He recalls why he and hundreds of others at the pit decided to down tools and join the picket line.

"Cortonwood Colliery had been threatened with closure only a few weeks after the workforce there had been told it would stay open," said Mr Whitehead, of Claylands Grove, Whitwell.

"Spontaneously, miners picketed across Yorkshire, and within the space of a few hours, the entire Yorkshire coalfield was at a standstill."

"I accepted the argument that was put forward – that closures were going to be a disaster, and I did not for a minute accept the coal board's line that they were not going to close pits."

"But it was a picket line – and you just did not cross it."

Scenes of chaos and violence on the picket lines became commonplace throughout the year of union action, and Mr Whitehead said this was borne out of miners' frustration that some fellow colleagues did not support the strike and went back to work.

He said: "I think the violence was over-played, but the stakes were high, emotions were raw, and we saw people undermining what we were trying to do. My view on it was this: for those who crossed the picket line, the result was going to be the same for us as it was for them."

Like thousands of other miners during the strike, Mr Whitehead had to live on very little, and relied on hand-outs to survive while he was out of work.

"We were skint and we were struggling. We were making the sacrifice in order to fight for and defend our jobs and communities, but other people, for selfish reasons, refused to see that argument," said Mr Whitehead, who is now operations manager for housing association Acis.

"But my heart is not hard enough to really bemoan the people who went back to work – many, many months into the strike. For some of our lads, it was tragic. They were literally starved back to work. We were looking at men who had been on strike for 10 or 11 months, who had to go back to work because they had no other choice."

But after 12 months of fighting for the future of the mining industry on the picket line, like miners all over the country, Shireoaks pit workers retrieved their tools and went back to work without coming to an agreement with the Government.

Mr Whitehead said: "I felt we failed. I look back now with pride that I did stick it out, we stuck together and there is a pride in fighting for what you believe in. But it felt like a big, heavy defeat. But looking back on it now, it was a remarkable achievement that we stayed out for a year, and it took the Government, and everything they could throw at us, a year to actually defeat us."

He added: "It was a defeat because the pits have been closed, but having said that, I think they were hell-bent on closing them anyway. But it's better to have fought and lost than to have sat back and simply taken it."