A Fife councillor has issued a rallying call to former colliery workers ahead of the 30th anniversary of the miners’ strike.
Councillor Tom Adams, a former pit worker and National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) official, plans to commemorate the event later this month.
He is encouraging other former miners to join him for a mock picket to mark the anniversary of the bitter dispute. The event is scheduled to take place at the entrance of the old Frances Colliery in Dysart at 11am on Saturday March 15.
Mr Adams said: “I’ve been doing this for a while, but it’s usually just me and another guy. This time, because it’s the 30th anniversary, I’m hoping to turn it into something else.
“I’m trying to get as many banners there as possible. I’ve spoken to members in Lothian and they want to come through. I would love to see as many as possible turn up. We had upwards of 1,000 pickets during the strike, but I would be delighted if 20 or 30 turned up for the anniversary.”
Mr Adams worked at Frances Colliery for 16 years and was also employed at the Longannet complex. He was formerly on the executive of the NUM and during the strike of 1984-85 was a picket coordinator.
Last year, a report revealed that Scotland had the largest concentration of coalfield deprivation three decades after the industrial dispute came to an end.
In the paper, the Coalfields Regeneration Trust uncovered a “stark gap” in deprivation levels between Scotland’s coalfield and non-coalfields areas.
The collapse of Scottish Coal and the loss of 600 jobs including the demise of St Ninian’s and Blair House in Fife was described as a “body blow” to those already suffering higher levels of deprivation than the rest of the country.
At its peak the Scottish coal mining industry employed 150,000 in 500 pits. In 1914 Fife had 30,000 men a tenth of the region’s population working in mines.
By the late 1950s, 85,000 miners were employed in more than 150 Scottish pits but the industry stuttered in the 1960s and 1970s and was reduced to a rump by the time of the miners’ strike in 1984.
Picture by George McLuskie