Thirty years ago this Christmas, my employer, the National Coal Board sent the seasonal message (above) to me and every striking miner in the country. It was also printed in local newspapers to make sure we strikers got the message.

Not exactly a lot of festive cheer around at the time. We had been on strike for nine long months, in the middle of a cold, cold winter with no heating and no money.

For those nine months we had been battered by Thatcher’s paramilitary police, vilified as “the enemy within” and abandoned by the TUC and Labour Party leadership.

The NCB thought Christmas gave them the opportunity to break our resolve by tempting us back with an out-and-out bribe. The message was get back to work or starve.

Incidentally, look at the wages on offer and compare them to wages today — in George Osborne’s prosperous Britain, where the national minimum wage is just £260 a week, 30 years later!

Only a few took the 30 pieces of silver and climbed aboard armoured buses to scab on their fellow workmates, “escorted” into work by hundreds of riot police. The rest of us gritted our teeth, told the NCB where to put their “incentive” and continued the fight. We might not have the money to buy our kids presents, we might be cold and hungry but we would never be tarnished with the indelible stain of scab.

While picketing and campaigning went on, efforts were intensified to make sure that — penniless or not — Christmas would be something never to be forgotten in our communities.

Trees were cut down for logs, surface coal seams were dug with a vengeance, despite the dangers (three died when seams collapsed).

I remember workers at a local furniture factory delivering lorry loads of off-cuts outside the miners welfare office for strikers’ fires. We were determined to be warm if not festive.

Now I’m one of those bah-humbuggers that hate Christmas but I have to admit that recalling that strike Christmas brings a tear to my eye. It’s impossible to explain adequately the sense of community solidarity that existed, showing the best of working-class versatility and strength at every level.

At a strike rally in Sheffield on November 8 I had heard the leader of the French miners Alain Simon give a pledge that “every striker’s child shall have a toy for Christmas.”

And, oh boy, was he true to his word. Lorries in convoy crossed the Channel delivering toys for every striker’s child in time for Christmas, a gesture of true solidarity from our French brothers.

I remember walking into the Goldwell Rooms in Chesterfield, loaned by Chesterfield Borough Council to the Women’s Action Group (not all Labour Party members were like Neil Kinnock and some Labour councils had a bit of bottle in those days), and seeing it crammed full of toys and gifts, with French lorries still being unloaded.

Scared of spoiling what hard-man image I had left, I went outside to see fellow strikers overcome with emotion.

We had braved the might of Thatcher’s thugs only to be brought to tears by French teddy bears!

The food parcels were a little different this time. Instead of the staples we had become used to, we had fresh vegetables and even massive frozen turkeys. Talk about manna from heaven.

The strike centres were buzzing and bursting to the seams. Starved back to work for Christmas — dream on Maggie!

Not only did I get the previously undreamed of luxury of a Christmas pud in my food parcel, I had two massive frozen turkeys. They were so big they must have been part ostrich.

Now this posed me a serious ethical dilemma. I was a vegetarian.

I looked at the birds and made a decision — as an animal lover I could not let those turkeys die in vain.

My dad was a retired miner and only lived just round the corner so I staggered to his house with one of the turkeys.

“I’ve got a spare turkey for you, Dad.”

“I’ve got one, our Alan gave it me.”

My late brother was NUM branch delegate at Ireland pit and he’d also been given two turkeys.

I think that we, the whole family, including the dog, dined on turkey until February, as did every striker.

Add to that all the parties in every village, the strike centre discos and celebrations of every description and it added up to what every striker will confirm was the best Christmas ever.

I should feel sorry, I suppose, for the scabs, spending their Judas money but unable to share in such magnificent communal events, but I won’t. They deserve only loathing for betraying their union and workmates.

They might have had the money but we have the memories.

That festive season showed the labour movement at its finest with solidarity, generosity and a fellowship never seen before or since.

Add to that the local shopkeepers, our neighbours and friends who gave as much as they could to sustain us through what could have been a bleak and dispiriting time, and it becomes apparent why we argued that we weren’t just fighting for our jobs but also our communities.

So this year, the 30th anniversary of that strike Christmas, we will allow ourselves to be a little nostalgic and even misty eyed as we remember the greatest Christmas we ever had.

I myself will raise a glass in its memory and to the memory of those heroes and giants, some sadly now gone, who fought that great battle.

Proud, unbowed and still fighting.

John Dunn is a former Derbyshire miner.