Then there’s ones who will tell you best thing was that they closed as the conditions were awful, paid well especially if doing extra hours.
Took me two weeks to stop coughing up black* & I'd only been working underground for a year & had recently had a 3wk break before giving it up altogether. But sat & Sunday work was well paid for sure.
* We were rationed on the number of paper masks we were allowed, often you couldn't see for the dust (cutter bigger than the coal seam) & only the machine operator had full face vented helmets.
I watched it. I grew up in North East Derbyshire and was 17/18 years old when the strike was on. People I was at school with followed their dads down the pit.
Although I lived nearer Chesterfield which had a broader job market than the pit villages mining was still huge - even my mum did wages at a company that manufactured and installed pit head buildings and plant.
Mining was reasonably well paid job back then in a much flatter society - not saying it was easy but it provided a comfortable life. More than that, in the pit villages it was pretty much the sole employer and miners social clubs and welfare were centre of the community. That was what was at stake and what was lost when the pits were closed - with no thought providing support to transition to new industries. Mining communities were the collateral damage in a war waged by Thatcher on the unions
Ex-mining villages/towns (and other former industrial communities) are still run down with now inter-generational unemployment and huge social issues. When Labour came to power in 1997 the focus was (not unreasonably) on inner cities and these semi-rural old industrial towns and villages were forgotten about in terms of regeneration.
Fast forward - NE Derbyshire was one of the first red wall seats to go Tory (in 2017) after a huge UKIP vote in previous elections, then followed by a tide of similar communities in 2019. Labour would me minded to think of why these voters are alienated from Labour policies and how regeneration needs to happen beyond the big cities
No need to read past post 10. Well said binners.
Also watch brassed off for an insight into what the dash for gas did. Apparently the dash for gas closed now pits, faster, than the strike and surrounding events.
I get that the mining communities were decimated and deserved much better. But sometimes you have to do it yourself when no one else is doing it for you.
Loads of people took Tebbits advice and ‘got on their bikes’ because they had no choice
The result?
A broom cupboard with a bed in it in some south london shithole costs the same as the GDP of Luxembourg. Meanwhile northern towns are full of boarded up terraced streets that they can’t give away because there are no jobs within a 50 mile radius
It’s all worked out well, hasn’t it?
I don’t think the country had the money.
Yeah that's always the case - as a G7 country the UK is permanently skint and the government is always pleading poverty.
And yet strangely, as is always the case, the Money Tree suddenly and magically appeared before the miner's strike, and provided Thatcher with £billions, no questions asked, to fund a war in the South Atlantic.
No one asked the obvious question "can we afford to pay for this ridiculously expensive war?".
Bunging each Falklander a £1million each would have been a lot cheaper.
Edit: At the time of the Falklands War Britian had the third largest navy in the world. Skint my arse.
Labour policies and how regeneration needs to happen beyond the big cities
Round here it doesn't happen past the ring road and they don't understand why the outskirts are changing colours.
Norman Tebbit summed up the casually callous attitude of the government by telling people to ‘get on their bikes’.
I literally did, along with my then girlfriend and now wife. We left the Midlands on bikes and headed for France, toured around a bit then lived in a tent in the woods in the town we chose while setting up a business on half a shoe string. It had little to do with our work ethic, more to do with voting with our feet and looking for greener grass. With hindsight I'd like to thank all those that led to us deciding to emigrate, some of whom have been mentioned in this thread but also some of those we worked for and their attitudes. Another currently running thread tells me that things are no better now and probably a lot worse than in 1984 for many employees or "self employees"..
Back then I could live on what I earned within easy reach of the work whatever the job.
It's fairly easy for a single guy or young couple to up sticks and move for work, it's considerably harder for a family with mortgage & kids at local school especially if no one wants to buy your house coz the main employer has just shut up shop.
I have a vague memory after the strike ended that Scargill disappeared somewhere with millions that was raised by the polish miners to support the striking miners over here.
On a similar thread, an ex-copper that I used to know (nasty piece of work he was, would boast about pushing cuffed suspects down the stairs and had a nice side racket he selling confiscated stuff) made big bucks from being bussed down to Newbury to beat up the bypass protestors.
especially if no one wants to buy your house
That was part of Thatcher's battle plan: selling off council housing.
Pre -Thatcher the councils would waive rent during a strike but the banks wouldn't do that.
Thatcher started planning for the strike - and to destroy the unions because they'd brought down Heath from the moment she came to power, if not before.
I have deleted my post half a dozen times to this thread.
I witnessed what went on at Easington Colliery, not as a Miner i was a member of the AUEW and we collected and took food into Easington.
Roadblocks, coppers with no collar numbers, snatch squads, proper violence.
No redemption..... they/we were destroyed.
Another perspective, I started work in 81 in heavy engineering in the East Mids, with associated companies in Chesterfield, Sheffield and Doncaster. At the start of the strike, there were a few meetings where we were urged, by the Union Leaders, to come out on strike in support of the Miners. We voted unanimously to not do that, engineering was dying a death then, we didnt want to go the same way, and neither did the associated companies in the strike areas.
None of the Mines in Leics. stopped working, they all said Scargill was not doing the Miners any good by striking. It got a bit heated when senior Union Reps came and told us we had to take at least one day of strike action to show solidarity. They were told to F off. A later meeting was had by the National Exec. which said the Leics. Branch of the Union would be suspended if they continued to defy their orders. They were all told to F off, and we said we’d be stopping our contributions to them. They suddenly shut up about it, as it later came out that they were nearly bankrupt, as they were giving our money to the strikers, and had no reserves left.
This just made us more determined to oppose the stupid strike (which was 6 months old then), and it was clear they wouldnt get their pay rise. We knew what was going on with the pickets and Police, but were not bothered at all about it, they were paid far more than us, in conditions that were not too different, so little sympathy was going their way. I do remember when the strike finish was announced, there was a big cheer from one side of the factory which had a radio on. The Union Reps were all bitter about it, and the Union became less of a influence after that, as we were sick of them telling us what to do, so many people stopped paying their subs.
i was a member of the AUEW and we collected and took food into Easington
I was a member of the AUEW too, see my post above. The strike did more to ruin the Unions than anything else. The AUEW were trying to make us come out in sympathy with the Miners, we were having none of it, we couldnt afford to strike. The high handed approach from the Management of the AUEW was totally stupid, no one was going to come out on strike for an industry that was miles away, had little to do with us, and for which we had little sympathy. Our factory went from a closed shop to around 40% membership within a year of the strike, none of us liked the attitude where we should lose our wages, and probably jobs too, for Miners who had far better pay than us. The Union was focusing on supporting the strike, when they should have been focused on their own members.
I chatted with a Head of MFL in a Sheffield school. He said during the strike he used to give a student teacher a lift in to work. Apparently when they drove past a picket line she said:
'Oh my God, there's my brother.'
'Really?'
'He's not in the police, he's in the army.'
Thatcher's aim was to destroy the organised working class and 'reward the wealth creators' and she did. Just take a look at the Gini coefficient (measure of inequality) from the mid 70s.
However, as a former RAF brat, I find the continued reaction to Tebbits comment a bit naive.
Your family had base accommodation to fall back on if necessary, plus support with private housing and moving costs. This was not available to miners and without council housing we are now unable to have a flexible workforce as private landlords are less flexible for short notice moves.
It taught me from an early age to know your enemy. I absolutely *ing despise the Tory party and everything those *s represent with every single fibre of my being
Very much this.
Scargill didn't do the miners any favours but Thatcher was out to destroy the unions in any way she could. She effectively weaponised the Police against the strikers and didn't give a sh*t about families or communities. She was pure evil.
What's amazing is how all thay Tory rhetoric has stuck, including on here, about the 'country can't afford etc etc'. I had mates in their 40s down the pub when I lived in Rutland who'd come out with all that crap and all they had in the world was a car, a rent book, a mobile phone and a packet of fags. An unbelievable achievement really.
When I left school at 17 I worked for a print company for a while. There was a Sogat member on the shop floor who was so useless at every job he was given (he'd deliberately sabotage work) he was given a chair in the corner and told to sit and do nothing all day. Because he was a union member he couldn't be sacked. He'd sit under the open tread stairs and try to look up the skirts of the office girls. Now while I agree that unions have had their place in protecting legitimate workers rights, there comes a point when their stance is indefensible. Issues like this damaged their image as they couldn't tell the good cases from the bad.
She effectively weaponised the Police against the strikers and didn’t give a sh*t about families or communities. She was pure evil.
The police force under Thatcher were a politicised private militia who wouldn’t have felt out of place in a South American dictatorship
It’s no wonder she was such good mates with Pinochet. Same MO.
Hillsborough and Orgreave were the inevitable result of that. A violent mob of a police force that operated with government sanctioned impunity
I saw cops waving their wage packets (and some of their arses) at miners' wives on a picket line at the time. They were loving it. I knew a local cop (Pendle area) who couldn't wait to get down there for a bit of aggro and the overtime. Whatever Scargill and the union did ( Did he really clear off with 'millions'?) wasn't a patch on the Tories and the police. They are the enemy, always have been and always will be.
I'll be interested to watch the programme. I was aware of it all, but it didn't really touch the farming community I was brought up in. My abiding memory of the time was being driven to Uni for the first time and seeing a seemingly endless convoy of lorries carrying strike-breaking coal along the M4 - literally miles, and miles of lorries - most of them with 'Mad Max' style grids welded over the cabs as people had taken to dropping concrete blocks onto them from motorway bridges. I do think we came close to civil war.
Thatcher’s aim was to destroy the organised working class
...and Scargill's ego, lack of concern for union members, and tactical ineptitude gave her enormous help.
(It's a bit more complicated than him making off with millions though, more like getting improvements to his house and a flat in the Barbican paid for, other financial irregularities with funds from Libia may have been down to incompetence. All doubtless googleable. And he didn't make off. Far from it, he became NUM president for life.)
I was at Uni during the strike, home was Yorkshire and my grandfather was a retired miner. Mining killed him and he wanted none of his children or grandchildren to have to work in the mining industry.
To be able to understand anything about the miners strike, you have to understand the unions, the economy at the time and public attitudes. It was a total shitshow. Mining was dying and Thatcher could have just let it die. Scargill (and many others) knew that mining was dying and used that as an excuse to pick a, literally, fight with Thatcher's government. Remember in those days, Thatcher was seen by many as a good thing after the failure of the Labour government. The country still easily recalled the 3 day week triggered by the striking miners.
None of this excuses anyone from what happened in the mining towns and villages. Perhaps if he unions and government had worked together, it could have reduced the impact and created some long term benefits. But the animosity at this time was far to great for this to even begin . No one walks away from this period with any credit.
We took my son's to see the stage show of "Billy Elliott". I struggled to explain the background because I still find it painful and deeply upsetting.
creakingdoor
Free Member
When I left school at 17 I worked for a print company for a while. There was a Sogat member on the shop floor who was so useless at every job he was given (he’d deliberately sabotage work) he was given a chair in the corner and told to sit and do nothing all day. Because he was a union member he couldn’t be sacked. He’d sit under the open tread stairs and try to look up the skirts of the office girls. Now while I agree that unions have had their place in protecting legitimate workers rights, there comes a point when their stance is indefensible. Issues like this damaged their image as they couldn’t tell the good cases from the bad.
A boss I worked for was a nasty piece of work and only ultimately lost his job when it was found out he had been bringing in his own modem (late 90's) and looking at kiddie porn on his work PC. The company was very reluctant to bring the police in, it was only when someone in the IT dept. said he was contacting the police irrelevant of what management said, that they were informed.
I'm guessing the peudophile boss and the managers that tried to cover for him weren't in a union.
So there's that.
The moral being that sh*ts will be sh*ts, union or not and sometimes they are protected. Union or not.
Scargill was wrong to pick that hill to die on, he knew the pits were going, he could have negotiated an exit with compensation/investment. However the truth is that Thatcher needed to teach uppity working people a lesson, the problem is that lesson extends to over 40 years of abandonment of certain communities. Its history and many have passed away and somehow the Tories achieved the redwall.
I was at a protest last year in Sheffield in support of the nurses and I saw a bloke ('blimey, he looks familiar') and yes it was Arthur Scargill, and he spoke very well. He hasn't completely retired to the Bahamas.
Contrary to popular belief union members can be sacked.
he could have negotiated an exit with compensation/investment
I don't think history, and the actions taken in other areas where different industries and communities were similarly treated but went without putting up such a fight, would support your theory.
Contrary to popular belief union members can be sacked.
Yeah but it is a nice anti union myth to believe, the same people probably believe their bosses when they tell them they shouldn't discuss pay with their workmates because he has given them a special deal.
The miners were objectively the wrong target in that the industry was quite productive, but a symbol of union power to be broken. The closed shop, multiple unions in the work place taking turns to go on strike, a resistance to change, secret ballots... were the imortant issues that needed adressing if the work place were to be democratised and a cooperative rather than conflictiual relationship established in the work place. I'd just come out of a 'labour economics and industrial realtions' option at uni and it was clear that there were better examples of how to negotiate collectively around the world. Behaviour on both sides looked suicidal, it was. The pits were closed and Thatcher eventually kicked by her own party then finishing her life loathed and demented.
Some of the reforms that came out of the strike made the UK more attractive to inward investment - the strike enabled those changes, the unions were seen to be unreasonable, Skargill played into Thatcher's hands. Without those reforms I don't think the Japanese and Germans would have invested in the UK as they did. However, there's a balance and further long terms of the Conservative governments eroding worker/human rights culminating in Brexit have left the UK worker's lot an unhappy one. And I don't see Karmer changing that.
T'm sure the UK being the most unequal country in Europe makes it very attractive for 'inward investment' (much of which would be a government subsidy). Capitalism exists to benefit capitalists not workers, you need to pick a side.
…and Scargill’s ego, lack of concern for union members, and tactical ineptitude gave her enormous help.
In a different world the Gov and the Unions would've sat around a table a thrashed out a deal, but that suited neither party. Both Thatcher and Scargill were fighting the battle they wanted, and **** everybody else. The behaviour of Scargill post Union and retirement (the London flat, the dodgy negotiations, the endless rows between him and the Union about money that wasn't his) have done nothing for his legacy overshadowing things like the fact that the secret plan by the Tories to shut the mines which they denied at the time and he warned publicly at the time about turned out to be true.
That we're still in the shadow of it all I will lay at Scargill's and well as Thatcher's feet, both of them intransigent idiots
I've been on all sides; employee, employer, investor. No need to pick a side. I'd rather work for a capitalist than a communist, and socialism still depends on capitalism. The Basque coopertives were/are held up as an alternative model, they're quite small though. You then become an investor, an employee and employer all at the same time.
Many british workers are capitalists through their pension investements.
And I don’t see Karmer changing that.
I'm not sure it's in my gift to give? 😉
'The miners were objectively the wrong target in that the industry was quite productive, but a symbol of union power to be broken.'
The industry as a whole wasn't productive - parts were like Noots , but large parts were not - if they were they wouldn't have required heavy subsidisation, and would have continued working. The rundown of the industry had started in the early 60's, and this was the messy end for some traditional areas.
I'd bear in mind that reducing union power was a part of the 1979 manifesto, and a pretty popular part to boot. It makes a lot more sense with the problems of the 70's as context
Mrs FD grew up in the thick of some of the shittiest areas during the miners strike.
Just lets say that the miners were not all sweetness and light.
Her Mum the post office which would get attacked a number of times, her Dad was a fireman and got attacked on the job. She would be beaten up at school.
Her Dad has said many a time that it wasnt just the Police that started the violence
if they were they wouldn’t have required heavy subsidisation, and would have continued working.
A doctorate student at Aberystwyth university was working on the economics of British coal at the time. British coal wasn't the only subsidised coal and imported coal came from countries selling a "cash crop" cheap to prop up their economies and currencies. It wasn't fair competition. You then have the fact that the main buyer was a national monopoly, the CEGB. The whole not competetive argument was a fudge from a government which was setting prices for both supplier and buyer. And the alternative, gas, and its powerful lobby of private oil majors dear to the conservatives.
When the economics of the mining regions and beyond was considered the pits were profitable in that the GDP they generated added far more to the the government tax take than the cost of the subsidies. Ski resorts in France are subsidised because of the wealth they bring to the whole region for example.
The doctorate student (ironically a Saudi ambassador's son) was adamant that the mines were a major positive contribution to the British economy.
Just lets say that the miners were not all sweetness and light.
I don't think anyones under any illusions about that. Anyone who's ever worked in a heavily unionised workplace will have met their fair share of pound-shop Scargills, who are permanently aggressively confrontational and seem to see themselves as some kind of revolutionaries
You had two sides led by a pair of bellicose belligerent nutters, completely unprepared to compromise and who saw themselves as being on some sort of life or death mission for the soul of the country. One had a politicised state militia on their side, the other a ready supply of people well and truly up for a ruck and probably harboured ambitions of bringing down the government.
Meanwhile the vast majority of the miners were just normal people who quite fancied having a job so they could carry on leading normal lives. They just became collateral damage
Union officials are just people, i've seen both sides, through my apprenticeship and industrial days the AEEU/Amicus/Unite had decent shop stewards where i worked, had a good relationship with the management and all was well, later in life when i was non-industrial i just witnessed too many wasters in union positions protecting each other, and the reason i left the union.
Our industry was decimated as well unfortunately, outsourced or sent abroad, then we wonder why we have no skilled workers and why outsource so much.
Norman Tebbit summed up the casually callous attitude of the government by telling people to ‘get on their bikes’.
However, as a former RAF brat, I find the continued reaction to Tebbits comment a bit naive. We moved regularly for my primary school years. My dad had a huge struggle to find work when he left the RAF in the winter of discontent. Lots of people move to find work, and have done for centuries. We relocated when I was made redundant in 2000.
Of course, the fallacy is that working class people DID move to be where the work is. They always have, always will because they have no choice. Even in the first two episodes of this documentary there were several references to people who'd only just moved into the area - miners moved from pit to pit, and pits didn't stay productive for ever. I had lost touch with many of my friends within a few years of leaving school in the 80s because so many of us moved to different parts of the UK.
But, to be told 'get on your bike' by a Tory minister, even one who claimed working class roots*, came across as thinking that the working classes were indolent slobs. If he'd had any working class roots he'd have known how utterly stupid that statement was.
* working for the FT at 16, being a pilot shortly after. I'm unable to find out what his parents did with a very quick google. I shall carry on looking! And a personal connection - he used to be seen in the pub up the road , when I lived on Dartmoor. I didn't drink in that pub, it was too posh.
I wonder how the payslip waving police feel now that they too have been completely done over by the Tories?
I wonder how the payslip waving police feel now that they too have been completely done over by the Tories?
All living in their multimillion pound apartments in Spain according to here.
Of course, the fallacy is that working class people DID move to be where the work is.
Yup loads did and you’re right miners at one time often moved about. A few families where I lived move to Aus post strike, within a year.
This is one of those bits of History if you weren't in it best to not proffer opinion.
It was also ship building, steel, they shut Consett steel works and it was profitable, they pulled the rug from under Sunderland Ship builders, the revenge extended in many directions.
The Strike was part of a long like of historical "adjustments" transportation, enclosures act, thw Plantations, Highland clearances, The luddites, the Industrial revolution, post WW1 the working class felt they were owed better but never got it, WW2 required a much more delicate approach to conscription, training and combat, then Churchill lost, the NHS was born, Council housing kicked off, and the working class got some power and control mainly via Unions and Labour governments, then came Thatcherism probably the best long con (outside the US) of the working class ever and as they say the rest is History. I was an AUEW member for 25 years of my working life, i went from the tools to management and remained a member. As a Union they contributed more to my pay and conditions than i ever paid in subs.
This was shown last night on BBC Scotland.
Tells the story of Polmaise Colliery, Fallin. First pit out and the last pit back.
Well worth a watch.
Strike! The Village That Fought Back
Forty years after the miners’ strike, this documentary tells the story of Polmaise Colliery, whose workers were the first to walk out and the last to go back to work. Hearing from miners who were on the frontline, and family members and journalists who covered the strike, this documentary reveals the inside story of the miners who went on strike for 56 weeks to save the last village pit in Scotland.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001xrwh/strike-the-village-that-fought-back
