🌍 对接英国诺丁汉-美国东北等
From 1984 until 1985, a major miners' strike shook the British coal industry in response to proposed closures of uneconomic pits. It was led by Arthur Scargill of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) against the National Coal Board (NCB), a government agency. Opposition to the strike was led by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who wanted to reduce the power of the trade unions. The NUM was divided over the action, which began in Yorkshire and Scotland, and spread to many other coalfields nationally. More than a fifth of mineworkers, especially in the Nottingham area, continued working from the very beginning of the dispute; by late 1984 miners increasingly returned to work. Few major trade unions supported the NUM officially, though many of their ordinary members set up support groups raising money and collecting food for miners and their families. The absence of a national ballot by the NUM to support the national strike weakened wider official support from other trade unions. Violent confrontations between flying pickets and police characterised the year-long strike, which ended in a decisive victory for the Conservative government and allowed the closure of most of Britain's collieries (coal mines). Many observers regard the strike as "the most bitter industrial dispute in British history". The number of person-days of work lost to the strike was over 26 million, making it the largest since the 1926 General Strike. The journalist Seumas