30 years on from the Miner's Strike

[johnnyboxer]

30 years ago, today.........it started

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-26534908



Anyone directly involved?

For me, it was the start of some sort of political awareness & how society worked or didn't

[Gedge]

I was on Mutual aid virtually every other week, flying up from Southampton to east Midlands airport or driving up in a convoy of vans at warp factor 9 ....learnt a lot about different culture and attitudes..not all of it good.........

[Rollingwheels]

Best thing that Maggie ever did, take on you know who and of course win.

Just my opinion.

Cheers

[chico]

I was brought up in a pit village (Sherburn Hill, Co Durham) its claim to fame was the biggest pit heap in Europe, it was huge, like a small Eiger dominating our lives (and a great playground as kids and later as a place to ride our 1st bikes) but quite grim really in its day, we were surrounded by pits, Sherburn Hill closed before the trouble began, (deemed, not economic) some of my relatives moving to the Yorkshire coal mines to save their jobs...around Pontefract area. the village died a death, of the 5 pubs, non remain, the cobblers, the co op, the 2 general dealers, all closed, even 4 churches closed, only the Salvation army and 1 church survived, the Miners Welfare facility closing too,
I can remember the armoured police vans, with all their riot gear on, tearing about from pit to pit, chasing the coaches full of pickets.... in our local workmans club, (my dad was chairman) regular violence erupting between "scabs" and strikers, real hatred still exists in the village to this day....it was an unreal experience watching it all going on...as JB says, it opened my eyes to political awareness too...the hatred and savagery were scary.....it proved the saying to me..."civilisation is only 3 meals deep"
as to the politics of it..looking back...maybe some of the pits were uneconomic, maybe we were moving out of the coal age.....but the harshness of the way it was done was too much , with hindsight it could have been managed differently and more gradually.....but it didn't...so it was what it was....irresistible force meets unmoveable object

[AndyB]

Best thing that Maggie ever did, take on you know who and of course win.

Just my opinion.

Cheers

Everyone's entitled to an opinion and my one is that if you think kicking thousands of families into the gutter is a good thing then sooner or later you'll end up there yourself. I doubt if it'll be fun but it'll give you cause for reflection and that's good for anyone.

[Crossrutted]

Best thing that Maggie ever did, take on you know who and of course win.

Just my opinion.

Cheers

Everyone's entitled to an opinion and my one is that if you think kicking thousands of families into the gutter is a good thing then sooner or later you'll end up there yourself. I doubt if it'll be fun but it'll give you cause for reflection and that's good for anyone.

Mmmmmmn. I wonder whether Scargill ever reflected upon those thousands of families he destroyed?

I doubt it (Just my opinion.)

[AndyB]

Scargill was daft enough to allow the NUM to be the sacrificial goat in a pre-planned assault on the bigger unions by the tories. The unfortunate side effect was communities destroyed to prove a point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridley_Plan

If that was the best thing thatcher ever did then she didn't achieve much in her life. Apart from taking milk out of childrens mouths of course :whistle:

[Crossrutted]

Scargill was daft

Something we agree on.

[grr442]

Even after all this time tensions are high,,,Arthur Scargill took the miners out on a suicidal strike without having a ballot,a ballot he would have probably won,he was on his own personal crusade against the government he is partially responsible for destroying the pits and communities. I don't know if the strike was legal without the ballot but I do know that he was a man who didn't listen to his members but made the decisions on their "behalf",,,I don't remember him at the soup kitchen or having no heating in his house.

[Chewy750]

Interesting how this still polarises opinion after all this time, very rarely does anyone look at this objectively and give a neutral view. I was at sea during this time and both Unions involved (the RMT and MNAOA) were not in support of the NUM and even the RMT Union Rep on the ship was realistic about it all.

Nationalised Industries in the UK have never worked, like most if not all government operated behemoths they are doomed to fail, the list is almost endless:

British Shipbuilders; British Leyland; National Coal Board; British Railways; British Steel, the Ports and the rest.,

If you let a government run an organisation the taxpayer always ends up subsidising the industry because they cannot operate commercially, mainly because they don't know how to. When the government of the day (whichever one it is) makes the decision that they need to bring a 'commercial' operator in it is too late and it all goess down the pan.

After the disruptions of the 70's, the 3 day week, power cuts etc the next government was always going to have to do something about it, the only question was what and how.

And here we go for the abuse and usual responses, the main reason we are a nation of service industries and don't mass produce much any more is and always has been the power of the unions (less so today, but still an issue) particularly within nationalised industry.

We talk about workers rights and something that always worries me is that it always appear to be the nationalised industries where the 'unrest' is more prevelant than in the privately run industries.

Also why is it that when they collapse in a heap and are either wound up as an entity or sold off they suddenly become more profitable, productive and people are happier to work for them. You only have to look at the car industry as an example. BL produced crap cars of crap quality, the same industry in the UK currently produces some of the best cars around (Nissan, Honda, Toyota, Jaguar, Mini and too many more to mention).

As I said, always a good discussion avaialable. Fire away.