Brassed Off

Brassed Off is a 1996 BritishAmerican comedydrama film written and directed by Mark Herman and starring Pete Postlethwaite, Tara Fitzgerald and Ewan McGregor.

The film is set ten years after the yearlong strike in 198485 by the National Union of Mineworkers in Britain. Before the privatisation of British Coal, a wave of pit closures took place. In contrast to the militancy of 198485, the miners put up little resistance. Many had been in debt ever since the long strike, and were prepared to take redundancy money whilst it was on offer. The National Coal Board arranged private ballots between closing a pit immediately with compulsory redundancies which were relatively generous or taking a pit to a review procedure to determine whether a profit could be made in the private sector where any redundancy money would have probably been much lower. Although miners had a tradition of fighting for their jobs, the risk of losing the redundancy money on offer by going forwards to privatisation swung the votes in most ballots to be in favour of pit closure and redundancy. The loss of hope, pride and fighting spirit in what were previously proud mining communities was the basis for the idea of being brassed off.The British miners were bitterly divided in the aftermath of the 8485 strike. Although the majority of Yorkshire miners observed the yearlong strike, a minority broke the strike and were ostracised in their communities as scabs thereafter. The word scab has a slightly broader meaning in Britain than in North America, and this is sometimes used in the film. Rather than referring solely to strikebreakers, the word scab can also refer to a traitor and particularly a traitor to the working class, which is used in the film for cases such as having a relationship with a management employee or going against the recommended line from the trade union. In a Yorkshire mining community, being called a scab is an extremely serious insult. ........

Source: Wikipedia