On this day 20 years ago

[Kris]

I have a vivid image of my Dad watching the results of the miners vote on the telly (I think it was in the evening at some point).

The result was 98 to 91 in favour of returning to work, so ending over a year of the bitterest battle for workers rights that has been seen in my lifetime. I'd never seen my Dad cry before that day, and I've probably only seen him cry once since.

I was just wondering if anyone here had a viewpoint on that strike? If they are even old enough to remember it or, like me, were in a family directly linked to it?

I myself can look back at it and see it as a kind of adventure. I was only 7 years old when it started, and my memories are of going to soup kitchens and school for free meals, getting christmas presents donated by supporters, and specifically I remember one day trecking for miles with my Dad and his mate, looking for wood and coal lying around the side of the pit railway line. For someone of my age, I never understood why we were so poor or what the politics were, I just remember a community pulling together and fighting for one another, so, surreal as it is, I actually remember that time being a happy point in my life!

The Diary Of Kris Gormley, Aged 7-8.
xxx
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"fashioned by the blade of a world that doesn't care,
feeling so removed, drifting thru stealing air then...
pause and think about it, try to move and shift the pain, but it's there you feel it kicking and you scream and feel alive."

[Bev]

My family wasn't a 'mining family' but lived in a mining village... which turned to shit for for 10 years after they knocked down the mine and so made 20% of the poulation unemployed and deprived a load of kids of any jobs in the area in the future... I remember the strikes but wasn't old enought to have a 'viewpoint'm on what was going on.

I remember, when the Pit Head got demolished they below it up, and we all went up the fields at the back of my house to get a good view. You could see it from miles away just crumble, with no noise from that distance. And the whole landscape seemed to have changed afterwards.
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Scattershot Writing: www.jameseverington.blogspot.com