The Irony of the Iron Fist: Social Security and the Coal Dispute 1984-85

Abstract

In many ways the story of welfare benefits and the coal dispute of 1984/85 is a straightforward one. Ever since the late 1960s the payment of social security benefits to strikers' dependants has caused considerable anger among large sections of the Conservative Party, business and the media. Yet when the Conservatives were in office in the 1960s and 1970s, all substantive attempts to reduce or abolish such payments failed to win significant support among influential members of the Party's leadership. With the election of a new-style Tory leader in 1975 and the subsequent victory of the Conservative Party in the General Election of 1979 on a radical right wing programme, however, a major change in Tory policies looked certain. Within a year of the Thatcher Government coming to power a new approach to politics was visible. Ideology and policies inter-meshed around sharply defined objectives in the terrains of the social and economic. High on this agenda was the need to undermine the strength and credibility of the trade unions as organisations, and to denationalise as much of the welfare state as they could. Strikers' social security payments were quickly the subject of attention. Legislation was enacted that required a cut in supplementary benefit payments to strikers' dependants by ?12 (subsequently rising to ?15 in 1983 and ?16 after November 1984). The grounds for such deductions fitted well into the New Right's perspectives. Trade unions, and not the taxpayer, should look after their striking members. In this one piece of legislation the Government had taken swiftly a significant initiative aimed at re-defining the relationship between trade unions and their members and restricting the rights of a section of society to social security payments. For those strikers in trade unions without substantial strike funds and those involved in protracted disputes the impact of the new legislation was bound to cause hardship. In the coal dispute, the length of the dispute combined with an absence of strike pay brought home the full implication of this measure on peoples' living standards. Moreover, the supposedly 'neutral' government department responsible for administering the new rules was forced into playing an active part in the dispute on the side of the government and, indirectly the employer-the National Coal Board.