Dear Hackney Gazette

This Saturday, 1 May, is Workers' Day. This year, many trade unionists are turning our thoughts to the miners' strike, which took place twenty years ago.

I was a teenager at the time, and the strike was my first experience of the strength and solidarity of working people. Margaret Thatcher's Tory Government decided to close pits, slash jobs and destroy communities, because - they said - coal mining was 'uneconomical'.

In response, the miners said that profits were not the point: while old people were dying of hypothermia every winter, we needed fuel to heat their homes. The miners fought hard to protect their industry and their communities, women played a powerful role, and millions of working-class people gave them our support.

But Thatcher was determined to crush them - so we also saw anti-union laws, brutal policing, and cruelly biased media coverage. The strike was starved and battered into defeat, and everything the miners' union said the Tories would do to the industry and its communities came true.

Looking back, most trade unionists will never forgive the Conservative Party, and many also feel that there was not enough solidarity from labour movement leaders. If there is one lesson we should learn for today, it is that working-class people must get organised and stand together. It is as important as ever to join a trade union, be an active member, and support your fellow workers' struggles, whatever industry they work in.

Yours in solidarity
Janine Booth
President, Hackney Trades Union Council