Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This study is available via the UK Data Service Qualibank, an online tool for browsing, searching and citing the content of selected qualitative data collections held at the UK Data Service.

This is a comparative study carried out by Critcher and colleagues of three mining communities in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire following the miners' strike of 1984-1985. The three mining communities were selected for their comparability in terms of size, demographic structure and the importance of mining in the local economy, and for their contrasting involvement in the 1984-1985 national coal miners' strike (i.e. whether solidly pro-strike, anti-strike or 'split').

The study documents and analyzes the processes of social change within a pro-strike, an anti-strike, and a divided community. It focuses on the impact on everyday life and the extent to which the strike shaped attitudes to authoritative institutions. Interviews were conducted with British Coal employees and their families, politicians and members of the police, clergy and welfare services. Specific topics addressed were those suggested as a possible legacy of the dispute, such as irreconcilable bitterness between former working and former striking miners and their families in a 'split' community; permanent disaffection from the police and from the institutions of legal and political authority; and changing family relationships as a result of the mobilisation of women during the dispute.


Main Topics:

Main topics include: household budgets; job changing; job losses; labour and employment; labour disputes; local councils; media bias; media coverage; miners; picketing; police brutality; police power; police services; politics; strikes; trade union membership; trade unions; and unemployment.