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In 1984 South Yorkshire mining villages were the scene of one of the biggest civil conflicts in England in living memory.

Flying pickets, wives of striking miners, and those who kept on working tell their stories: read their stories here, and you can read and listen to more strike stories via the links below.

1:听 Life in the pits

I started in the mines in 1948 when I were fifteen. First of all when you were young you started in pit bottom lowering tubs down and that. And then when I was sixteen I went pony driving. Men used to fill tubs and you used to go up with your pony and take some empties in and fetch full ones out.

Then when I were eighteen I went on face filling coal. Then in 1964 I went deputying and became an official. Thirty six year!

Looking back now I think it were a good living, you worked hard but when you'd done your work nobody bothered you. When it were shift end you'd come out of the mine, got bathed and went home. It were good, I mean you met each other at night, went to the pictures or went for a drink, better than now: there were no violence.

2: A New Career

We'd been married six years while he worked at the pit, he started at Monkton One and Two in 1957 and left in '66. He worked in the safety office but also did coalface work. His only reason for leaving the pit was that the rumours were going around that the pits were closing and he thought this was a way to reassess his view on a career.

And his choice of new career was the Prison Service. People used to say "aren't you frightened of him working with prisoners?" and I used to say "how more scary can it be than going down a pit and having uncontrol of all that's above you?"

I mean he had a narrow escape: muck fell and he was on his way out and it cut his arm. So he's got quite a bad scar on his arm. He wouldn't ever have missed the mining experience. I never worried about it because I grew up with it.

There were three miners in the family, it was a way of life in the area. Like a lot of other areas you grow up with these things and you don't think of the danger aspect. Everyone's happy, everybody's doing what they do and it's just, as I say, another way of life.

3: The flying picket

I live at Royston, I worked from 1978 to 1993. I worked at Royston Drift until it shut in 1989 and I was transferred to Charleston until that shut.

It were a good job: good set of lads where I worked; decent hours; decent money. I worked on the face or I worked developing headings to pin the faces back. My father worked there so obviously all his friends used to walk up to work together.

I did twelve months on strike to try to keep the pits open, and obviously we failed. But to move out of me village where I'd lived all me life and worked and then to travel to Wakefield to work somewhere else, it were a big wrench.

We'd go picketing and I'd go away most of the time. Most of the older men stopped at home and picketed up at the drift and we used to - we were the flying pickets.

I'd got a car so the best way to keep on the road were for the union to pay for tax and that, give me a bit of petrol money. We used to go to drift, then get away somewhere, get to Nottingham or owt like that, then come back nicely for the soup kitchen.

Read and listen to more strike stories by clicking on the links below.