Is it really that long ago?

Is it really 25 years since the Miners' strike?

It must be. For hearing I was once Vicar of a mining parish, the reporters have started to seek me out, much as I guess they have been trawling through all the folk who might possibly remember what the Church was doing in the mining communities of Nottinghamshire through those turbulent months. It is a weird thing, suddenly to realise that what you recall as yesterday, has crept stealthily away and become history to others. But climbing over the shock, it dawned on me that there really wasn't much I could say to help them piece together what it was like to be there.

There were, of course, many parishes where the local church was deeply involved - counselling, helping run soup-kitchens, holding special services, hosting meetings, getting debt advice and finding food and clothes as families ran out of cash - all sorts of wholesome community engagement. But it did not happen in my particular patch, for that was a place where the church had become caught up in a terrible conflict over church buildings which had divided the community, and alienated the mining union en masse. In consequence, when the great strike began, the church there, though sympathetic, was not much included in the struggle.

Still, perhaps there are somethings I might add to fill out the picture for my media friends. One thing not easily conveyed is how strongly people felt things. Often that might be good; none pulled together better in times of crisis. But that same capacity for strength of feeling also determined the way such communities could become bitterly divided, and how long the quarrels might last. There were still in the 1980s some families who would tell you they didn't talk to 'so-and-so' because their father or grandfather had been a scab in the 1920's strike. It coloured the way people felt about the spectre of a new strike against the government; it was not one they relished. It was a time of too much uncertainty, a time that raked over old ills, while folk dreaded what new ones might come.

I was largely side-lined. My task there was to sort the mess and make it possible for the people to get on again being the Church. Not one that was ever likely to make me a popular Vicar ! [But then who wants to be popular? My job was to stop the children fighting in the nursery and persuade them to behave, not court public acclaim.] Oddly, it seems that after I had left , I became quite undeservedly, something of a saint. 'That poor man', folk apparently said, 'just think how nasty they were to him... and to his family and all... ' And indeed, folk could be cruel. A local undertaker took against me, rather too personally, I thought, and decided upon a scheme, which he explained once too often for discretion at the Welfare. He would refuse to deal with funeral fees for the church. Believing [mistakenly] that fees were part of my stipend, he reckoned the loss of money, and the difficulty for the church collecting its own fees, would drive me away. It did not work, of course, but it did not help either. Or again, if my wife, walking to the Post Office met people coming the other way, it was quite normal to find them pointedly crossing the road, walking past on the other side, then very deliberately crossing back once they had passed her and the children. Just so you knew. At the Post Office it was not unusual to find that as you entered everyone inside fell abruptly silent, parting to let you to the counter where an embarrassed clerk served you; and as you left, as though switched on, to hear the conversation suddenly resumed, just before you closed the door. It was called, 'If we can't get at him, we'll get at his family"... But there you go. They never were very good with 'in-comers'.

'What do I recall most vividly?' one reporter asked. Well, just the plain tragedy of it all, really. The Notts. miners were sympathetic to the strike. But good, courageous men, fiercely proud of their own union they were intent upon 'doing things right', as one explained to me in the pub. 'You'll see,' he said,'we'll have our ballot in a couple of weeks and I can tell you now what the result will be: we'll come out. Then, whole country'll be out, and that Maggie Thatcher'll have to give in. I'll not give her another fortnight, you see.' And I do believe he would have been right. It was certainly the prevailing sentiment. And if it could have happened, it would have saved many communities and families from hopeless lives.

But it was not to be. Sadly, I think it was Arthur Scargill. I myself believe that if only he could have shut up and been a bit more patient things would have turned out very differently. What changed things was simple. The Notts miners worked on, waiting for their own ballot, determined to do things 'right', but that did not satisfy Arthur. He wanted them all out and now; not waiting for a ballot. And once the flying pickets were loose, it was their arrival - coming through the fields (and even up my garden) to avoid roads and police blocks - well, it just upset the Notts men. Men began to say 'Who does he think he is. Trying to push us about?' And they began to go to work with pickaxe handles up their coat sleeves, determined to do what they thought was 'right' and not be pushed around by anyone. I believe that Arthur created the situation which changed their minds; he had shot himself in the foot, and in the end the divided strike failed.

Did the miners desert the Church? No, I don't think so, not at all. Even in my patch they were good folk at heart, just victims, really, whom I had to set free from the feuds of the past. But there was desertion in the air.

It was a government deserting their communities: and weakening them did no one, least of all the Church, any good. We shall all be paying the price for that evil, for many years to come.