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 FM

Strike Boy: 9. An Era Ends

9. An Era Ends

BBC Radio 4 - Strike Boy, 9. An Era Ends

'It was one of the most awful decisions I had to make. But there was no other choice.'

'It was one of the most awful decisions I had to make in my political life. But there was no other choice.'

"It was one of the most awful decisions I had to make in my political life. But there was no other choice."

Mark was 11 during the miners’ strike of 1984-5 when his dad, George, was a striking Nottinghamshire miner. George went back to work when the strike ended, but in 1992, it was announced his pit would finally close for good. What did George make of protests from colleagues who didn’t join the strike? What’s it like being the last in a long line of miners?

Mark asks Michael Heseltine about the decision to close the pits in the early 1990s, and hears about positive impacts of the strike from the miner’s wife outside Durham who was politicised by the dispute.

Archive: ThamesTV (Silverhill Colliery closure); 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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