When we were Miners - Book Launch

A book by Ian Isaac, published on March 5, 2010, (to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the ending of the 1984-85 miners’ strike).

Launch meetings:

Tuesday, March 2, 7pm, Railwaymens’ Club, Wind Street, Swansea SA1
Wednesday, March 3, 7pm, Chapter, Market Road, Cardiff CF5 1QE
Thursday, March 4, 7pm, Maesteg Workingmens’ Club, Temple Street, Maesteg CF34 9YY
Saturday, March 6, 11.30am, Afan Forest Park Visitors’ Centre, adjacent to South Wales Miners’ Museum, Cynonville SA13 3HG

All welcome

Ian Isaac is available for interview. Extracts from the book and further information at the website whenwewereminers.co.uk
Pictures from the book are available at the Flickr site
Se also: Twitter or blog

Background briefing

The miners’ strike of 1984-85 was a pivotal moment in Welsh history that changed the character and outlook of valley communities irreversibly. Ian Isaac was in the frontline of that epic and bitter struggle to retain the mining industry and to save valley communities from destruction.

Ian Isaac recalls in When we were Miners what it was like to be an area leader of the South Wales Miners before, during and after the strike. He recalls the battles during that period from his position as a member of the South Wales National Union of Miners executive from 1983 to 1988, and as lodge secretary of St John’s Lodge NUM in Maesteg from 1978 to 1986.

The book recounts the build-up to the 1984-85 strike, the colossal struggles, solidarity and humour of the miners and their communities during the strike, and the enduring bitterness that the defeat of the strike brought, along with a devastating economic and social aftermath in the vastly changed world of the former mining communities.

Ian Isaac stood for President of the South Wales NUM with the support of his lodge at the same time as conducting a high profile campaign to keep St John’s colliery open in 1985. Ian worked in the mining industry for 15 years from 1974 to 1989. He was one of the youngest ever full-time officers in the NUM becoming full time paid NUM Lodge Secretary at the age of 26 and NUM Area Executive Council member at 31.

The book is also a well-researched history of the mining industry and the struggle for leadership within the mining unions in the South Wales and British coalfields over decades.

Using original archive material and his own personal papers, Ian describes the political interference in the mining industry dating back to Victorian times, to the post-war struggles to establish a nationalised mining industry.

He chronicles how the industry was run down by successive Tory and Labour governments, until it became a ‘profitable’ rump industry ripe for privatisation.

Ian also shows how the social impact of the industry’s run-down was ignored, despite warnings from eminent economists such as the late Andrew Glyn, of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

The account also praises the stand of the Tower miners, while putting the survival of the mine within the political and economic context of the time.

The book, which has more than 70,000 words in 180 pages packed with pictures and illustrations, explores a number of key themes.

Part one looks at 1974 to 1984 - the ten years preparing for battle and explains the background to the dispute and issues facing miners in their daily working lives.

The second part recalls the monumental battle of the 1984 strike and the meticulous organisation that went into it by NUM members, organising picketing and negotiating agreements with companies and other unions during it.

The final part, from 1985 to 1989 looks at the campaign to Keep Mining in Maesteg. It covers the strenuous campaign by rank-and-file miners in Wales to return Arthur Scargill as NUM President at a time when there had been a complete turn to the right by the South Miners Executive in 1987. During this time Ian had been exiled to a methane drainage plant until he was victimised and left the industry in 1989.