On 40th anniversary of UK miners’ strike, can Labour win back the north?
Al Jazeera
What caused the miners’ strike 40 years ago and why did ‘Red Wall’ communities turn against Labour in the last election?
It divided communities, split families and changed the face of a nation.
The 1984-85 United Kingdom miner’s strike, which kicked off 40 years ago this week, was an epoch-defining event in the social history of Britain as thousands of coal miners left their pits in protest against Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s drive to close collieries across northern England.
A year-long struggle would lead to the arrest of more than 11,000 miners and would cement Thatcher’s status as a hate figure among trade unionists and supporters of the left.
Five years ago, however, many of these former mining heartlands, once solidly of the Labour left, voted for the right-wing Conservative Party in droves, propelling then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to comprehensive victory in the 2019 British general election.
The so-called “Red Wall” – 45 constituencies in northern England and the English Midlands which had been held by Labour for generations – turned Conservative blue leading to Labour’s worst election result since 1935.
