The Miners Strike...25yrs on

[Joy11]

I t was sad to see on our local News that families are still bitter enemies due to the miners strike, one guy hadn't spoke to his "scab" brother since and says he never will, I'm from the North but not from one of the many mining communities that were here, I can't imagine how it must have felt then, father against son, brother against brother and in the middle, a Mother trying to hold it all together.

[123everton]

Thatcher was the first leader of this country to govern purely for the benefit of the people who voted for her.
The miners were never going to vote Tory so she lost no votes there.
We still need coal, we still use coal, we now buy coal from places like China and Poland with appaling safety records.
Thatcher's "short termism" was widely criticised in the day (critics were called "wets") you reap what you sow.

[no-knowledge]

good post everton!

[kempie]

They still didn't kill anybody, unlike striking miners.

[Kromovaracun]

coal industry needed to be made profitable

Erm, how?

It'd been heavily subsidised throughout the '70s (and in the first few years of the Thatcher govt) and that didn't work. The government borrowed literally billions (which we're still paying off) to keep the industry afloat, and it failed.

Thatcher did not scrap the mines because she thought it was an enormously beneficial thing to do, she did it because she had to and nobody else would bite the bullet. The reason we import now is because it's what we can afford - that's what countries who can't use their resources (or don't have them) have to do.

[Joy11]

Am I missing something Kempie? striking miners killing someone?
I know the politics of this strike were and are very varied and rightly so, but miners killing!!!!

[R1Geezer]

They killed a cabby by dropping a concrete block off a bridge, nice chaps eh?

[craft1948]

so steve are these the same police you need to sort out all your hooligans at your footie matches...

[no-knowledge]

craft even the local police hated the met thugs that were shipped in . do the police go to football matches armed to the teeth?
banging their shields like Zulu warriors?

[craft1948]

well nokno not the ones I've been out with.....
I just get so annoyed when people vilify 'the police' as a whole. I said in my earlier post that some police definitely stepped over the line but the majority did not, My brother-in-law was ordered onto the picket lines - was he supposed to refuse and lose his house and job. Afterwards it was dreadful for the normal 'beat' copper working in the local communities affected by the strike.

[Joy11]

That's terrible R1, I hope they were caught and did time for such a barbaric act, I personally think the police do a fantastic job and I have a lot of friends in the Northumbria Force and for all they do not discuss their jobs when socialising, I don't envy their tasks in any way, dealing with the yobs of today, but that's another ball-game, back to my post, all I wondered was it Mrs T herself who gave the go-ahead for "some" of the brutality metred out by the police, it just seems todays forces have to use ultimate restraint in all areas, they are dammed if they don't and dammed if they do.

[R1Geezer]

No politician gives orders in those terms, It'll be up to the commanders on the ground and also the men themselves. Orders will not be of the form, "go and beat the cr4p out of them" - I belive the general order was always the same. Do everything possible to protect those attempting to go to work from those using illegal means to stop them. Picketing and even secondary picketing where all prefectly legal at the time but it was never legal for a mob to try and stop people going about their business. In broad terms the police where really attempting to protect those that wanted to cross picket lines. Of course there where ugly incidents but they where not the "oders".

[Joy11]

Thanks for that R1, I now have a wider spectrum of the situation