Pride: The Unlikely Story of the True Heroes of the Miner's Strike

by Tim Tate

The Falklands War was the big turning point for us – especially in this part of Wales. More than a hundred years before, a group of people had left the valleys and gone to Patagonia in Argentina, where they set up a Welsh-speaking community. That community thrived and, when the war happened, we knew that some of the young soldiers fighting for Argentina would be called David Jones, or whatever: they might speak Welsh with a Spanish accent but they still spoke Welsh. So how could they be the enemy? On top of that, much of the Falklands was owned or managed by British coal companies – and we saw how they had always treated us here in the Welsh coal-mining communities. So we were very, very torn about the Falklands. We didn’t understand why we were going to war.