We’ll have to make one or two tiny changes to the script. Well every five pages or so there should be an event. ibid. Robbie Coltrane
Arthur Scargill is in fact a mumbling ball of sexual tension from Brooklyn. ibid. Alexei Sayle/Paul
What kind of film did you have in mind? Here’s your new ending, Mr Pacino. ibid.
I really don’t think this picture should be a musical. ibid. Al Pacino
I know what you’re thinking. I’ve gone too far this time. ibid. Al Pacino to Meryl Streep
I was born in a poor mining town in the foothills of Wales. My name is Arthur Scargill. And this is my story. ibid. Al Pacino’s introduction
Daddy, what’s job security? ibid. Tammy to Arthur
There goes the fastest trade union leader you will ever see, Slim. ibid. miner
Now you’ll excuse us, we have a country to run. ibid. Speaker to Scargill
Tammy! ibid. Scargill [Tammy enters House of Commons]
Write a screenplay about the GLC. ibid. Robbie Coltrane to Paul
In the summer of 1973 the men at the Brookside Mine in Harlan, Kentucky, voted to join the United Mine Workers of America. Duke Power Company and its subsidiary Eastover Mining Company refused to sign the contract. The miners came out on strike. Barbara Kopple, Harlan Country USA ***** 1976
He died of black lung ... I was beginning to hate the company. ibid. Lois Scott
Organise the unorganised. With organisation you have the aid of your fellow men; without organisation you are a lone individual, without influence and without recognition of any kind. And exploitation of you and your family when it pleases some industrialist to make money out of your misery. ibid. John L Lewis, president UMW, televised address
They used to abuse us actually ... If you stuck together in solidarity you can defeat them. Besides that, I learned that the politicians worked with the coal companies. I found out that the union officials were working with the coal companies. I also found out that the Catholic hierarchy was working with the officials. ibid. old miner
The government is acting as their muscle man. ibid.
We have to fight for our rights. ibid. miner’s wife at meeting
We didn’t give them any resistance whatever. We just lay down in the road. ibid.
It’s a feudal system. ibid. Houston Elmore, UMW organiser
Which side are you on, boys?
Which side are you on? ibid. folk song
Consolidated Coal’s Mannington Mine in Farmington W. Va. was inspected by the Federal Bureau of Mines sixteen times in 1968. Extensions were granted to the company sixteen times. On November 20th 1968 the mine exploded. Four men survived, 78 men were trapped in the mine. ibid. caption
It’s not true that the inhalation and retention of coal dust in the lungs necessarily results in any impairment of the pulmonary function. ibid. Attorney, Bitumous Coal Operators Association, televised address
If a company kills a man, the company gets let off. ibid. miner
Three months after the contract was signed at Brookside, the national coal contract expired. For the first time in UMW history the rank and file has the right to ratify the contract. ibid. caption
July – August 1975: 100,000 strike to protest company abuse of grievance procedures. ibid.
The miners’ problem was that their suction pumps wouldn’t suck water further than thirty feet up a tube. But the deeper they dug the more it flooded. James Burke: Connections s2e5: Something For Nothing, BBC 1994
Parkinson: What was being a miner like?
Eric Morecambe: Dark. The Parkinson Show with Morecambe and Wise
‘In 1984 I was part and privileged to be a party to the greatest struggle on Earth.’ Pride 2014 starring Bill Nighy & Imelda Staunton & Dominic West & Paddy Considine & Andrew Scott & George MacKay & Joseph Gilgun & Ben Schnetzer & Menna Trussler et al, director Matthew Warchus, Arthur Scargill on tele
Gay marcher #1: I’m from Bromley.
Gay marcher #2: Don’t worry about that. We’re a broad church. ibid.
Di, your gays have arrived. ibid.
The pit and the people are one and the same. ibid.
The [coal] strike became a battle between two implacable opponents. Thatcher: The Downing Street Years II: Best of Enemies, BBC 1993
She ordered the police to deal with Scargill’s flying pickets. ibid.
The year-long strike by the National Union of Miners is a watershed for industrial Wales. Huw Edwards, The Story of Wales VI: Wales and Britain, BBC 2012
A region that has long been coveted by foreign powers. Zambia, or northern Rhodesia as it was known, was a British colony. There’s a good reason why the British wanted to control this place. Zambia is sitting on top of an extraordinary resource – one of the largest seems of copper in the world. Hundreds of kilometres wide in places, and there is reckoned to be billions of dollars’ worth of copper still in the ground. Justin Rowlatt, The Chinese Are Coming, BBC 2011
The presence of Chinese mining companies in Zambia has become a major political issue. At other mines there have been demonstrations about pay and conditions and violent clashes. Recently, eleven Zambian protesters were shot by Chinese managers at a coal mine. ibid.
The pictures were of hundreds of miners running down muddy banks to meet other miners. From that moment, for hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of people, for at least a year and maybe for life, everything changed.
The pit-closure programme had been announced, and it was the final stage of the Ridley Plan. It was the last scene of a predictable Western. Along the way Thatcher had disposed of many casualties but now she stood face to face with her sworn enemy. Arthur Scargill is often blamed for calling the strike at the end of winter, when coal stocks were high. But the strike was in response to the closures. Mark Steel, Reasons to be Cheerful
Scargill didn’t call the strike. One of the pits due to close, Cortonwood in Yorkshire, walked out. ibid.
Tory outrage exploded. The Sun called miners ‘scum of the Earth’. Social security payments to miners’ families were blocked. Ministers spewed disgust at pickets. Adoption of the slogan ‘right to work’. And the police blockaded pits in Nottingham, put roadblocks across striking pit villages and turned back Kent miners heading into the Dartmouth tunnel. ibid.
Half a mile beneath Yorkshire’s countryside a rare breed of men are at work: but not for much longer. The last deep-coal mine in Britain is about to close. The Last Miners, BBC 2016
This is the story of the last miners. ibid.
There are only 450 deep-coal miners left. ibid.
They’ve endured strikes, pit closures and unemployment. ibid.
Britain has turned its back on deep-coal mining. ibid.
A machine called a Shearer tears the coal from its seams. ibid.
They produced over a half of the world’s coal supply. ibid.
‘The smell of burning of nowt to worry about.’ ibid.
‘David Cameron, you might take our jobs but you won’t take our sense of humour.’ The Last Miners II, miner
‘Crazy, innit?’ ibid.
‘Smile: you’ve just lost your job.’ ibid.
‘Britain will regret the day they closed their coal mines.’ ibid.
The asbestos industry is able to thrive in Russia because very little attention is given to human rights. Why the Deadly Asbestos Industry is Alive and Well, expert, Vice 2016
The most notorious industrial carcinogen known. ibid.
We suggest you consider this material for your home. ibid. old US TV advert
Asbestos kills more than 300,000 people a year. ibid.
Each mining town was a feudal dominion with the company acting as lord and master … The laws were the company’s rules. Plutocracy: Political Repression in the USA I: Divide and Rule, 2015
1907: The most deadly mine disaster in US history occurred when an explosion killed 361 men and boys in a West Virginia coal mine. ibid.
In 2012 coal miners in Kanawha Country in West Virginia issued a list of demands including a shorter workday, the right to organise, recognition of a worker’s constitutional rights to free speech and assembly, an end to the blacklisting of union organisers, and alternatives to company stores. The requested pay raise would have cost the company fifteen cents per miner per day. Instead of negotiating, the company hired a private militia to break the strike. ibid.