Gavin Hawkton

Recently completed PhD at @UofGlasgow | Media & Memory Researcher | Investigating how journalism shapes public memory and power

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

My review of Channel 4's #MinersStrike1984 for @tribunemagazine 👇

[Tribune @tribunemagazine]

A new Channel 4 series explores the painful realities of the miners' strike through the eyes of those directly involved. But it ignores the crux of the strike — Thatcher's determination to crush the organised working class.

https://t.co/c0nTggUAbW

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@davembruce @Miners_Strike @paulmasonnews @UKLabour @Conservatives Another question to ask is which party closed most coal mines during periods of mass unemployment.

There's a big difference between closing mines when people could find alternative sources of income and not.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@danielmgmoylan @AndrewG34558041 Well yes, the public frame was: impossible demand + lights out + Scargill. Rather than the contested economics and highly political nature of pit closures.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

Amazing how Scargill is treated as the all-powerful villain of the 1970s before he was even NUM president.

[Lord Moylan @danielmgmoylan]

@Steven1897001 The country was entirely dependant on coal for energy. Natural gas had barely come on stream. In the 1972/3 strike Scargill reduced us to a 3-day week and did get the government out. He was explicit in wanting to bring the govt down. He was an open revolutionary, not “one man”.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@danielmgmoylan Andrew Glyn answered this at the time. On wider public-cost accounting, closing 'uneconomic' pits cost more than keeping them open.

So “uneconomic” framing was more contested accounting and political judgement.

https://t.co/TuH2IjVH3H

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

“Scargill threatened democracy” is the pantomime version of the strike.

A media memory product that reduces the strike to one man and ignores bigger questions about why whole communities were being sacrificed or why resistance to that had to be criminalised.

[Lord Moylan @danielmgmoylan]

Good. He was seeking the overthrow of the elected government and British democracy.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@danielmgmoylan @AndrewG34558041 Declassified cabinet papers showed the intention was to close 75 pits over three years. This would have led to the loss of 64,000 jobs. Miners knew this and resisted.

The NCB's own Ned Smith claimed government undermined settlements, not Scargill. Who knows though.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@grenville_1 A strike does not “permanently deny” electricity; it creates temporary pressure to negotiate. I mean that is essentially what industrial action is.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@grenville_1 A strike in a strategic industry is disruptive by definition. That may threaten supply, policy and profits but it does not follow that it threatens democracy itself.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@danielmgmoylan @AndrewG34558041 A year-long strike involving 142,000 miners cannot be reduced to conspiracy.

The origins were exactly opposition to pit closures, rooted in pit communities facing devastation. Miners did not need Scargill to understand what closures meant for their futures.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@danielmgmoylan “Deconstructivist virus” is doing a lot of work here.

No one is denying facts. The point is that “uneconomic pits” and “Scargillism” were the language through which those facts were made to mean: closures inevitable, resistance illegitimate, Scargill to blame.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@danielmgmoylan @AndrewG34558041 Yes, exactly. 1984–85 was about pit closures, not pay.

Scargill was the figurehead, but the strike was sustained in pit villages, community centres, picket lines, soup kitchens and women’s support groups. It was a grassroots movement against closures (not about one man).

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@grenville_1 Electricity supply is not democracy.

A strike using industrial leverage may threaten the government’s policy aims, but that is not the same as threatening democratic rule.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@danielmgmoylan "Uneconomic pits” and “Scargillism” were dominant frames within media at the time, not inventions of professional lefties.

Calling later criticism a “rewriting of history” misses a key point: these were the frames through which the strike was originally written.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@grenville_1 Does it seem reasonable to spend more money closing pits than keeping them open?

Does it seem reasonable to destroy entire communities during a period of mass unemployment?

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

I was glad to join KMTV recently to contribute to their Kent Chronicles series looking at the legacy of the #MinersStrike in Kent

https://t.co/ZLCQxDgLK4

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

20 years ago, in the “vegetarian days“ of the rising Putin dictatorship, I would try to explain to western media & leaders how elections could be free but not fair. Media domination, through propaganda and exclusion of opposition, is one element.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@AlexPanton1 @Miners_Strike What you've highlighted is how Yorkshire miners intially crossed into Nottinghamshire to picket. A decision made by miners, rather than the NUM leadership or Scargill.

Miners themselves directed the course of the strike. The ongoing focus on Scargill is misdirection.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@AlexPanton1 @Miners_Strike Sure. It was complicated with different responses from different areas of the union and from different miners within those areas.

That's why summing up the strike with one man doesn't work.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@AlexPanton1 @Miners_Strike I'd challenge the frame.

The strike was not about one man. It was run at a grassroots level with Scargill as a figurehead. That perspective is prominent at a local and community level and contrasts with popular/ media memory of the strike that remains dominant.

[Gavin Hawkton @GavinHawkton]

@AlexPanton1 @Miners_Strike I've just done a PhD on the strike. Lots to learn, no plans to move on yet.

Cheers for the chat 👍