Miners' Last Stand

This Week report capturing the immediacy of life on the picket line in South Yorkshire.

"The proper height of a miner’s ambition used to be to breed a champion whippet or win first prize in a pigeon show". Tommy Hyams of the Markham Main colliery in Armsthorpe, Doncaster, represents a younger generation of miners who, after ten years of mass redundancies and pit closures, are willing to strike for "a fair day's wage for a fair day’s work".

The ever-probing This Week team go beyond the headlines of the day and capture the immediacy of life on the picket line in South Yorkshire. The 1972 strike was the first national miners' strike since the general strike of 1926. This was Peter Taylor's first assignment as a This Week reporter; he had previously worked as a researcher on the series. Markham Main colliery was permanently closed in 1996 and is now the site of a large housing estate.