Workplace conflict and the origins of the 1984-85 miners' strike in Scotland

Literature on the 1984-85 miners' strike in Britain tends to be dominated by examination of peak level relations between the Conservative government, the National Coal Board and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). The strike is usually depicted as being illegitimately imposed, without a national ballot, on the industry and the miners by the NUM leadership. This article develops a more rounded perspective on the strike, by locating its origins in workplace conflict which had been steadily escalating in the early 1980s in the Scottish coalfields. A significant portion of Scottish miners, anxious about employment prospects and angry about managerial incursions on established joint industrial regulation of daily mining operations, pushed their union towards a more militant position. This subverts the conventional picture of the strike as a top-down phenomenon. In this respect events in Scotland, which rarely feature in established literature, were in fact extremely important, shaping the national strike that emerged from the workforce's opposition to managerial authoritarianism as well as the closure of uneconomic pits. The peak level context of deteriorating relations and pit level details of incrementally intensifying workplace conflict are established through industry and trade union records and press accounts

The 1972 miners' strike: popular agency and industrial politics in Britain

The national miners' strike of 1972 is central to contemporary British history: it undermined Edward Heath's Conservative government and sharpened social conflict; the common interpretation of the strike as a 'victory for violence', shown here to be disingenuous, legitimised the Thatcherite attack on organised labour in the 1980s. This article examines the high politics of the strike, but situates popular agency - the actions and attitudes of the miners - as the predominant historical contingency. This was especially so in the uproarious events documented at Longannet in Fife, which shaped the outcome of the strike. This analysis is related to the character of industrial politics more generally in the 1960s and 1970s

The shape of New zealand's regimental system : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Defence and Strategic Studies at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Unit cohesion has been identified as a strong factor in the way soldiers overcome their fear of death in battle. Imperial Roman soldiers felt loyalty to the legion and its standard was more than a signal to rally towards in battle; British soldiers show similar loyalty to their regiment and Colours. Historians of a strong military background often write of the British regimental system as particularly effective in maintaining ethos and fighting spirit. Yet, reading any one of their descriptions of the regimental system offers only a vague insight of the structures and character of a uniquely military organisation. Identifying a regimental system is a particularly difficult task, even for those who are part of one. Although New Zealand has inherited the idea of regimental system from the British, it is a much smaller nation with a correspondingly smaller all-volunteer armed force and a more egalitarian society. The size of the New Zealand Army, with fewer regiments, seems to suggest that it has escaped both the benefits of regimental cohesion and the damaging effects of aggressive tribalism between its units. This thesis will challenge that assumption by showing that the New Zealand Army has a strong cultural history with definite characteristics of a regimental system. It will be seen that the New Zealand Army's regimental system adapts its values according to its own particular cultural pressures and legacies