Davey Jones and Joe Green Memorial Lecture in Full:

 

Please can I express my thanks to Chris Kitchen and the executive of the National Union of Mineworkers for inviting me to speak here today.

 

It is an honour for me as the son, grandson and great grandson of a miner to be here with you today at the Davey Jones and Joe Green Memorial, as we remember two of our own who lost their lives in one of the greatest working class struggles for justice during the Miners’ Strike.

 

Their sacrifice is part of our long and proud history of working-class struggle, comrades standing in solidarity shoulder to shoulder, in the fight for dignity, for justice, for the right to shape at better future for our mining communities.

 

Davey Jones and Joe Green, like the thousands of miners who stood alongside them, embodied the values that have always defined our movement: solidarity, comradeship, and collective struggle.

 

Those values did not wither with the demise of the pits – they live on in every worker who refuses exploitation, in every community that refuses to be broken, and in every movement that rises to challenge injustice.

 

We owe it to them – and to all those giants, like Thomas Hepburn in the North East, who came before us – to carry the struggle forward.

 

It is right at this time of reflection 40 years on from the strike that we also honour the indomitable Women Against Pit Closures, and the countless women who stood shoulder to shoulder with the miners – promoting the cause, delivering solidarity, organising communities, and putting food on our families’ tables.

 

Without the leadership, commitment and organising skills of women like Ann Scargill and Betty Cook, the hardship of the strike could not have endured as long as it did.

 

The Miners’ Strike was never merely an industrial dispute. It was a fight for survival, for our communities, and for the nature of soul of this country; its defeat did not just devastate coalfield communities and the trade union movement, but has left subsequent generations of workers trapped in low pay, insecure jobs, exploited by failing public services, declining high streets, absentee landlord and sky-high rents. All the while community assets vital to public well-being have been sold off to private interests at the expense of the common good.

 

The Miners Strike marked a watershed moment in society, a shift of power from working people and collective action, towards the interest of private capital and corporate profit. While we have seen policies pitched, proposed and even enacted which have at times improved conditions, we have failed to deliver the structural change which occurred in the 1980s, or before that by the great post war 1945 Attlee Labour Government.

 

I do not romanticise life in the mining communities. I was born into one myself, and I know that mining was more than an occupation, it was a way of life. The pit was at the heart of our villages, providing work, welfare, and a sense of belonging – the cement that held our society together. It was in those communities that the real, practical values of socialism were forged, not in books or pamphlets, but at the coalface, where solidarity was not a theory but a necessity. Where working people relied on one another, for their personal safety at work, looked after one another, and understood that only through unity could they survive.

 

Make no mistake, the destruction of the coal industry was not an accident. It was not about economics or efficiency. It was premeditated, a well-prepared deliberate act of political and social vandalism, carried out by Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party to break the power of working people.

 

The injustice included the 9,000 miners sacked during the strike. The 11,000 people arrested and charged under historic laws such as Riot or Unlawful Assembly.

 

My friend and constituent Ray Pattinson, who died just recently age 62, was one of the miners sacked and charged under the law of Unlawful Assembly, a law that can trace its origins back to 1328. After the Strike, the Government would abolish Unlawful Assembly, replacing it with the Public Order Act 1986.

 

The Government went to war with Miners during the strike, with assault, perjury, and misconduct in public office being rife.

 

I was 24 during the miners’ strike and saw how the Conservative Government tried to starve workers and their families into submission. I saw a police state on the streets of East Durham, intent on crushing miners fighting with all of their reserves of inner strength to protect their jobs and community.

 

The Government, courts, police, and national media were part of a criminal conspiracy deployed ruthlessly against working people in coalfield communities.

 

It is now 2025, and we still need the truth.

 

While Scotland has taken steps with the Mineworkers Pardons Bill, which was brought before Scottish parliament  by my friend Neil Findley, England and Wales are yet to act.

 

The policing of the strike was notorious, marked by perjury and fabricated evidence courts willingly accepted in the government’s war on miners.

 

Four decades later, it’s imperative that this Labour government honours its manifesto commitment to uncovering the truth about Orgreave, and in truth we need a full review of the policing of the entire miners’ strike.

 

We need justice for those wrongfully sacked, convicted and for the miners who have sadly passed away. They fought for future generations, and now, we must continue their fight for justice.

 

At its core, the Miners’ Strike was a battle for the very soul of this country, whether society should serve the interests of working people, or whether it should be subserviate to capital, corporate interest, and a political elite which desired profit and power, over the public good, welfare and social capital.

 

This was the defining industrial struggle of a generation, it was more than just an attack on trade unions, it was an assault on the communities, the industries, and the very fabric of working-class life in this country. The defeat of the miners’ was not just a battle lost; it marked the beginning of an economic and social regression that hollowed out entire towns, shattered local economies, and left a lasting scar on our society, which persists to this day.

 

Take a walk down our high streets

 

Once the heart of the community, filled with independent businesses, bakers, butchers, family-run shops, and thriving local enterprises, sustained by wages from an industry that provided stable, well-paid work.

 

Those same high streets are now in decline, charity shops and boarded-up empty properties replacing the butchers, bakers, and greengrocers that once served as pillars of local life.

 

When people are struggling from month to month, when wages barely cover the cost of living, when stable jobs with decent pay have been replaced by insecure, low-paid work, what money is left to spend in our local economies?

 

Decisions that dismantled industries, gutted communities, and left us with an economy that works for the few, not the many.

 

We see the legacy of Thatcher’s policies all around us – in our housing, transport, and utilities.

 

Council homes, once symbols of security for working people, were sold off under Right to Buy, now rented back to us by private landlords at extortionate rates. Whole streets owned by absentee landlords profiting from poverty.

 

Public transport, privatised and deregulated, leaves communities cut off – unreliable, expensive, and run for profit, not people.

 

Our utilities, sold off to private companies, extract wealth while pumping sewage into our rivers and driving bills ever higher.

 

The energy industry could have powered our future, but instead of investing in our resources, Thatcher’s government abandoned coal, leaving us dependent on foreign imports and rising global prices.

 

None of this is accidental. These were deliberate political choices – choices that stripped power from working people and sold our futures to the highest bidder.

 

The fight is not over.

 

As my good friend, the late, great Tony Benn said:

 

“There is no final victory, as there is no final defeat.

 

There is just the same battle.

 

To be fought over and over again”

 

The spirit of the miners did not wither with the closure of the pits.

 

It lives on in every worker struggling for a fair wage.

 

It lives on in every community fighting for decent housing.

 

It lives on in every strike, every protest, every act of resistance against a system that puts profit before people.

 

Because socialism is not an abstract idea, it is the collective power of working people seeking to have control of their own lives.

 

And Unions are fighting back.

 

After decades of campaigning alongside all of you, and with the support of the NUM, we have won on the Mineworkers Pension Scheme, with the transfer of the Investment Reserve Fund, and progress ongoing toward ending the unfair surplus sharing arrangements.

 

We continue to fight for the BCSSS, to put both scheme on equal footing, and giving retired mine workers security in retirement.

 

We have GMB taking on union-busting employer, Amazon, and have also won a major victory in their equal pay campaign with ASDA.

 

The RMT, under the exceptional leadership of Mick Lynch, eviscerated the Tories and right-wing press, who they were seeking to demonise industrial action and workers.

 

We have Unite winning inflation beating pay rises across numerous sectors, including an 8% increase for Cornish Clay Miners.

 

And change is coming, through the New Deal for Working People, Renationalising Rail, the Better Buses Bill, our Trade Union movement, through collective action are turning industrial gains into political wins for our communities.

 

And so, as we remember those we have lost, let us not do so in mourning, but in determination.

 

Let us rededicate ourselves to the struggle they fought.

 

Let us build a society where no community is sacrificed for profit, where no worker is left without dignity, where the wealth of this nation is used for the benefit of all, not just the privileged few.

 

That is the fight before us. And if we stand together, as the miners have always done, as so many before us have done, then we will win.

 

Thank you.