It's now 40 years since the miners' strike hit Ayrshire

When thousands of Ayrshire miners downed tools on Friday, March 9, 1984, they were fighting to preserve generations of history and a future not blighted by poverty and unemployment.

They believed Margaret Thatcher's government, supported by the National Coal Board (NCB), wanted to destroy the industry.

But the government said the industry was running at a loss and change was inevitable.

And 40 years on, the bitter divisions caused by the strike are far from healed - and emotions remain raw.

Jim McMahon, now an East Ayrshire councillor representing Cumnock and New Cumnock, was a miner from Logan when National Union of Miners leader Arthur Scargill called the strike.

Today, he says: "I knew the devastation that was going to follow. They took away the jobs and ripped the heart out of communities."

Jim himself was arrested when miners picketed North Ayrshire's Hunterston ore terminal in May 1984 to stop "scab coal" being brought in from overseas.

An estimated 1,000 miners were met by 2,000 police officers - many mounted on horses - determined to allow dozens of Yuill and Dodds lorries to leave the site carrying coal shipped in from South Africa and South America.

At 12.57pm that day, the first of the 39 lorries swept in through the entrance as the pickets surged forward towards the police lines, trying to outflank them.

But the police line held firm and the frustrated miners could only watch and jeer as the lorries sped past them.

It took just three minutes for all the lorries to make it through.

And then the violence erupted.

Pickets pushed forward on the left, and a brigade of mounted police advanced to repel them.

A bottle was thrown, a scuffle broke out, and police hats flew through the air. A band of officers moved right into the crowd in a bid to break it up.

Then the arrests began. Police filled vans with more than 80 pickets over two days.

Jim said: "I was talking to the police officer and suddenly his attitude changed. A shove came from the back.

"I fell. I was arrested, led to a van and my photograph was taken.”

Councillor McMahon landed in the dock at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court.

His solicitor accused Sheriff David Smith of stating publicly beforehand that he intended to "hammer" the miners in court.

Mr Penny said the sheriff should not judge the case in light of stating his intentions before the hearing. 

Mr McMahon said: “My lawyer was a brave man. I was the first miner in front of the sheriff. 

"I was fined £150. In 1984 that was a lot of money. The average breach of the peace was £20.”

The SNP councillor says one of the police officers who gave corroborating evidence in court was not even present when the so-called offence occurred.

He was accused of using offensive language and calling a police officer a fascist – an allegation Jim said was made up.

He added: “I felt anger at being arrested for what I deemed as my right to protest."

The sometimes brutal action against the miners in Scotland and elsewhere - most notably at the Orgreave coking plant in South Yorkshire - led to a loss of trust in the police in many communities.

But despite the drama of the effort to stop the coal carrying lorries - which, within weeks, would turn grass verges through villages like Fairlie black - the real story was elsewhere in Ayrshire.

Mining communities from the Cumnock area, and from parts of South Ayrshire, were left devastated by the dispute, which would run for 11 months, three weeks and four days.

“I was married with a daughter," Jim said, "and it wasn’t a good time for me to go on strike.

"But is there ever a good time for anyone to go on strike?

“You know that you will never get back the money that you lose. But the strike was about much more than wages or conditions.

“It was about saving jobs and saving whole communities. Coal mining was in my blood and that’s why I striked from the first day to the very last."

In Cumnock and Doon Valley, pickets were mounted at Killoch and Barony, as well as at Knockshinnoch and Waterside.

A 16-man sit-in was staged in one of the surface buildings in Killoch.

One month in, miners were confident they were on their way to victory - a feeling echoed by Scottish miners' leader Mick McGahey as he stood before 600 people in Cumnock Town Hall and declared: “We can win our fight.”

The STUC’s Day of Action in May saw thousands of people march through the streets of Cumnock in the biggest rally the area had ever seen. 

But as the strike continued, some men were lured back by the NCB, under promises of high bonuses and generous redundancy packages. The pressure on families living on a mere £15 a week from the union took its toll.

Jim remembers the day in March 1985 when, strike over, he returned to work at the National Coal Board pit.

The councillor added: “We lost the fight. We knew that was the end.

"There was no help. They closed the pits and they left us as an industrial graveyard.

"We are left with monuments. That is what hurts so much. They just walked away after the strike and left us.”

He continued: "You look across East Ayrshire now and see the capacity of the villages and how much the population has dwindled.

"I think the loss of coal mining has led to around 6,000 jobs going. Not just the miners but the factories, suppliers and a lot of others that relied on mining.

"They simply didn't re-invest in the area. The loss of coal mining has had a devastating effect."

The Scottish Government finally pardoned those arrested during the strike last year, but many are still fighting to this day for compensation for their wrongful arrests.

But the mines, as predicted by the NUM all those years ago, have now long gone.