The 40th Anniversary of the miners’ strike has encouraged considerable academic and media attention on the nature and lessons of the strike (Hendy,2024), but less on the long-term economic and social consequences of Thatcher’s and subsequent Governments’ policies on the former Coalfields. Our report, on the impact of austerity on inequality and deprivation in the coalfield areas in Scotland, England and Wales, argues that the large-scale pit closures and the attack on trade unions and the welfare state by the Thatcher Government from 1984 onwards leave a 40-year legacy of extensive inequality and deprivation. Overall, public expenditure cuts since 1984 have disproportionately impacted coalfield and deindustrialised areas of the UK. Austerity policies over 14 years have only intensified this deprivation. Since 2010, we have shown that welfare reforms and benefit cuts to the former Coalfields amount to £32.6 billion between 2010-2021. Local government funding also took a major hit. Coalfield local authorities now have a combined funding gap in 2025/26 of £447 million (University of Staffordshire,2025).
The report focuses on several case study areas: Fife and South Lanarkshire (Scotland), Barnsley and Stoke on Trent (England) and Neath/Port Talbot and Merthyr Tydfil (Wales), revealing the ‘violent’ consequences of austerity policies. Academics Vicki Cooper and David Whyte (2017) describe the ordinary and mundane violence which comes in a variety of forms. “It is precisely because this violence pervades people’s lives over long periods that the violence of austerity carries an ever-present threat of physical/and or psychological harm.” This includes poor health, lower than average life expectancy, lack of sustainable employment opportunities and destitution arising from insufficient incomes to make ends meet. Our report argues that the current Labour Government’s commitment to austerity and welfare cuts exacerbates and reinforces entrenched inequalities in the former coalfield areas.
The commemoration of the miners’ strike in 2024 has drawn attention to the role of women as both activists and carers in supporting the strike (Massey & Wainwright, 1985). We contend that the pit closure programme and related policies were an assault on women’s economic and social rights. The post-2010 austerity policies not only targeted benefits, but also enacted heavy cuts to local government, and thus all the community services they fund. These cuts are unevenly spread across the country, but, of course, the effects of local government cuts are also uneven in place and analysis by the Women’s Budget Group finds that they disproportionately affect women (Wakefield, 2019).
Our findings reveal the political and electoral hazards for the continuation of austerity(Lago-Peñas, Cadaval-Sampedro, & Herrero-Alcalde, 2024). However, we also challenge the notion that the deindustrialised areas are ‘left behind.’ As one study comments,
Far from being forgotten or left behind, England’s former mining and manufacturing towns have been testing grounds for successive waves of neoliberal policymaking. Although these policies have failed at their stated aim of generating well-paying jobs, they were successful at remaking former industrial heartlands into hubs of logistics and care work….. policymakers and commentators continue to refer to ex-industrial towns as defined by the past, the actual economic structures of these areas are marked by cutting-edge innovations in exploitation and financialisation (Hilhorst,2024).
There is another way. As an example, the Centre for Cities has identified German reunification as an example of ‘levelling up.’ The scale of investment in the former East Germany had to be commensurate with addressing the structural economic problems and inequalities. They show that the German expenditure on the former East between 1990 and 2014 totalled €2 trillion (about £71 billion every year). For comparison, UK “levelling up” funding by 2021 was around £4.8 billion in total. Germany’s equalisation scheme comprised direct transfer payments through benefits and pensions (45%), and the remaining involved large investments in infrastructure and ‘growth-enhancing’ policies (Enenkel, 2021 ).
Our report calls for similar long-term funding and political attention for the former Coalfield areas of the UK. We argue for long-term investment — economic and social policies based on a Just Transition, an end to austerity, revitalised public services and an economic plan that involves unions, workers and communities.
Reference
Massey, D., & Wainwright, H. (1985). Beyond the coalfields: The work of the miners’ support groups. In H. Beynon (Ed.), Digging deeper: Issues in the miners’ strike (pp. 149). Verso.
Connect with the Authors
David Etherington is a Professor at the University of Staffordshire. His research focuses on economic and social inclusion, devolution, trade union organising, and labour market policy. He has led and contributed to studies on work-based harms, coalfield regeneration, and welfare-to-work, including comparative research on the Danish welfare and employment model.
Mia Gray is an economic geographer at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Girton College. Her research explores the political and social effects of austerity, public debt, and local governance. She co-edited Debt and Austerity and is co-editor of the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society.
: Mia Gray 
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Lisa Buckner is Professor of Quantitative Social Policy at the University of Leeds. Her research uses official statistics and large datasets to explore gender inequality, unpaid care, and employment at the local level. She has worked on numerous policy-applied research projects supporting carers and improving labour market inclusion across the UK.