ABSTRACT
Many people have asked why the Notts coalfield reacted so strongly against the strike. In Bentinck Colliery, an isolated pit two miles from the village of Pinxton on the county border with Derbyshire, only twenty-three men out of 1600 came out and by the end of the year that figure was down to sixteen. The three interviews here were taken on 14 October 1985, in the week when the Notts coalfield was balloting on whether or not to form the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers. Between them, Colin Bottomore, Todd Clark and Lennie Harper seem to express some of the contradictions of the Notts miners and in particular the battle between a gut trade unionism and a stubborn unwillingness to be, as they see it, ‘led by the nose’ by their trade union leaders.
