The closure of Bedwas Colliery is closely linked to the Miners' Strike of 1984/1985

The Miners' strike of 1984/1985 was controversial for a number of reasons. At the time, the right-wing Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher enjoyed a large Commons majority arising from the popularity of the campaign in the Falklands. The Labour Party was hamstrung by its policy of Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament, which against the background of the Cold War, did not enjoy popular support. Its leader, Neil Kinnock, was heavily dependent on the support of the Trades Unions.

The NUM leader, Arthur Scargill claimed that the Conservatives planned large-scale closures of coal mines which they denied. Nonetheless a strike was called by the NUM at the height of summer 1984, when demand for coal was at its lowest. Mr. Scargill made a political point of not holding a ballot of NUM members to call the strike - this was after all a recently-introduced Conservative measure. The strike was therefore technically illegal. It is widely accepted that if a ballot had been called, a mandate for the strike would have been achieved.

The strike was a total disaster for the NUM. It destroyed many of the achievements of the labour movement since the early 20th Century.The failure to call a ballot was a huge error of judgment leading directly to the sequestration of NUM funds (the famousTaff Vale case in the early 20th Century had prevented Trades Unions being sued for the actions of striking members) and the breakaway of the Nottinghamshire miners who formed the Union of Democratic Miners. It enabled the Police to intervene in the illegal strike to allow a handful of strike-breakers to go into work. This led to picket-line violence. The Nottingham miners worked on and the Police picked up their overtime cheques, while miners at Bedwas and the rest of the Country stayed out on strike without pay for nine months. The country was polarised. Mrs. Thatcher called the striking miners 'The Enemy Within' (she had called the Argentinians in the Falklands 'The Enemy Without').

Public support for the Strike was huge in South Wales. This was partly undermined however by a few idiots who tried to murder one of the few working colliers by dropping a concrete slab on his car near Merthyr. Arthur Scargill became a pariah as Miners funds, instead of providing financial assistance to the strikers, were moved abroad to avoid the sequestrators. Both sides engaged in political dogma and the striking miners had lost both tactical advantage and their financial support.

The Miners Strike of 1984/85 ended on 9th March 1985.The Western Mail reported in April 1985 that the colliers at Bedwas had accepted the closure of the mine, although the NUM had advised them to fight on.

It was not that simple. The National Coal Board was required by an agreement in October 1984, to refer any colliery proposed for closure to an independent colliery review process. To the fury of NACODS, the pit deputies' trade union, the NCB ignored this requirement. NACODS deputies had manned the colliery during the strike and had already objected to the rundown of manpower at Bedwas, which they claimed would lead to insufficient maintenance at the colliery. When it came to restart production in April 1985, this was reported as impossible due to damage caused by this foreseen lack of maintenance!

The NCB reported that the pits at Bedwas and Frances Colliery, Scotland had not been closed, but that it had "not been posssible to restart production due to lack of maintenance during the strike." ('Western Mail' above). The closure finally announced in May 1985 was attributed to geological problems. Although one might have supposed that these problems were known before the start of the strike, at the time of the closure announcement there was no resistance with the miners exhausted by the months of attrition during their ill-led strike.

Perhaps the truth is that this was a piece of opportunism by the NCB - a decision had in fact been made that production in the North Pit would cease due to problems with the seam tapering out. In the political aftermath of the strike, the NCB needed little more than a fig leaf of an excuse to close colleries and, unfortunately, in the case of Bedwas that given needed to stand little scrutiny.

It seems that the Colliery's future was sealed at a meeting at the NCB offices at Llanishen, Cardiff, shortly after the end of the strike. All the various union officials were summoned to a meeting - NUM, COSA and NACODS, ostensibly to discuss how the colliery could move forward after the strike. After a long meeting, during which the unions made their various presentations, Mr Weekes, Chairman of the NCB South Wales Coalfield announced that he would like to see the Colliery close immediately. When the union officials returned to Bedwas they found that whilst they were in Llanishen, NCB officials had started to interview miners at Bedwas. The men were given the stark choice of transfer to another colliery or accept enhanced redundancy terms (or retirement terms to those over 50) within a short timeframe. In practice this amounted to little choice then to those with mortgages and debts following the months without pay.

At its closure, Bedwas had amongst the largest reserves of coal of any South Wales mine.