THE Salvation Army opened up a new soup kitchen in Oxford in October 1982 to cope with the innocent victims of the strike that had frozen social security payments.
Captain Clive Bishop said: "We seem to be going back in time. William Booth, our founder, was doing this a hundred years ago."
The soup kitchen, at the Salvation Army citadel in St Ebbe's, opened following a request from the Claimants' Union, the group that campaigned for the unemployed.
The union told the Salvation Army the need was desperate in the light of the week-old strike by two civil service unions which closed the Department of Health and Social Security office in Marston Road.
Although an emergency office for payments was opened at South Oxford Middle School, payments were being restricted to £22.50 per week for single people and £36 for a couple.
The Church Army hostel,. in Lucy Faithfull House, helped out by supplying the Salvation Army with food to make sausage, chips and beans.
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