UK miners' strike (1969)

The UK miners' strike of 1969 was an unofficial strike that involved 140 of the 307 collieries owned by the National Coal Board, including all collieries in the Yorkshire area. The strike began on 13 October 1969 and lasted for roughly two weeks, with some pits' returning to work before others. The NCB lost £15 million and 2.5 million tonnes of coal as a result of the strike.

At the time of the strike, wage negotiations were underway between the NCB and the National Union of Mineworkers. Although that was not the cause of the dispute, it became essential to the settlement of the dispute. In the 1960s, employment in coal mining had fallen by almost 400,000 with little resistance from the NUM leadership, but the left wing of the union was becoming stronger and drawing strength from the students' protests. When miners staged a protest in London to support their wage claim, many Londoners were surprised that there were still coal mines operating in Britain. The NUM leadership of Sidney Ford was regarded by many within the union as having been too passive and accommodating of a Labour government.

The cause was the hours of work for surface workers, who were often older mineworkers who were no longer capable of working underground. Wages were lower, and working hours were longer for surface work than for underground work. The annual conference of the NUM had voted in July 1968 to demand the surface workers' hours to be lowered to seven and three-quarters, but the union's executive had not acted upon the vote.

On 11 October, Arthur Scargill led a group of Yorkshire mineworkers in pushing for action at the Yorkshire NUM's area council. The president of the Yorkshire NUM, Sam Bullogh, was unwell at the time and ruled Scargill "out of order". The area council's delegates responded by voting Bullogh out of the chair and voted for strike by a margin of 85 votes to 3.

Within 48 hours, all 70,000 mineworkers in Yorkshire were on strike. In other militant coalfields, such as Kent, South Wales and Scotland, walkouts followed shortly afterwards. The coalfields of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire were more conservative and became targeted by pickets from Yorkshire when they did not respond to the strike call. That has been identified as the first widespread use of flying pickets.

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