Miners strike back: bitter legacy rears its head in old pit village

Just as the funeral proceedings were starting in London, a world away, in the old pit village of Easington Colliery, the former Durham miners unveiled a banner that parodied Thatcher's evocation of the prayer of St Francis of Assisi on the steps of Downing Street in 1979.

“Where there are pits may we bring destruction, where there are communities may we bring strife, where there is work may we bring unemployment, where there is hope, may we bring despair,” it said.

It was a bitter-sweet coincidence that Thatcher’s funeral occurred 20 years ago to the day that Easington Colliery closed down. The Durham Miners’ Association had already organised an all-day commemoration at their local club. They were never going to cancel it for their old nemesis.

That closure did not happen on her watch. It happened on that of her successor, John Major. Nor was she the first British prime minister to order pit closures, but the bitterness towards her, a legacy in particular of the miners' strike, is of a different order.

Easington Colliery in east Durham was a one-industry town. When the miners went on strike in 1984, the pit canteen had to supply food to 500 families.

Yesterday a few wore T-shirts with the slogan “Generations of trade unionists will dance on Thatcher’s grave”.

One of them was David Hopper (70), general secretary of the Durham Miners' Association. "I'm here to celebrate Thatcher's demise for what she did to our people and our communities. I'm pleased that I have outlived her," he said.

The television was left off for the funeral. The miners had heard enough already. "It's an absolute obscenity that we have this stage-managed performance that is going on in London today," said David Douglass, a miner for 42 years and former trade union official.

"How many sycophants can you cram into one studio and hear them eulogise this woman? I heard the personal names of the horses leading this parade. This event would be worthy of North Korea. "

Some collieries are named after towns, but Easington was named after the colliery that was established in 1899.

The mine shaft still stands sentinel overlooking the North Sea in a landscaped park opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 2001. The mine wheel is the centrepiece of a memorial to those who died, including 83 who were killed in a disaster in 1951.

The town, with its rows of red-brick terraces gently sloping towards the sea cliffs, has a picturesque quality about it at a superficial glance. Billy Elliott , the story of a miner's son who discovers ballet, was filmed here.

On closer inspection, however, the signs of terminal decline are everywhere. The paintwork is flaking on the houses and the shops are boarded up.

One two-bedroom house in need of renovation is on sale for £14,500, the beautiful red-brick junior school with its copper dome is derelict and its windows are broken. The school has been closed since 1994, the year after the mine closed down with the loss of 1,300 jobs. No jobs means no families and no families means no children.

Twenty years on from the pit closure, and despite 13 years of Labour government, the place remains on its knees.

The old miners’ welfare centre is now a social welfare centre for unemployed people.

"This town has never recovered," said Anthony Bell (30) who is doing a course in fitting solar panels on roofs. "She started everything. Problems would have happened in the long term but it all happened 10 to 15 years before it should have happened. Everybody is unemployed around here. We've got nothing."