The Miners` Strike 1984-85

The Yate & District Labour History Group s approach to the year-long strike of the National Union of Mineworkers has three points of articulation. The first is Yate & District Heritage Centre s history of mining in the Yate area. The second is the ＂Readers Letters＂ pages of the Dursley Gazette, where payment for provision of policing the strike was the chief topic. The third topic is the activities of the Conservative Party s elite s discussion of future tactics following the Heath government s defeat by the miners in 1974. The dialectical systems theory used provides the framework holding the research together. The author was an apprenticed and operative plumber, later becoming a plumbing lecturer at Oxford College of Art, Technology and Commerce, before making the shift to sociology in the late 1960s. He then became a lecturer in sociology at Filton College, Bristol. He has been a Labour Party member since the 1970s.