-paying, patriotic men who were guilty of nothing more than legally withdrawing their labour to defend their livelihood and to defend an industry that brought such great wealth to the country.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
Is not this one of the most desperate motions to come forward from the official Opposition? I am talking about attacking a Prime Minister who is 18 months dead and cannot defend herself. Is it not the case that this motion is not about the events of 30 years ago, but about trying to unite the Labour party around the desperate leadership of the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband)?
Michael Dugher
What is desperate is the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. Look at the wording of the motion. Around 5.5 million people live in the former coalfields. The anger about what happened in the 1980s still exists today. It just shows how completely out of touch the Government are.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
My hon. Friend will also know that, in the 1960s, the Labour Government had a plan which included not only moving people to bigger pits but bringing industry into the coalfields of North Durham. That did not happen. That was vindictive; it closed down communities, and communities such as mine are still suffering today.
Michael Dugher
As always, my hon. Friend brings to this place insight from his own constituency. Fundamentally, the Cabinet papers also show the true scale of the dishonesty in maintaining that the strike was about an industrial dispute based on economics, and it puts paid to the nonsense assertion at the time that Ministers were somehow neutral bystanders. The fact is that the Government of the day saw the strike in political terms. Far from Ministers being non-interventionist, they were in fact the micro-managers of this dispute.
One paper from a Downing street meeting shows that Mrs Thatcher told Ferdinand Mount, a senior policy adviser, that her Government should
“neglect no opportunity to erode trade union membership.”
In a paper prepared for Mrs Thatcher by the Downing street head of policy, the now right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), it was said that miners had a “revolutionary” strategy, and it urged the Prime Minister to return to her original plan of
“encouraging a war of attrition”
against the miners. That completely reinforces the view at the time that the Government of the day regarded the striking miners as—to use that most infamous of phrases—“the enemy within.”
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
I hope that the shadow Minister will recognise that one of the fundamentals of trade unionism is that the union is there to represent its members, that it has a ballot and that it acts upon the result of that ballot. One of the fundamental flaws in the NUM strategy was that it did not have a ballot, which divided the work force.
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.
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.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is right to mention Orgreave, but it was not the only place. In Mansfield, exactly the same thing happened when at the end of a peaceful demonstration police stormed into the crowds that were left, 45 people were locked up and were banned from picketing and that case fell apart. Up and down this country, the police rampaged through villages where people had a history of being peaceful, and men were locked up who should never have been locked up because they were deliberately attacked by police who were not even from that part of the world.
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.
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—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I am fed up with hearing the Whip, the Chair of the Education Committee and a Minister heckling constantly in this debate. We are pressed for time so—this goes for both sides—can we please listen to the debate and to the arguments being made, rather than shouting across the Chamber, which is what has been going on so far?
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.
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.
Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)
The CRT has done a tremendous amount of work. Was my hon. Friend as disappointed as I was when the issue was devolved to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly and the first thing they did was to cut the money?
Michael Dugher
My hon. Friend makes an extremely powerful point. I hope that people in Scotland are listening to this debate and understand the enormous contribution that the CRT has made across the whole country.
A lot more needs to be done. A recent report by Sheffield Hallam university on the state of the coalfields showed that there are still significant economic and social problems for the majority of coalfield communities. It states that since 2010 many voluntary community organisations in coalfield areas have been driven into crisis. Problems in coalfield communities include fewer jobs, higher unemployment rates, more people with serious health issues, and greater numbers of people in receipt of welfare benefits.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that Conservative Members have no idea whatsoever of the devastation they inflicted on these communities? They are doing it again, because they are cutting funds to local government, which means that the services that are very much needed in these communities cannot be provided, and people are not getting work either.
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.
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.