Strike Boy

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Mark was 10 when the miners' strike took over his life. Forty years on, he goes back.

Mark Watson was 10 when the 1984 miners' strike took over his life. Forty years on, he wants to know what really happened and how it changed his community - and this country.

Mark Watson was 10 when the 1984 miners' strike took over his life. Forty years on, he wants to know what really happened and how it changed his community - and this country.

Lying in bed one night as a boy, Mark heard a massive roar, like a football crowd. He opened his bedroom window and saw a red glow in the distance where the noise was coming from. He jumped out of his window, onto the kitchen roof, and bolted out the back gate. Just a few hundred yards from his house, he was suddenly confronted with a mass of action - hundreds of police and pickets, shouting and shoving. He was hooked.

The son of a striking Nottinghamshire miner, Mark was caught in the middle of Britain's biggest ever industrial dispute. Ever since, he's wanted to make sense of the deeply-held views on all sides. Travelling the country, hearing tales of violence, desperation, and determination, Mark investigates the conflict that became a battle for Britain's soul - and its consequences today.

Presenter: Mark Watson
Series Producer: Simon Maybin
Editor: Clare Fordham
Sound mix: James Beard
Production Co-ordinator: Ellie Dover
Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

BBC Radio 4 LW

Strike Boy: 1. Coal Dust in Our Veins

1. Coal Dust in Our Veins

BBC Radio 4 - Strike Boy, 1. Coal Dust in Our Veins

'We were the vanguard of the trade union movement, and we'd got to be eliminated.'

“We were the vanguard of the trade union movement, and we'd got to be eliminated.”

When Mark was just 10, he found himself slap bang in the middle of what would become Britain’s longest and bitterest industrial dispute - the miners’ strike of 1984-5. Growing up in the Nottinghamshire pit village of Stanton Hill, Mark’s dad was a local union leader and backed the strike from the start, in an area where most miners carried on working. 

But, until now, Mark’s never really had a proper conversation with his dad about what happened that year, the different forces at play, and the decisions he took. 

Archive: AP Archive (shouting pickets); BBC.

Presenter: Mark Watson
Series Producer: Simon Maybin
Editor: Clare Fordham
Sound mix: James Beard
Production Co-ordinator: Ellie Dover
Commissioning Executive: Tracy Williams
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

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Strike Boy

1. Coal Dust in Our Veins

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