Forty years on, Kent miners who went out on strike say they have no regrets.

The year-long nationwide walkout, which began on March 6, 1984, was the biggest in the UK since the General Strike of 1926.

It was a turning point in industrial relations, severely weakening the power of Britain’s trade union movement when the coal miners lost and had to go back to work.

The fight had been against the closure of collieries but they could not be saved. All three in Kent – Tilmanstone, Snowdown and Betteshanger in the Dover district – shut over the next five years.

It was also one of the bitterest industrial actions, dividing families and communities across the country and throwing many strikers and their families on the breadline.

But one of those on strike, Phil Sutcliffe, 76, who worked at Snowdown, told KentOnline: “I would do it all again. We had no choice. They were going to shut our pit. It was better to fight and lose than not fight at all.”

Miners’ wives had an active role in the struggle, such as attending marches, meetings and rallies.

Mr Sutcliffe’s wife Kay said: “I look back on it with anger in some ways because of what was done to the mining communities. But I think we worked as hard as we could to try to keep the mines open and keep our community together. It was worth the effort.

“As a miner’s wife, at one time you might have thought you weren’t going to be involved. But then you understood how it affected families and communities everywhere.”

The strike began with the first walkouts in Yorkshire and spread throughout Britain within six days.

Snowdown was the only one of the three Kent pits listed for closure in 1984 but miners from the other two also came out to heed the National Union of Mineworkers’ countrywide call for action.

Mr Sutcliffe, of Aylesham, spent much of his time as a flying picket – moving from one workplace to another to picket them.

With no wages or dole money available for him as a striker, the family income came from Mrs Sutclffe. Throughout the strike, she worked full-time as an accounts clerk for the security company Securior in Canterbury.

The family had three daughters – Heidi, Kelly and Amy – who at the time were aged 14, 13 and nine respectively.

They were able to just get by, with additional help for them and other striking families, for example, through food parcels from trade unionists in Britain and abroad such as in France and Germany.

Coal rather than gas or electricity was used to heat their homes and was part of the miners’ income. When that ran out too, members of the wider community helped by providing firewood.

Many women in the village also helped feed income-drained families through soup kitchens, which could also provide full roast dinners.

Family and friends rallied to provide practical support when needed. Mrs Sutcliiffe’s mother looked after the couple’s three children when they were away from home.

Mr Sutcliffe was vice-chairman of the National Union of Mineworkers’ Snowdown branch and on the local strike committee.

He travelled up and down the country picketing.

“In the first month of the strike I was never home at all. I had spent all my time in Leicester then,” he said.

He was arrested three times and charged with obstruction although his cases, smothered in a backlog, never ended up in court.

Once he sat in the middle of the road with a couple of hundred other pickets at Wivenhoe Port in Essex to stop imported coal coming in.

He said: “At another time I was arrested locally, spent much of the night at Dover police station and had to walk home from there at 2am.”

This was when he and other miners had picketed the home of a strikebreaker at Woolage.

Shaun Parry, also a striking Snowdown miner, was arrested for obstruction once but ended up in court and was fined £100.

Mr Parry, now 61, of Aylesham, said: “It was a very frightening time. I was taken by a snatch squad of three policemen, bound in cable ties and put in the back of a police van.

“I was brought before Sandwich Magistrates Court when they still had spikes on the dock.

“The criminal record didn’t cause me problems with jobs later but I think the English miners should be pardoned like the Scottish miners were because those sacked lost their pensions. That didn’t happen to me because I was made redundant.”

In March 1984, he was not yet married with children and was still living with his parents. His father was already retired and on a pension and his mother didn’t work.

Mr Parry said: “I was the only one with a wage so they wanted me to carry on working. But I would not walk through a picket line on principle. We were trying to protect jobs, so I stand by what I did.”

The family were able to struggle through and Mr Parry paid built-up debts after he went back to work.

The action began after the National Coal Board, which managed state-owned collieries, announced on March 6 that 20 pits across the country would close.

There were at first official walkouts within Yorkshire but NUM president Arthur Scargill on March 12 called for a national strike. A total of 95% of miners walked out.

Those old enough to remember followed the TV news coverage nightly and saw violent clashes between police and flying pickets.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher led the opposition to the strike. She believed that some collieries were too inefficient and expensive to maintain and that energy should come more from imported coal, oil, gas and nuclear power.

Another familiar face on television at the time was Ian MacGregor, the boss of the NCB, who had previously turned around the fortunes of the British Steel Corporation, albeit by halving the workforce.

Mr Scargill called him the “butcher of British industry”.

There was a swell of support for the miners from individuals, plus organisations such as women’s groups, student unions and gay and lesbian activists. They collected food, clothes and money for them.

One of the most common campaign slogans, reproduced on badges, was: “Coal not dole.”

I was a student in south London at the time and I remember regularly seeing at Deptford Market people giving out leaflets and rattling collection buckets.

However, I overheard one woman say: “Chuck ‘em back to work where they belong.”

Scargill called the action off on March 3, 1985, and on TV I saw him tell one large group of miners that they had fought well but it was over.

But as a last gesture of defiance, they chanted: “We’re not going back, we’re not going back.”

Mr Parry explained: “More and more miners were going back after Christmas and eventually there were more in work than striking. People were just worn down, had no money at all and had to feed their families.”

Terry Harrison, now aged 93, was a striking Betteshanger miner.

His new book on the history of the pit, Betteshanger Colliery – They Didn’t Take It Out of the Wind, says: “By January 1985 all pits had small groups of men returning back to work. Huge debts, starvation and lack of fuel had all sapped the will.

“The majority of the miners remaining on strike could see that there was a drift back to work.

“The return-to work figures shown every night [on TV] convinced many that the game was up.”

Mr Harrison says morale had further been eroded by the killing of taxi driver David Wilkie in Wales. He had been taking a working miner to his colliery on November 30 when two strikers dropped a concrete block from a bridge.

Mr Wilkie died at the scene, the worker escaped with minor injuries and the case caused widespread revulsion in the country.

Mr Sutcliffe and Mr Parry had been miners since leaving school at the age of 15 but both were made redundant when Snowdown finally closed in October 1987.

They were offered alternative posts at Betteshanger but Mr Sutciliffe said: “They couldn’t promise that wouldn’t close so we took redundancy. But I felt they had no right to sell another man’s job.”

Mr Sutcliffe later took on factory work. He is now retired and is a volunteer at Aylesham Heritage Centre and the present Kent Mining Museum at the former Betteshanger site, as a tour guide.

Mr Parry retrained as a carpenter and now runs his own business installing double glazing.

Several other redundant miners found work in the building of the Channel Tunnel, which began in 1988.

Mr Sutcliffe said: “Time has not healed since. We lost the pit and the community has suffered as well as a consequence of that. We're still a united community but obviously with the pit gone things have changed.

“But we never thought it would go on for a year. The strike we had in 1972 lasted just seven weeks and the one in 1974 was for four weeks.”

Several Kent miners stayed out for up to a couple of weeks beyond March 3, 1985, in solidarity with those who were sacked.

Ten men were kicked out at Tilmanstone for occupying the colliery’s surface control room.

A total of 30 were summarily dismissed at Betteshanger Colliery for a sit-in there in June 1984. One of them was Mr Harrison, who had been a miner since January 1955.

Miners at Betteshanger were actually the last in Britain to return to work.

The strike caused bitterness up and down the country, particularly because some miners defied the action and continued working. They were labelled “scabs” and there were violent scenes such as when they were confronted on the picket line. Many were ostracised by their own family members.

Mr Sutcliffe said: “We were solid in Aylesham. There was only one strikebreaker from there and he was transferred to the Tilmanstone Colliery.

“They said they had to go back to work to feed their families but we had to do that too.”

Mr Harrison told KentOnline: “Betteshanger was on strike solid. There was some return to work by a couple of or three individuals, which caused some concern.

“I wouldn’t say they’re forgiven now but they’re forgotten. If you spend your time hating where does it get you?”

Over decades the demand for coal had declined in favour of oil and gas, which was reflected in the United States and Western Europe.

At the start of the 20th century in the UK, there had been about 1,000 pits but they were down to 173 by 1984.

Employment at the pits had peaked at one million in 1922 but was down to 231,000 in the decade up to 1982.

Coal was also more redundant when trains were powered by diesel rather than steam and the closure of heavy industries saw materials such as steel being imported rather than made in Britain. This meant less coal was needed in these areas too.

Against this background, Tilmanstone shut in October 1986 and Betteshanger in August 1989. Chislet, in the Canterbury district, had already closed in July 1969.

The first notion that Kent might have coal to offer was when a geological survey showed that its earth was similar to northern France and Belgium, which already had coalfields.

The first ever coal in the county. a two-inch wide seam, was found at Tyler Hill in Canterbury during the construction of a railway tunnel.

Committees by the 1830s were set up to discuss extracting coal but no practical action was yet taken. Meanwhile, by now the Pas-de-Calais area was digging up four million tonnes of coal a year and employing 25,000 men.

A large amount of coal was discovered under Shakespeare Cliff in Dover in 1890, leading to the first development of the Kent Coalfield in 1896.

But mining this area was fraught with problems such as flooding, ultimately leading to eight workers drowning in 1897.

Shafts were lined to keep water out but sinking them had to stop due to running sand.

By 1912, after 16 years, 1,000 tonnes of coal had been brought out. Meanwhile. 54,000 gallons of water per hour were pumped away.

With digging for coal at Shakespeare Colliery being so deadly, impractical and uneconomical, it was closed in 1915.

However, investors realised the wider area was worth continual exploration and the full 20th century mining industry grew from there.

Work began at Snowdown in 1908, at Tilmanstone in 1911, Chislet, in 1914 and Betteshanger opened in 1924.

The actual centenary of Betteshanger’s official opening is May 19 and events to mark that are planned.

With the demand for workers to come into the area, villages and estates were built for the mass influx: Aylesham for Snowdown, Mill Hill in Deal for Betteshanger, Eythorne and Elvington for Tilmanstone and Hersden for Chilslet.

The workers came from as far as Wales, Scotland, Yorkshire and the North East and brought with them their cultures of rugby, pigeon racing, brass bands and male voice choirs.

Traditional Kent people had also noticed the miners, speaking in dialects strange to locals, using unfamiliar slang such as “snap” for food and “jitty” for alley.

All this at first made the locals prejudiced against them. Mr Harrison's book says that one shop had a sign saying: “Food here for miners and dogs.”

But Mr Harrison, originally from Birmingham, explains: “By 1955 when I arrived that had all gone. The miners by then became much a part of the community. They benefited the community.

“For example, Deal was a small town and had very little industry, so the advent of a mine being developed had economic clout.”

Ex-miners say digging for coal was not just a job but a way of life. They socialised together in their villages and neighbourhoods outside their shifts and close friendships were formed, many of which exist to this day.

Mr Parry says he remembers the immense camaraderie between workmates during his time in the pits.

Betteshanger Colliery - They Didn’t Take It Off the Wind, by Terry Harrison, is published by Addelam Books, price £15. Copies are available at Kent Mining Museum at Betteshanger and on eBay.

The museum will hold an exhibition for the strike anniversary in July, which will continue until the end of this year.

Commemorations will also be held from 3pm on Saturday, May 11, at Aylesham Heritage Centre in Dorman Avenue South and Elvingon and Eythorne Heritage Centre, in St Johns Road, Elvington. Exhibitions will be in place and speakers and entertainers appearing that evening will be confirmed.