CyprusLiving

Watched this programme tonight on ITV. If you didn't see it, you should watch it on catchup tv.

If you were living in the UK in 1984 you would be hard hearted not to sympathise with the miners and their families. Emotional to watch if you, as I did, had close relatives working in Yorkshire pits.

Arthur Scargill would NOT have a vote.......not Mrs Thatcher's fault, down to the NUM.

Alan

Alan what on gods name are talking about, of course it was Thatchers fault, she wanted and got mine closures, the miners went on strike to save pit closures not more cash as Thatcher got, they failed because that evil lady got the Police on full overtime made it almost illegal to strike, now the UK is paying for her really stupid acts, she went on to be a Billionaires the rest of us may as well gone to hell..fact!! just watch that TV program last night, even a true blue like you will maybe have a little compaction for the now ex miners...Jim

emgee, kingsdale. agree 100%
Arthur Scargils ego lost them the 100% support of all the mine workers and the rest of the trade union movement and to say that his heart was in the right place well just look how he's carrying on with his own union in court battles.
He wouldn't have a vote therefor to give in to him the trade union movement and the UK would have handed power to a dictator.


Milo

If the Cypriot gas goes the same way as North Sea Oil and Gas it won't change anything for Josepe gasadopulous (Cypriot Jo Public).

John (peer gymp) rubbish get your facts correct..stick to your bass guitar, you obviously know nothing.

It is often overlooked that Harold Wilson closed more pits than Maggie Thatcher.

What do you know just how many pits closed after that altercation? Wilson never came close to Thatchers closures, our area went from seven pits to one (that is now closed) in five years..

The left always did have selective memories and when they can't win the argument they resort to personal abuse.

Have you forgotten the constant strikes that brought Britain to its knees? The power cuts? The three day week? The bodies unburied and piling up in the mortuaries? The bags of uncollected rubbish? The shoddy car production? The constant stoppages at the ports, that interrupted the supply of food?

As for coal, it was cheaper to import it half way round the world than dig it out of the ground. Steel and ships could be produced elsewhere far more cheaply. Britain was paying itself more than it earned and it was as unsustainable as the debt mountain that more recently brought Britain to its knees. The markets for British heavy engineering disappeared.

When will you realise that there is no such thing as democracy? The individual does not matter one jot. Trade union power challenged the power of the state, and that would never have been allowed to happen, whoever was in charge. It just happened to be Margaret Thatcher. It was 35 years ago - get over it!

Admin wrote:John (peer gymp) rubbish get your facts correct..stick to your bass guitar, you obviously know nothing.

I would expect the Administrator to be above such abuse

KG wrote:. The markets for British heavy engineering disappeared.

Believe me British Engineering is still there though usually producing quality under foriegn names like ABB, Alsthom etc.; I've worked on heavy Engineering projects all my life and made a very good living out of it and the markets are still there but it was due to lack of investment that the UK became uncompetative and that was very little to do with Unions. Come on the project I'm on right now and you will see all the precision equipment made in the UK forty years ago is now made in Germany and mainly Italy and usually to a lower standard than ever came out of British factories like English Electric, GEC. NEI, Parsons etc . If the British workers were so bad why did Nissan, Toyota, Tata and a host of other multinationals invest heavily in the UK.

Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail (no less) did a documentry on the car industry and even he conceded that it was more due to lack of investment than Unions that caused the demise of the industry. Only people who weren't affected by the destruction of Britains Insustrial base under Thatcher can say "Get Over It".

Jim

KG

Good post, totally agree.

Jackie

Jackie.

Being honest I wouldn't have expected anything else; though I very much doubt you've had the Ignominy of being thrown out of work through no fault of your own.

Jim

KG

Good post, I also totally agree.

P.villas wrote:KG

Good post, I also totally agree.

Why??

Jim

During Wilson's time in office @ 290 mines were closed; during Thatcher's time the figure was @ 160. Not passing judgement or posting an opinion, merely putting some facts into the discussion.

Interesting Radio ,

Some more facts:-

During Harold Wilson’s government more mines were closed than under Thatcher. But the closures had been agreed with the union and the National Coal Board on the basis that those mines didn’t have enough coal left or were genuinely economically unviable.

If you add up the figures from 1947 to 1997 you see the real picture??– 345 pits were closed under Labour governments but 597 went under the Tories.

A total of 235,000 mining jobs were lost under Labour but 458,000 under the Conservatives.

Hi
I lived in South Wales for twenty years.A very good friend of mine was chief engineer of the massive steel works at Llanwern,it was British steel then.The nearest coalmine was Merthyr Tydfil,about 15 miles away.
I asked him his views on the miners strike.He told me that Llanwern imported its coal from Poland because it was cheaper.
People also forget to mention the"flying pickets" at the steelworks,very violent.
Also the miner who was killed in a taxi after strikers dropped a massive boulder on it from a bridge.
There are arguments on both sides of the camp but the sheer violence involved cannot be excused!

Hi Hudswell
Yes,you are correct,it was the unfortunate taxi driver.

Some great post's but this is 1 argument I'm staying out of ,some didn't like what I wrote last time, but I will say you had to live in a mining village and come from a mining family to see and know what really went on, and the cost of getting the coal out, nuff said.

JB actually you're wrong, I have lost a job through no fault of mine, I was made redundant when the company I worked for closed. But I expect you to come back and say that isn't what you meant.

Know what ? I wouldn't have expected anything else from you either, seems we can all have an opinion as long as it agrees with yours, or are you just a misogynist ?

Jackie

Shame Sandra d, you have been bullied into not posting your real opinions.

Jackie

Misogynist; Hmm!! I’ll have to ask my wife about that or possibly my two daughters or even my four Granddaughters or I could ask our numerous female friends if I’m one though somehow I think they would all say no.

You are quite welcome to your opinion whether you’re a man or a woman even if you don’t let a few facts get in the way of your argument but I don’t have to agree with it just like you don’t have to agree with mine.

Jim

During the miners strike I was at college and travelled between Horbury/Wakefield/Castleford/Ackworth & Hemsworth all mining towns & villages.
All buses had to be got or changed at Wakefield bus station where I remember miners wives & families shaking tins for money as they had none for food, clothing etc etc. I have to agree with a previous poster - I had an ex boyfriend who was a miner and they did as little as possible and wanted thousands for doing it, I'm not suggesting it was not a dangerous job and I certainly would not have wanted to work in the pits, but the miners did bring the country to it's knees and Margaret Thatcher was, in my opinion the first one brave enough to take them on.
There were other casualties of this strike, I used to go drinking in Wakefield and got involved in several heated debates about the strikes with striking miners, who took great pride in the fact that they were making weapons that would be used primarily to injure the police horses!!
It was also commonly talked about that whilst miners & their families were hungry & cold Arthur Scargill was still sending his children to private school and his contribution to the strike was to put on hold his new Jaguar!!! Probably an urban myth......but no smoke etc.

There will never be a 100% agreement about what was & wasn't right and there was blame on both sides, I do think however that it's sad that friends & family members STILL don't speak to each other 30 years on
Being a Yorkshire Lass I had to have my say

Jim B

Quite so, and the fact that you have daughters and granddaughters is an accident of birth, not choice. So shall we respect each other's views in future ?

Jackie

Shame Sandra d, you have been bullied into not posting your real opinions,
Don't think many would like it,even at school in a mining village I couldn't wait to leave and get away maybe I was different, I use to look at my mam and other women and knew I just didn't want the life they had.,ye my dad and brothers worked hard I'll never take that from them. and I come from a long line of mining family's,coal and ironstone.Villages round here seem never to have moved on,and when Margaret Thatched died the next village to our's had a massive celebration which was on television it was awful I felt ashamed as did a lot of others,they had a coffin and effigy of her burning with a rope round her neck stood there cheering all with a drink in their hand, but yet most of them were to young to remember the strike and some weren't even born and the pit in their village was nicknamed "the sunshine pit" cos every time the sun shone they went on strike, I rest my case.One other thing I'd say 80% of mining houses used gas central heating as coal fires were "mucky" and because they didn't get their free tons of coal (10 a year) they were given a gas allowance of this I know is true.

Jackie.

It just shows how little you know about me;


Jim

Kia Picanto

Same here,my cousins husband went back after 9 month his young son of 10 started hoarding food frightened his mam and dad would starve and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown at 10 year old,so his dad said enough I'm going back to work my son comes before anyone, my cousin all of 4ft 11 walked over the picket line with him,she was spit at, dog muck and all sorts were thrown at her but she did it, and men and women called her son a scabbing bst among other things,yet these were miners who wanted support,this was in the Sunderland area.

JB

I don't know anything about you, and I hope you will forgive me for not falling over backwards to either, but as you don't know anything about me either, stale mate I think. That said I do know that if I post my opinions without insulting or accusing another poster, I should have the same courtesy extended to myself. It seems to me it is a childish reaction to failure, to show disrespect or discourtesy to another.

Jackie

jersey I am happy to comply with your wishes, if everyone else does.

Jackie

kg

This year, Wall Street paid its bankers, brokers and financiers, more in bonuses than Wall Street made in profit.

This is the root cause of financial issues and always has been.

Investment goes into supporting the rich, non-industrial sectors, while industry is left to rot.

Britain is still allowing this to happen.

When will learn that vast divides between rich and poor is not always down to entrepreneurship, hard work or brains.

As Tony Benn once said (RIP) "If we can find money to kill people, when can we find money to save or feed people?" (Or similar)

As I see it, the big unions have been the cause of a lot of British industry loosing out. Which country will order ships from another country, when the workforce is 'down tools' at the drop of the union leaders hat ? Delivery dates not guaranteed, prices forced up by demands for pay increases. It was the same with many other industries, if our production cannot be relied upon, prospective purchasers will vote with their feet. There will always be men who gain great satisfaction from controlling a workforce, and not necessarily for their good, or that of the country, it's just one way to wield power.

The unions should stick to protecting and providing for their workers, not to bringing the country to it's knees, and then blame the government.

Now I know many of you won't agree with that, no problem, I'm happy you have your opinion, this is just mine.

Jackie

Whilst I was in UK my philosophy was that I voted in the general election for a government to look after those things that governments do, whilst I voted in my union for things that unions should do i.e. get the best deal with employers regarding working conditions and other things at a job level. It was never my opinion that unions should be interfering in national government. however it should work both ways.

double post

Coming from a mining area I hated both Thatcher and Scargill, but more the former. From 1978-1982 I lost 3 jobs and spent approximately 18 months on the dole, I eventually moved from the North West to the South East and haven't looked back since, however I had no ties, and friends of mine would have found this harder to do as most had families.

By selling off the manufacturing industry and promoting more of the service industry which Britain has to rely on today, in effect the Tories put all our eggs in one basket. Laying off thousands of workers who although I admit where probably too highly paid, this meant that they no longer paid taxes based on those salaries and were forced to take money from the government in the form of unemployment benefit etc or take lower paid jobs.
When the crash of 2008 happened it was said that the UK wouldn't have been in such a bad state if we still had a manufacturing industry.
The service industry amounts to 75% of the UKs GDP and is admired and wanted by some members of the EU, who have already tried to have it moved to the European mainland. If that happened..........

People forget that if it wasn't for the unions there may still have been 6 day weeks, none or very little paid holidays and in some cases no paid sick leave.

Dave,

There are many workers in the UK on zero hours contracts, many with no rights under two years employment, many who still do not get paid sick leave. Things are not that rosy, in spite of the unions.

In the sixties I joined a union, the only woman in my town, in that union at that time, The Post Office Engineering Union. When I needed their help, they totally dismissed my complaint out of hand, I never joined another.

Jackie