Miners Strike 1984

It was a very turbulent time. The killing of David Wilkie always stands out in my mind. No idea why that one in particular.

And then you had Arthur Scargill.

Like all heads of trade unions he started off with a small house and a big trade union and ended up with a big house (paid for by stealing donations from Libya and Russia to the striking miners) and a small trade union.

Never, ever trust a socialist.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Scargill

No she didn't, she destroyed towns, communities and families, what she did was horrendous.

Thatchers right hand man was norman Tebbit

His solution to self improvement was to "Get on your bike", well, because that's what Tebbit's dad did!

Pr|ck

She had a years reserve of coal to fuel the nation built up before she took them on. So the strikes were never going to work anyway. Would never lead to shortages. The workers and unions would eventually run out of money. It was a very deliberate, surgical and ruthless take-down.

There are a good few British people who agree.

Very good series. Thatcher was a vicious woman who carried out class warfare on the miners. But the NUM was terribly led by Scargill who was more interested in fighting a political battle with the Conservatives than in working for his members

Wasn't exactly a surgical strike was it? - a typical cowardly IRA action that put the lives of many innocents at risk.

The miners' strike wasn't just about jobs it was about whole communities that were built around the pits - the pits provided the jobs (and the jobs supported the shops and pubs), and the National Coal Board provided the houses. Visit these communities now - once proud (but rough) places, they are desolate.

Arthur Scargill knew what was coming, but why he played his hand the way he did - when he would have had a lot of support - is beyond me. West Yorkshire/South Yorkshire/Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire/Lancashire constabularies (in whose force areas the strikes took place) would have had many officers who were sympathetic to the miners, which is why officers were bussed in from areas outside mining communities (such as the Metropolitan Police, which unlike other constabularies was not then under local control but under the control of the Home Office).

The IRA bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton, October 1984. Morrissey subsequently praised the bombers.

Also worth a listen - https://www.rte.ie/culture/2023/0818/1399362-how-the-smiths-irish-tour-turned-incendiary-documentary-on-one/

She was right to a point, but went too far.

I don't think miners were treated that badly, they were well paid in comparisin to myseld anyway. Friends that left school in the seventies were on five times what I was paid for full time work.

The miners were seen as a threat when Heath went to the country. There was a three day week because of the energy crisis and the miners saw their opportunity so along came the three day working week and Heath went to the country rather than submit to blackmail from the miners unions.

The great British public don't like discomfort and didn't like the cut in pay either, so they ousted Heath and put in Laboutr who paid up and ended the strike.

That was the worst move the voters would make until Brexit.

Some unions misused their power and Maggie waded in. Her remedy was well over the top, she hated unions and what the miners did.

The UK is still paying a heavy price for Maggies approach.

Including a lot of pensioners

She and her government used the money from council house purchases to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. The money wasn’t reinvested in more housing or social programs.

North Sea oil money was squandered in the same way. In Norway, a sovereign wealth fund was created to manage their oil money for the future generations. Norway was as poor as Ireland until the 60’s and look at it now.

She was no hero. The state purposely stockpiled coal for years after the previous strike when Ted Heath had to relent to the miners of face bankrupting the Country.

They knew Scargill would never give in either. It was always going to be a brutal battle.

fighting a political battle was the only way he could fight for the workers.

he was up against a woman who would have gone to no lengths to put down the workers.

Read the thread :)

when the conservatives announced a new coal mine, all those Labour people mourning the pit closures then were outraged about the impact on climate change.

https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/07/uk-first-new-coalmine-for-30-years-gets-go-ahead-in-cumbria

Scargill made key strategic errors. He should have called for a national ballot, which he likely would have won, and broken the divisions within the minors that existed on a county by county level. He also persisted beyond a rational point, in effect turning a bad loss into an existential movement scuttling defeat.

However, it really isn't a simple issue. Scargill was correct in terms of the big picture and the direction of travel: for him it was an existential issue and history has proven him 100% correct on that point. A National Strike that could bring the National Coal Board / Government to the table so that a deal could be cut around ring fencing pit closures was the only way to slow the loss of jobs. Sure it seems silly and counter intuitive in retrospect, but the writing was on the wall already and drastic action was needed. Entire communities and lives were due to be destroyed, and it was only a matter of *when*. In that sense, once Scargill had the lads out he deduced that they could never go back in without a deal. You can say his mistakes hastened the demise of the miners and their unions, but that demise was coming anyway. Pit volume and mining employment was ever decreasing so they really didn't have anything to lose.

In any case, as the documentary summarises, no matter what approach Scargill chose the reality is that he and his union would have been portrayed incorrectly in media. This was the era of McKenzie at the Sun and class based editorial decisions within the BBC and ITV current affairs rooms (it was also an era influenced by the ongoing conflict in the North and the continuing censorship directed by Government). Media coverage was doctored, one eyed and deeply biased with facts changed and footage sequenced as necessary to support an anti Union narrative. It is therefore hugely naïve to think that Scargill had a path to victory, even if it is correct to point at strategic errors that made the life of Government / Media easier.

It is important to underline that the bias in media is historical fact. South Yorkshire police fabricated statements and evidence and media spliced footage in a way that supported an unlawful narrative discordant from reality. A similar effort was employed after the Hillsborough disaster. In this light, what people who lived through the time experienced is deeply distorted. Those working away in London and reading their paper / listening to the BBC - no matter how open minded - were being fed pure Government propaganda. Mining could not have survived, but a serious national conversation around how to ramp it down fairly, with retraining opportunities and replacement of jobs never happened. Instead the Conservative apparatus went to war on the miners, correctly deducing that it was to their political benefit to do so.

The big thing that came through the individual stories covered by the documentary is the crippling loss of identity experienced on both an individual and community level. Generations of working men "down pit" left with no job, no future, no hope. Their identity could not have survived of course, mining was always going to become obsolete. But it didn't have to become a class war by proxy, where "victory" for the Conservative Government meant abject poverty and desolation for mining communities.

the imported coal was actually often low grade, not to mention used slave labour to dig it out of the ground.

low grade coal is generally more polluting then some of the british stuff that came out of the ground which was often high grade, of course some of it was low as well but quite a lot of it was quite decent.

welsh coal as an example is said to be among the best in the world if not the best.

I remember them looking for the NUM's money and tracing a stash to a Bank of Ireland account in Dublin. I don't know if Thatcher's crowd managed to get their hands on it.

The only union that Thatcher ever supported was Solidarity in Poland, but people in the UK standing up for rights was a definite no no.

quite strange she supported solidarity in poland when she was backing the government there also.

obviously some falling out with the polish government or something.

more a backer then a supporter, as in she was happy to use them when it suited her.

oh yeah it's great the soviet union is no more, it was a brutal regime that is no loss to anyone TBH.

nobody because what closed before she came to power were small pits that could not be modernised, she on the other hand closed profitable pits that were ripe for modernisation and imported coal at multiples of the cost which was dug out of the ground using brutalised slave labour.

she put the police in to break up the strike and beat up workers, this has been admitted to even indirectly by her.

there was no point in having a ballot because the strike had enough support to justify it and carry it.

The miners were there own worst enemy. The whole of the 70s they were on strike every five minutes and the owners of the mines were also in on it as the government had no choice but to bail the mine out

also remember the miners were very prone to violence too and I believe scargill made huge mistakes in how he managed the union.

thatcher had no choice but to bite the head off the snake