8. The Reckoning

Jonny Owen reaches the end of his highly personal exploration of the strike and finds out what happened afterwards.

Saddled with debt after a year with no wages, mining families now face the closure of their pits and the end of a whole way of life. Jonny asks whether the

NUM was doomed to lose from the very beginning.

He sifts through the arguments about the lack of a national ballot being the union’s Achilles heel, and about the role Arthur Scargill played in it all. And he hears more about how Margaret Thatcher’s confrontation with the miners shaped life in Britain today.

Presenter: Jonny Owen

Series Producer: Clare Hudson

Executive Producer: Steve Austins

Assistant Producer: Ffion Clarke

Development Producer: Branwen Davies

Sound Designer: Meic Parry

Sound Editor: Adam Whalley

Composer: Richard Llewellyn

Series Consultant: Dr Ben Curtis

Strike is a Bengo Media Production for BBC Sounds