“Who’d have thought we’d be doing this again?” Arthur Scargill said earlier this week, raising a laugh from the ex-miners standing in the picket line outside the National Coal Mining Museum.
Staff at the Wakefield museum, many of them former coalminers, have walked out in a dispute over pay, and were joined on Thursday by the now 87-year-old former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers.
Alongside him was Russ Kear, 60, who has worked as a guide at the museum since the UK’s last coalmine, Kellingley colliery, in North Yorkshire, closed in 2015. He began working as a miner at the age of 16, at Sharlston colliery, near Wakefield, before moving to Selby coalfield, and later, Kellingley.
He said many of the museum’s staff, particularly those who have gone on strike, are former miners.
“I’d say 99% of us, I suppose you could call us veterans of the ‘84-’85 [strike],” he said. “I’m one of the youngest, believe it or not, up at the Mining Museum.”
In the 1980s, Kear was living at home with his parents – his mother did not do paid work, and he walked out of the pits alongside his father, Fred, a fellow miner.
“It was horrible,” he said. “The Tory government managed to get some laws in very quickly that stopped my mum claiming any benefits, so there wasn’t a penny coming into our house.
“But everybody got together, the community got together. Soup kitchens were opened up, we could get one meal a day. Up at the miners’ welfare club, we could go up once a week and you got a carrier bag full of shopping.
“It really was horrible,” he added. “It really brought the community together, people helped each other out, but when they started shutting the mines, that destroyed communities.
“You’d have thought that was a strike to end all strikes, wouldn’t you?” he said. “Like the big war should have been the war to end all wars. But it hasn’t worked out that way.”
This strike is very different. “The last time, you’re up against the government that had big, deep pockets, and no matter what happened, you weren’t going to win,” he said.
This time, he hoped, the industrial action may be successful. “When we do want to retire, if [the job] isn’t a decent income, how’re they going to attract somebody else to do what we’re doing?” he asked.
About 40 members of the Unison union are in dispute with the museum’s management over pay. They say the existing offer – of a rise of 5% or 80p an hour, whichever is greater, for all workers – is less than the previous deal proposed by the union and which they believed would be accepted by management. But the museum said it was an “increased offer” on previous pay proposals and “equates to a 6% pay rise for many”.
The strike, which is due to last until 14 September, with further action planned if an agreement is not reached, has caused underground tours to be suspended, but the rest of the museum remains open.
“Workers only choose to strike as a last resort,” the Unison general secretary, Christina McAnea, said. “It’s unsurprising museum staff have reached that point when their employer has come back with an even worse pay offer.
“Managers should do the right thing and pay staff fairly so the public can continue to learn about this important part of the nation’s industrial heritage.”
“I don’t want to [strike], it’s not what I go there for,” Kear said. “I’m 60 years old, so I’m at the twilight of my working career. I don’t want to be doing this.
“This is a place where I really do like to go and share my heritage and my history, and I just don’t want to be doing it [striking].”
A spokesperson for the museum said the pay offer was higher than pay settlements in the public sector, including the police, schools and other museums.
“This increased offer was rejected by Unison,” they said. “The union refused to share our revised offer with their members to see if they wished to accept it.
“As a charitable organisation, the museum, which relies on external funding and donations, continues to face considerable financial pressures.”
The spokesperson said they hoped “Unison will reconsider their position”, adding that they “remain committed to working closely with union representatives in the hope of a resolution”.
