Skip Navigation | Sheffield IMC | UK IMC | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Support Us

UK Indymedia UK Indymedia Sheffield Indymedia Sheffield Indymedia

Miners Pay Tribute to Radical Hatfield Main Branch

Peter S. Moore | 30.03.2005 17:59 | Culture | Social Struggles | Sheffield

National Union of Miners members from the Hatfield Main branch paid tribute to the struggles of their branch and to their delegate Dave Douglass in Stainforth, Doncaster district.

More than 60 National Union of Miners members from the Hatfield Main branch paid tribute to the struggles of their branch and to their delegate Dave Douglass at a March 5, 2005 social in Stainforth’s Old Club in the Doncaster district of England.

The event marked the South Yorkshire branch's closure after 87 years representing miners. The collieries nearby were either closed or privatised by 1994.

Dave Douglass joined the branch as a delegate in 1979 while working as a "ripper" on the coal face. Today he and other Hatfield members at times rasp or cough, a symptom of pneumoconiosis known better as
black lung disease, caused by inhaling coal dust. Douglass now provides advice to miners, widows and their families at the Miner’s Advice Centre in Stainforth.

Douglass was the delegate during the 1984-1985 miners' strike and has also served on the NUM area executive and the South Yorkshire NUM panel. Throughout the event miners still called Douglass by his nickname, "Danny the Red".

"When he first came to Hatfield, people despised him," said one former miner who got up to speak. But Douglass' dedication to the workers turned him and many others around. "He was a man who stuck by his
principles."

Another miner, Aggy, paid tribute to Douglass. "He's represented us. He's looked after us as workers. You can't disrespect this man," he said, pointing to Douglass. Another miner told how Douglass had paid for copies of the coroner's report for the widows of miners
out of his own pocket.

Douglass paid tribute to the workers themselves stuck by him and his radical politics and looks (a Castro-like beard) even when police arrested him for growing marijuana plants in his garden. Douglass is a
member of Class War and the Industrial Workers of the World and once wrote a regular column for the communist Weekly Worker.

Douglass recalled the Hatfield branch's reputation for inviting controversial speakers from the Black Panthers to Sinn Fein to the Palestinian Liberation Organization to South African apartheid activists and a guerrilla from El Salvador. The branch also marched
in the 1985 gay pride march to reciprocate for the solidarity fundraising by London's gay community for miners during the 1984-1985 coal strike.

"I am indescribably proud of the branch," said Douglass, citing the branch as one that never lost sight that "it's the members of the union that make the decisions."

As the speeches came to an end, the audience stood and gave Douglass a standing ovation for his service. The evening was thick with emotion as the former miners unashamedly hugged and kissed each other on the cheek, as they told their stories particularly of the '84/'85 strike, known to them as "The Great Strike". Aggy told a story about how he was jailed for 26 hours for giving a police officer a 'Sieg Heil' Nazi salute. The police arrested him for "impersonating a police
officer."

Betty Cook from Women Against Pit Closures said that the strike changed the role of women in mining communities forever.

"The strike really gave women confidence," she said. Women went on the front lines during the strike. The police broke Cook's knee on the picket line, making her one of an estimated 20,000 people injured, two
miners and a taxi driver killed during the strike.

She said that her involvement in the strike prompted her to go to college and then university. She recently spoke to working women in Germany. She now works as a call centre worker, one of the service jobs the government said would replace mining jobs. But even
those employers were planning to off-shore those jobs to the Mediterranean island of Malta. She called for working class access to education and a socialist society.

"Women during the strike didn't have a political voice. We've got one now and we’re going to use it," said Cook.

The NUM now has a membership of 3,042, largely due to the privatization and consequent closure of all but seven coal mines in the United Kingdom.

There are more people working in the mine nostalgia business than in the mining industry now, said Douglass, who denounced the closure of the coal fields as "industrial genocide".

The result is unemployment and disillusionment in former mining areas that the whites-only British National Party (BNP) is seeking to exploit electorally for the national election expected in May this year. In its February 2005 Voice of Freedom newsletter, the BNP claimed it was being smeared by the government and media just like the miners were during the strike.

The NUM leadership has angrily rejected the BNP call for a Miners' Memorial Day. "The racism and religious hatred pedalled by those on the far right is totally alien to the values of decent people everywhere and they will find little support in mining areas.

"It is a most disgraceful attempt by a fascist party to associate itself with the miners' cause in an attempt to win votes in mining areas. The BNP never supported the miners' cause in any way whatsoever nor have we ever wanted their support," said Steve Kemp, NUM national secretary.

Douglass called for a more direct approach to the BNP in miner communities. "We have to give them the boot, in more senses than one."

Banner Theatre and Rotherham band, Toe'In'The Dark, also entertained the crowd.

Peter S. Moore
- e-mail: pmoore26@yahoo.com
- Homepage: http://www.iww.org.uk/

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Sheffield Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Sheffield [navigation.actions2016]

Sheffield [navigation.actions2015]

Sheffield [navigation.actions2014]

NATO 2014

Sheffield Actions 2013

G8 2013

Sheffield Actions 2012

Workfare

Sheffield Actions 2011

2011 Census Resistance
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Occupy Everywhere

Sheffield Actions 2010

Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands

Sheffield Actions 2009

COP15 Climate Summit 2009
G20 London Summit
Guantánamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
University Occupations for Gaza

Sheffield Actions 2008

2008 Days Of Action For Autonomous Spaces
Campaign against Carmel-Agrexco
Climate Camp 2008
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Smash EDO
Stop Sequani Animal Testing
Stop the BNP's Red White and Blue festival

Sheffield Actions 2007

Climate Camp 2007
DSEi 2007
G8 Germany 2007
Mayday 2007
No Border Camp 2007

Sheffield Actions 2006

April 2006 No Borders Days of Action
Art and Activism Caravan 2006
Climate Camp 2006
Faslane
French CPE uprising 2006
G8 Russia 2006
Lebanon War 2006
March 18 Anti War Protest
Mayday 2006
Oaxaca Uprising
Refugee Week 2006
Rossport Solidarity
SOCPA
Transnational Day of Action Against Migration Controls
WSF 2006

Sheffield Actions 2005

DSEi 2005
G8 2005
WTO Hong Kong 2005

Sheffield Actions 2004

European Social Forum
FBI Server Seizure
May Day 2004
Venezuela

Sheffield Actions 2003

Bush 2003
DSEi 2003
Evian G8
May Day 2003
No War F15
Saloniki Prisoner Support
Thessaloniki EU
WSIS 2003

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech