Andy Kolundzic

Cadeby Colliery - Closed November 1986

It was hard, I’d just got married at Christmas in ’83 and my wife was pregnant. My daughter was a strike baby, she was born in October ’84. Initially I was living off savings which eventually ran out. I had to freeze my mortgage. I had to go down to my mums’ at half five, six o’clock in the morning to cadge a fag off her before she went to work. We had people who my wife worked with, came through with big food parcels. I felt a bit humble that these people that I didn’t even know were donating food so that we could live and I never forgot that. People you didn’t know supporting you, otherwise you would have starved, I don’t know what we’d have done.

When you see on the news about people having talks about having talks, and Mrs Thatcher calls us ‘the enemy within’ you can’t see any end of the strike. At the time I hated people who went back to work, breaking the strike. I can sort of understand to a point why they might have done it financially, but I still can’t forgive.