Miners Strike

Twenty five years ago Britain's miners walked out on strike and began one of the most bitter and violent industrial disputes seen in this country.

March 5th 2009 marks the anniversary of the walkout by miners at Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton, South Yorkshire. The action sparked the year long strike.

Scars run deep

The then National Coal Board had announced a programme of pit closures, which miners were determined to resist. The strike ripped apart friends, families and communities and scars still run deep in many mining areas.

BBC Radio Sheffield is marking the anniversary of the strike with a series of special programmes. You'll be able to hear many of them on Toby Foster's Bigger at Breakfast Show, but Rony Robinson and Howard Pressman will also be looking at the anniversary of the strike in their programmes.

WAPC at Buckingham Palace, 1984-5

We'll be asking if the strike and its consequences were inevitable and look at what happened to villages where the local mine was shut down. For many years mining communities remain depressed, although some have now successfully regenerated better than others. Toby Foster's Breakfast programme will look at the role of women in the year long strike, and examine the dispute from the perspective of miners and the police who were charged with keeping public order.

The future of mining

Doncaster reporter James Vincent will look at one part of South Yorkshire where mining has survived, and ask just how rosy is its future. At Doncaster College, students are now taking courses in mining engineering with a view to a career in the pits. And what happened to some of those families caught up in the dispute?

You can find out by listening to  Radio Sheffield for the anniversary of the miners' strike. Special features begin on Monday 2nd March and continue all week.

Special programming from around the BBC

A quarter of a century after the start of the miners' strike new evidence unearthed by the BBC's Inside Out in Yorkshire suggests police chiefs were more involved in the strike than merely maintaining law and order.

More coverage from around the BBC can be found at the BBC Miners Strike Topic page.