Richard A. Couto

Americans have some difficulty in understanding the British
coalminers' strike of 1984-1985 and its significance. The media in the
United States gave it scant attention. Televised coverage, in particular,
was sparse. Totaling less than an hour of all the evening news broad-
casts on all three major networks combined during the 51-week period
of the strike. Much of the news was reported in 10- and 20-second
segments. The dominant theme of the coverage was violence with
scenes from the conflict of police and miners at Orgreave shown
throughout the year. Inevitably, as with most issues in American
politics, the strike was reduced to a personal power struggle between
Arthur Scargill, president of the National Union of Mineworkers, or
NUM, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The larger significance
of Britain's longest strike ever, and the complex issues behind it, were
not reported well.

This is especially disappointing because the issues of the strike
bear a marked similarity to issues in the Appalachian coalfields that
brought on the longest strike in the history of American miners in
1977-1978. This chapter examines the important parallels between
the British peripheral coalfields and the Appalachian region. It
examines the background and causes of the strike--rather than its
conduct--and compares those causes to conditions in the United
States. The discussion proceeds with a summary of events in the
United States; an analysis of changes common to the peripheral coal-
fields of Britain and the United States; the policy options with which
to distribute the benefits and costs of changes in the coal industry;
and the unresolved questions of inequality, unemployment, and the
conduct of industry that are asked in the coalfields of Britain and
America. The premise of this work is that the issues of the strike are

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