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

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Strike Boy: 3. Arthur and Maggie

3. Arthur and Maggie

BBC Radio 4 - Strike Boy, 3. Arthur and Maggie

'We'd been beaten by militancy before. We were not going to be beaten again.'

“We'd been beaten by militancy before. We were not going to be beaten again.”

Two firebrands dominated the national stage during the miners’ strike of 1984-5: NUM leader Arthur Scargill and prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Back then, as an 11-year-old miner’s son, Mark just knew that his family were on Scargill’s side and Thatcher was against them. 

Now Mark wants to know what was behind the government’s plan to close pits and take on the unions. To find out, he meets one of Margaret Thatcher’s top ministers, Michael Heseltine. Were union leaders really the “enemy within”?

Archive: Kinolibrary (Arthur Scargill speech); 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

3. Arthur and Maggie

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