The Miner's Strike and support groups: Selby

Selby in Yorkshire, known as the ‘super pit’, represented the last major development in the Britain coal industry, and one of the most ambitious deep mining projects in the world. It was among several pits supported by the Cambridge Miners' Support Group.

Started by the Labour Government of 1974 after the 1973 oil crisis, the Selby complex cost £100m, spanned 20 miles, and consisted of the five deep pits at North Selby, Ricall, Stillingfield, Whitemoor and Wistow all surfacing at Gascoigne Wood to feed electric power stations in the Aire valley.

Miners on strike in 1984 had migrated from pits all over the country to work at Selby, where investment in new technology augured well for the future and appeared to assure them of a job for life.

Marie Thompson, a resident of Cambridge, had grown up in a mining area in the West Riding, lived in the same street as miners, and come home from school each day on a bus filled with miners coming off their shift at the Roundwood Colliery.

Marie (pictured below looking at a newspaper clipping from the time) was particularly inspired by the courage of the women in Yorkshire when the strike broke out. Because of her Yorkshire roots she had wanted to support a Yorkshire pit. She and her friend, Cheryl Hodgson, who was the workplace representative for NALGO, decided to set up a miners’ families support fund in their office.

There was hardly a TUC-affiliated trade union during the strike which did not have members voluntarily organising collections for the miners at their individual places of work. NALGO (The National and Local Government Officers' Association which combined with two other unions to form Unison in 1993) was the largest of the white collar unions at the time.

When Marie and Cheryl made enquiries, they were put in touch with the Selby Miners’ Support Group by Lucy Munby. In August 1984, the Queen Edith’s ward of the Labour Party also started supporting Selby and from November collections of baby clothes were organised. The Cambridge Miners’ Support Group decided to split money between Selby and Gwent once the needs of Rainworth and Blidworth, the Group's 'adopted' pits in Nottinghamshire, had been met. It sent a total of £1,365 to Yorkshire.

In Cambridge, Marie and Cheryl collected from the staff in their office weekly as well as one-off payments from a small number of their workmates in the last four months of the strike.

The collection sheets show them raising £10 per week and sometimes far more. They also sent knitting wool for baby garments on at least one occasion. All the money collected was sent to Sandra Widdrington who lived at North Duffield near Selby. Sandra (pictured below on a visit to Cambridge) presented Marie and Cheryl with a glass goblet in thanks for their fundraising efforts.

Coal production from the rich seam at Selby reached its height in 1993-4 at 12 million tonnes. But the coal field ran into trouble after the privatisation of the coal industry in 1997, when what had been heralded as the country’s most advanced coalfield was faced with a combination of deteriorating geological conditions and falling coal prices. Closure was announced in 2002 and production finally came to an end in 2004.

Marie joined the Labour Party in 1985 as a direct result of her involvement in the Miners’ Strike and in 1986 became a City Councillor for Arbury Ward in Cambridge, where she still lives. She took a qualification in Women’s Studies from Ruskin College, Oxford, with a major project (dissertation) on the roles played by women in local government. She has proudly retained her glass goblet for over 30 years, as well as an exercise book and sheets that were provided by NALGO to record her weekly collections.