'The most important year of my life' - twenty five years on, Bishop describes his experience of the Miners' Strike.

The former vicar of a mining community, Bishop John Packer tells the BBC of the role played by the church

The Bishop of Ripon and Leeds has told the BBC that the Miner’s Strike 25 years ago was the most important year of his life for the development of his faith.

Bishop John Packer was Vicar of the mining parish of Wath-upon-Dearne in the Diocese of Sheffield throughout the strike, and speaking on the BBC Radio Leeds Sunday programme with Richard Staples (Sunday March 8th), Bishop John Packer said the church had a vital role to play.

"It was a very difficult time for the  community. Many of our parishioners worked at Cortonwood where the strike began and others at Wath Main and Manvers and the pressure on the community, described by the Prime Minister of the time as the ‘enemy within’, made us feel very much that that we were rejected by the society in which we lived – and alongside that there was the practical problems for people in that they simply did not have enough food.

"In those mining communities the church was an essential part of the whole community and we worked alongside many other people in the provision of food parcels, in listening to people, in trying to help them. Our church school had a lot of children at it who were simply not getting enough food at home. I remember my own daughter who was 8 at the time, coming home in tears because of people in her class who simply didn’t have enough to eat.”

Bishop Packer was said that it wasn’t true to say the church was only on one side during the dispute. “The church was deeply involved – we were also careful to provide help and support for those who went back before the end of the strike , many of them feeling simply that they had to because they needed to earn something for their families and they were deeply unpopular within the community itself so the church had a role with them as well so it wasn’t simply that the church was on one side though I think it is true to say that the churches were desperately concerned for the plight of those in our communities and indeed within our congregations.”

Asked how the events affected his own faith, Bishop Packer said that it was the most important period of his life. “It was the most important year of my life in terms of my own developing faith, and thinking through the way in which Christianity is there for people on both sides of disputes like that. We had two local preachers within our own church. One of them was a face worker and so on strike throughout the strike, the other was a Deputy and so because [his union] didn’t join the strike he was being paid throughout the strike - and the two of them led our worship. The press got hold of that and came and interviewed them, having filmed them conducting worship, and asked them, ‘How can you be leading worship together in the parish church when you’re on opposite side of the most bitter strike in the century?’ And I was extremely proud of the way they talked about the way in which their faith was something which enabled them to support each other, to be alongside each other, listen to each other despite the tensions within the community. Whether or not they actually disagreed as much as the press wanted them to disagree, I’m not so sure, but it was a real symbol of the way in which, despite everything, people needed to be held together and particularly that  people needed to be held together in Christ.”

 “One of the extraordinary things about the miners’ strike period” added Bishop Packer, “was the way in which church congregations increased in number. People saw the church as somewhere to which they could come, which wasn’t on  either side, which wasn’t involved in the bitterness, and where they could actually look outside their own experiences and cling to a faith which for some people was very deep, for others there wasn’t certainty about faith but nevertheless they could see something which was beyond themselves.”