Frightened miners and their families live in hotels
April, 1985Miners and their families frightened from their homes by intimidation during the coal strike are still living in an hotel at the expense of the National Coal Board.
They are still too afraid to move back to the houses they abandoned in a south Yorkshire pit village and their exile has so far cost the board about £9,000.
Three miners, all with their wives and two with young children, have been living in an hotel in Sheffield for almost three months.
Two of the men, miners in their 50s with at least 30 years each in the industry, have been trying to obtain redundancy to enable them to start new lives. Unhappy with their day-to-day existence they have complained of "betrayal" by the board.
Leaders of the National Working Miners Committee, formed to represent men who defied the pickets during the strike and which is still fighting their cause, are to press the board this week to grant the men redundancy terms.
Mr Tony Ellis, vice-chairman of the organization, said : "Three weeks ago we had a meeting with Mr Michael Eaton, the coal board spokesman, and we were told there would be no problems about obtaining redundancy for the two men. Then when they went to see their colliery manager they were told there was no chance of getting it. "They feel let down and betrayed. They are, however, decent men whose lives have been turned upside down."
The men have all put their houses up for sale in the village where they now feel outcasts and the National Working Miners Committee were so confident that they were about to win redundancy terms that they put down £250 deposits on new houses away from the coalfield.
The men would have used their cash to pay for their new homes until their other houses could be sold, but now the deals look like collapsing.
The men went back to work last November.
Since they moved into the hotel the bills of about £250 for each family have been paid by the board.
A NCB spokesman said "We will keep them there until things settle down sufficiently for them to return to their normal existence."
Mr Ian Macgregor, the NCB chairman has pledged his management's "absolute resolve" in tackling what he termed "the distressing problem of intimidation" in the mining industry. He said that only "one tenth of 1 per cent" of the workforce was found guilty of intimidation.
Mr Macgregor said: "Throughout the NUM's strike, I gave an assurance that we would safeguard the interests of working miners. Our management will not tolerate any intimidation of individual workmen or groups of employees. "Because of firm action already taken and the good sense of the overwhelming majority of miners, reported incidents of intimidation have been very few and they are getting less."
Two men are to appear before magistrates in Rotherham today in connection with an alleged attack on the home of a strike-breaking miner and his family in the village of Thurcroft near-by.
