TRIBUTES have been paid to Henry Richardson, general secretary of the Nottinghamshire area of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) during the strike against pit closures of 1984-5.
Richardson was a tower of strength for the minority of Nottinghamshire miners who were loyal to their union during the strike.
Most of the Nottinghamshire coalfield — the second largest coalfield in Britain after Yorkshire — scabbed, betraying their fellow mineworkers whose jobs were under threat from pit closures.
Richardson picketed his own pits in an effort to persuade the Nottinghamshire miners of their folly — warning them that their pits would be next for closure if they did not stand with the mineworkers of Yorkshire, Scotland, South Wales and elsewhere in resisting the Thatcher government’s closures plan.