Counting down to a poignant march: 40 years on from the end of the Miner's Strike
The countdown is on to the day when former miners will march again.
Huge interest has been shown in a Westoe event which is being planned for Sunday, March 2, and which will feature speakers including a former Wearmouth Colliery NUM lodge official.
Alan is the main speaker
Former pit workers - as well as many others who backed the strike - will first assemble at Mowbray Park in Westoe at 10.30am.
Then, they will march from 10.45am behind the Westoe Lodge banner with the Harton and Westoe Brass Band playing.
The parade will head to the old entrance to Westoe Colliery on Milner Street for 11am where the commemoration will include a speech by Durham Miners Association secretary Alan Mardghum who was a Wearmouth Colliery pit lodge official in Sunderland in 1984.
‘Quite a bit of interest’
Afterwards, there will be drinks and a finger buffet at Harton and Westoe Miners Welfare.
Ronnie Peterson is chairman of the Harton and Westoe Miners Heritage Group and he was a fitter at Westoe Colliery for 14 years.
He had previously worked at others pits in the Durham coalfield in a colliery career which lasted for 20 years.
He added: “There has been quite a bit of interest and Alan Mardghum will be the main speaker.”
Alan previously spoke to us as part of a documentary film, looking back on 40 years since the strike.
He told us at the time: “‘From the day we went back to work, I was not a happy bunny.”
Alan was among those who went out on strike. He was on the picket line, was arrested and jailed and had this to say about going back to work a year after it all started.
Out in protest at pit closures
‘It was a bitter pill to swallow. I felt dejected that we had not gone back on our terms.”
‘It was over with. We didn’t feel as if we had achieved our aims and objectives that we had started with 12 months previously. But there was great camaraderie.”
The miners’ strike started in Yorkshire in early March 1984 and within days half the country’s mineworkers had walked out in protest at pit closures.
Most of the UK’s 190,000 miners were soon embroiled in a daily routine of picketing outside collieries, most of which had ground to a halt.
The Miners Strike lasted for almost a year until March 1985. Share your memories of life back then by emailing [email protected]