The Miner's Strike - 25 years ago yesterday..

[Flyboy]

Well she changed the law about picketing and the power of the police, to suit her agenda. Then, when she wasn't satisfied with that, she turned her attention the Trade Union Movement as a whole. She changed the law to ban many civil servants from joining a union, for example. I am sure there must be many on here, who remember more.

I think we will be needing more than wind,wave and solar energy..and no coal fired or gas fired energy is not the only answer..putting our eggs in one basket is a poor idea...

I think the governments recent support for nuclear(and now improved designs) has to be another direction we should be pushing towards.

[LondonRoad]

Originally Posted by Maggy J

I think we will be needing more than wind,wave and solar energy..and no coal fired or gas fired energy is not the only answer..putting our eggs in one basket is a poor idea...

I think the governments recent support for nuclear(and now improved designs) has to be another direction we should be pushing towards.

and reduction in usage of energy. We've still got a long way to go on that..

Originally Posted by Flyboy

Well she changed the law about picketing and the power of the police, to suit her agenda. Then, when she wasn't satisfied with that, she turned her attention the Trade Union Movement as a whole. She changed the law to ban many civil servants from joining a union, for example. I am sure there must be many on here, who remember more.

Ahem - 150 people at GCHQ is a new definition of "many" I hadn't come across before........ (but the 14 staff shouldn't have been sacked).

A lot of the employees at Q are/were ex-forces, so weren't big Union fans (a lot of my ex-colleagues work(ed) there.

However, I personally think banning Unions at Q was wrong, and was pleased when they were re-instated in '97.

Originally Posted by Flyboy

Well she changed the law about picketing and the power of the police, to suit her agenda.

Mmm, secondary picketing, because that was a fair and democratic thing for disgruntled workers to do, wasn't it.

I note Labour has not reversed that particular piece of Thatcher's trade union reform. They could have, of course; they have reversed other parts of it.

[Flyboy]

See above post.

She still changed laws to suit her anti-union agenda, despite whether you consider them to be fair or not.

Yes, she did. Political parties have been changing the law to suit their agendas for as long as there have been political parties. This is not surprising, nor is it somehow underhand or criminal. It's what we elect them for, in fact.

[Julian]

Originally Posted by Chris

Yes, she did. Political parties have been changing the law to suit their agendas for as long as there have been political parties. This is not surprising, nor is it somehow underhand or criminal. It's what we elect them for, in fact.

Exactly.

I wonder what year it will be before some people stop blaming Maggie Thatcher/The conservative governments of the 70's/80's for all the ills of today/tomorrow.

[LondonRoad]

Originally Posted by Chris

Yes, she did. Political parties have been changing the law to suit their agendas for as long as there have been political parties. This is not surprising, nor is it somehow underhand or criminal. It's what we elect them for, in fact.

..and at that time she did have fairly substantial support from the British Public. The unions had pretty much abused their power for sometime before Thatcher came to power so union bashing was popular, especially those nasty miners who deprived our power stations of coal meaning we had to have power cuts.

IMHO Thatcher got personal and took it too far, destroying communities and families in the process.

She forced Scargill's hand at a time when she knew she had 5 aces.

---------- Post added at 12:15 ---------- Previous post was at 12:11 ----------

Originally Posted by Julian

Exactly.

I wonder what year it will be before some people stop blaming Maggie Thatcher/The conservative governments of the 70's/80's for all the ills of today/tomorrow.

From the experience of when the public stopped blaming Labour and the Unions for the ills of the 70s, I would say it should stop around about the date of the next General election.

Originally Posted by harmitage

..and at that time she did have fairly substantial support from the British Public. The unions had pretty much abused their power for sometime before Thatcher came to power so union bashing was popular, especially those nasty miners who deprived our power stations of coal meaning we had to have power cuts.

IMHO Thatcher got personal and took it too far, destroying communities and families in the process.

She forced Scargill's hand at a time when she knew she had 5 aces.

---------- Post added at 12:15 ---------- Previous post was at 12:11 ----------



From the experience of when the public stopped blaming Labour and the Unions for the ills of the 70s, I would say it should stop around about the date of the next General election.

And it wasn't personal/political with Arthur Scargill?

[LondonRoad]

Originally Posted by foreverwar

And it wasn't personal/political with Arthur Scargill?

Hmmm, certainly political, not sure if it was personal, I think he'd have acted the same with any Conservative Prime Minister hell bent on destroying his beloved mining industry, and thereby his power base.

Originally Posted by harmitage

..and at that time she did have fairly substantial support from the British Public. The unions had pretty much abused their power for sometime before Thatcher came to power so union bashing was popular, especially those nasty miners who deprived our power stations of coal meaning we had to have power cuts.

IMHO Thatcher got personal and took it too far, destroying communities and families in the process.

She forced Scargill's hand at a time when she knew she had 5 aces.

Well, it's no secret that she ordered power stations to stockpile coal for months beforehand. Actually I remember being on holiday during the strike and in a playground next to a railway, and a great big coal train going past. I was amazed that it was possible to fill a train with coal. In fact I ran to find my parents to tell them. I remember by dad saying we'd have to phone Arthur Scargill and warn him.

The thing is, it might sound extreme to us now but we are a generation that has, by and large, grown up without any concept of what it was like when the question of who actually ran the country was topical. The trade unions were very, very powerful and were making it difficult for the elected government to manage the country and the economy.

The NUM may have represented a large number of people but they were still a single-interest pressure group at the end of the day, and such organisations have no business hobbling the entire country and everyone else's interests just so they're alright Jack.

I would say that redressing the imbalance was a perfectly reasonable policy aim of Thatcher's government. It may well have been ruthless in its execution but I think those who claim she let it 'get personal' are simply buying into a convenient parody of the handbag-waving nasty woman. Nobody who gets into a personal grudge match is able to stay the course in the measured, determined way she did for the 12 months it took to break the strike.

The point about destroying communities and families is another myth I take issue with. The industry was dying. Thatcher was no more the destroyer than a doctor who turns of a life support machine is a murderer. She dealt the final blow, yes, but if she hadn't, it would have been a lingering death that would have brought the entire country down with it.

From the experience of when the public stopped blaming Labour and the Unions for the ills of the 70s, I would say it should stop around about the date of the next General election.

It's amazing, when you look around threads on this forum, how many people simply assume the next Government will be a Tory one. That's the kind of thinking Labour enjoyed going into the 1997 election. Sometimes prophesies become self-fulfilling. Let's hope so, anyway.

Originally Posted by harmitage

Hmmm, certainly political, not sure if it was personal, I think he'd have acted the same with any Conservative Prime Minister hell bent on destroying his beloved mining industry, and thereby his power base.

Because, of course, Arthur was elected by the people of the UK to bring down the government (again, trying to repeat his actions in the 70's with Heath)?

To quote the Labour Leader (Neil Kinnock) at the time -
"The strike was ruined the minute it was politicised and in the mind of Arthur Scargill it was always a political struggle. He fed himself the political illusion that as long as the miners were united they had the right to destabilise and overthrow the democratically elected government. The miners didn't deserve him, they deserved much, much better. My view is Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill deserved each other. But no-one else did."

[LondonRoad]

Originally Posted by Chris

It may well have been ruthless in its execution but I think those who claim she let it 'get personal' are simply buying into a convenient parody of the handbag-waving nasty woman. Nobody who gets into a personal grudge match is able to stay the course in the measured, determined way she did for the 12 months it took to break the strike.

The point about destroying communities and families is another myth I take issue with. The industry was dying. Thatcher was no more the destroyer than a doctor who turns of a life support machine is a murderer. She dealt the final blow, yes, but if she hadn't, it would have been a lingering death that would have brought the entire country down with it.

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It's amazing, when you look around threads on this forum, how many people simply assume the next Government will be a Tory one. That's the kind of thinking Labour enjoyed going into the 1997 election. Sometimes prophesies become self-fulfilling. Let's hope so, anyway.

The strike was broken a long time before the official 12 months. I can't speak for anybody else but I'm not buying into any parody you describe. I'm buying into the fact that the strike could have ended earlier. I give her credit where it's due, she prepared for the battle, she stockpiled coal, she got the red tops and police onside. Her victory was complete and decisive. The calculations had already been done before the strike was started. The victory was never in doubt. Prolonging the strike suggests to me personal and vindictive reasons.

I don't agree that the industry was dying. It certainly required to be significantly cored back but not to the butchering extent that transpired. Again, I think this was personal. It still isn't dead yet and could have survived as a larger viable industrly than it presently is.

I'm not sure why you think the destruction of families and communities is a myth, it happened. If you're suggesting it would have happened anyway you are probably right to some degree but not to the depth of bitterness that exists in many ex mining communities to this day.

On you're final point, I'm not assuming anything, it was a throwaway line in response to Julian's post. As unpopular as Brown and Labour are in some quarters I'm not convinced Cameron is the right man to gain the necessary support from the middle ground seats who determine who'll win the election.

The strike ended when the NUM declared it ended and marched back to work. That was after 12 months. It may have been broken earlier than that, but the time it took for Scargill to realise he wasn't going to be allowed to act like a tinpot revolutionary isn't something that can be laid at Margaret Thatcher's door.

Deep mining in this country is something that is very, very difficult to do profitably when cheap, strip-mined coal can be brought in from elsewhere. A number of deep mines existed post-privatisation. Virtually all of them have now gone, even the ones that had undergone the modernisation that (ostensibly) was one of the things the miners objected to. On that basis I find it hard to agree to the conjecture that many of the mines that were closed pre-privatisation 'could have survived'.

I'm not saying that the destruction of families was a myth. I'm saying the notion that Thatcher is Destroyer of Families is a myth.