Na then Forest.....

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"FATCHA!!". Still living rent-free in all your pathetic, warped socialist minds I see. Good.
 



derfblade.3 said:
.....you will always be scabs. Your scabby parents or scabby grandparents were vilified for deserting their fellow workers who went through hell to fight for their jobs while your scumbags refused to join the cause and caused a huge rift between the mining community. Some may say that it's "All in the past" or that "It was nothing to do with me". Well that doesn't wash with me. I saw first hand at Orgreave how the mining community stood as one in the face of police violence , orchestrated by Thatcher, and went through months of poverty and extreme hardship. Scab breeds scab, so shame on you all!
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Orgreave? The NUM turned up mob-handed thinking it would be like Saltley in 1973 and got their arses handed to them.
 
Booker4 said:
Always enjoyed your views Pompey but I think your post is as confrontational as the OP if honest, maybe that was your intention and I know that this subject is very heated and divided families/communities. Whether you agree with the strike or not, saying the coal industry was going to end anyway given its horrendous footprint is a largely irrelevant point given that at the time coal was produced/needed for many years after its just that Thatcher could get coal cheaper from other countries so that became more desirable/economical and, of course, it was personal between her and Scargill, post what happened to Ted Heath's government. But more importantly lives were ruined by Thatcher far more than Scargill in my view, there was no or little sympathy from Thatcher to ordinary miners in this, it could have been done so much better by her and she knew lives/families were been ruined and families on the bread line.

As you'll know doubt know it has also been released in 2014 from previous cabinet papers that Scargill, for all his ego and failings, was right about the secret list of pit closers which was at 75 and not 20. As for Nottinghamshire mines, I can see why they didn't join in the strike beyond 20% at first and then declining further thereafter. The lack of ballot from Scargill was of course an own goal and unconstitutional for many miners across the country, but I suspect he knew he didn't have the support of all of the nation's miners (based on failed strike attempts years earlier) and therefore if he'd balloted every area it would have only been a partial strike anyway and that would have crippled the strike from the off.

You saying the mines should have closed ten years earlier - that's harsh in my view/shows a lack of empathy as thousands of people's livelihoods were involved in mining, particularly in South Yorkshire and do you honestly think that alternative work would have been provided instead for them and other declining industries? I doubt it and the legacy from Thatcher is one of a finance dependant economy that benefits London, buying in goods not producing them, selling off so many public owned assets which have in my view not improved post private ownership in most if not all instances.

I'll be the first to admit that I didn't live through the strike of 72 and I was 5 in 84 but you don't have to be alive to have a view of history, and Thatcher, for me, it wasn't what she did so much but how she did it and in such a short timeframe, and as I said earlier the lack of support thereafter for the miners in terms of future work was limited at best, and these areas like Grimethorpe were pit dependant even if you didn't work down the pits, the whole towns went downhill thereafter for decades.

Changing tack, it's interesting that there was even less support from Leicestershire mines but we never seem to accuse Leicester of being scabs, and interesting that the Kent pits were as militant for the strikes as the Yorkshire miners were.

I hope you don't find this post critical/personal; your post was well worded even if I disagreed with most of it. I'll no doubt continue to enjoy your posts, you're right that this is a forum for football, but politics do come into football, maybe we shouldn't discuss politics on here, but I actually enjoy an occasional diversion from talking about our usual football failings! Ha ha!
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Excellent post Booker4, articulating stuff in my head but sometimes forget to get on paper 🙂
Yes, harsh indeed that our friend Pommps called for the industry to be culled 10 years earlier, easy to say when your livelihood doesn't depend on it.

On the point of ballot, Scargill always maintained a strike mandate had been given from a previous (national) ballot that called for strike action if a pit was closed for anything other than exhaustion of reserves. Cortonwood (the catalyst for the strike), was targeted on economic grounds.
Quite whether Scargill got the tactics wrong ballot wise is a moot point, had he gambled on a ballot and not taken the route he did, Nottinghamshire would have come out and this may well have toppled the government.
We'll never know...
 
Newcastle/Sunderland - civil war
Portsmouth/Southampton - 1930’s dock strikes
Millwall/West Ham - General strike
Liverpool/Manchester - Manchester ship canal late 1800’s
Nottingham/Derby - industrial revolution
Etc.
Football is just a forum for long held grievances. Like I said not likely to pass anytime soon.
 
The whole scab thing is just embarrassing….40 years ago….quite a lot of us weren’t even born then…
 
derfblade.3 said:
.....you will always be scabs. Your scabby parents or scabby grandparents were vilified for deserting their fellow workers who went through hell to fight for their jobs while your scumbags refused to join the cause and caused a huge rift between the mining community. Some may say that it's "All in the past" or that "It was nothing to do with me". Well that doesn't wash with me. I saw first hand at Orgreave how the mining community stood as one in the face of police violence , orchestrated by Thatcher, and went through months of poverty and extreme hardship. Scab breeds scab, so shame on you all!
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eyup Fred are you just sat back reading an laughin?
 
Between 1947 and 1994, some 950 mines were closed by UK governments. Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990

PITS CLOSED (since 1947)
Labour ..... 354
Conservatives.... 373

So the Torys win by a nose and hopefully that's the end of the matter.

Now What are peoples thoughts on school milk?
 
colblade said:
Between 1947 and 1994, some 950 mines were closed by UK governments. Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990

PITS CLOSED (since 1947)
Labour ..... 354
Conservatives.... 373

So the Torys win by a nose and hopefully that's the end of the matter.

Now What are peoples thoughts on school milk?
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Aye
Epitome of lies damn lies & statistics:

Why were they closed - exhaustion or political capital political rhetoric & political revenge ?

How many pits did each of those regimes open?

How many of those (prematurely) closed still had workable reserves which begats the question:

How many would have remained open if ‘we’ hadn’t imported coal ‘at any (extortionate) cost ?

Why is the current government ‘exploring’ ‘opportunities’ to again mine coal?

School milk could be horrid if left in the sun to curdle - guess another thing to be grateful to Thatcher for, along with my gas shares, & (former) Council house she saved me from Salmonella- well at least until Edwina rocked up

Doffs cap, tugs forelock, genuflects (even lower)
thanks m’lady
PS the commie bastards are trying to say you didn’t invent Mr Softee - please please tell me it’s not true
How dare they besmirch your legacy
 
Some understandable recollections from posters here. It is completely right to still regard the Miner's Strike with sourness, especially against Thatcher and the tories of the day. I doubt she was wholly set on destroying UK plc industry as such. We just couldn't complete with the spectre of rocketing inflation and wage demands. One begets the other. If you want another example, see British Leyland. A productive industry ruined by militants who would have the shop out of the gates because a fucking canteen door opened the wrong way, with a static, silent production line and orders laying unfulfilled.

Whilst many blame Thatcher entirely, I'd counter that with the obstinacy of Scargill and his dismal brothers in the NUM. They'd triumphed against Heath and broke the back of a shockingly weak Labour successor and Scargill wanted the nation paralysed and martial law enforced. It would be interesting to see people's extrapolations on what this country would have looked like if he'd succeeded, the Thatcher government collapsing and a 1984/85 snap General Election returning a daft arse like Kinnock, with his party as riven with militants as Starmers is today. The country would have been back on it's knees a decade from the last social/economic disaster. And I guarantee the military I knew then would not stand idly by as he and his missus sucked the cocks of CND and denuclearised, just at the apex of Cold War tensions.

Thatcher was yes, brutal, yes, unfeeling and yes, a cunt. But unfortunately (take heed Johnson, you fat wanker) she was a political heavyweight who studied every outcome incessantly and asked for advice from many sources. She was informed, astute and politically brilliant, and her cabinet were frightened to death of her. Brexit under her would have been done and dealt with. Russia by now would be withdrawing it's troops. The COVID pandemic would have been a damned sight better managed and shitheads within her reach (like Hancock) taken out the back and quietly shot. Whilst this might not auger well with her haters, it's a pretty-much well conceived assumption.

So when it comes to dealing with the sad, inevitable slump of UKplc and it's donkey-led workforce (themselves, clever, inspirational and grafting) it was only going to go one way with one outcome. Scargill was engaged in a war he was never going to win and was feeding the poor fuckers in slumping mining communities into the barrel of his gun, to fire at an Iron Lady. He also fired a shot straight upwards which came back down on his head in that constitutionally, he needed permission from his union rank and file to strike. It's as undemocratic as you can get and when people speak loudly of the accepted-as-fact brutality of Orgreave, they whisper at the shoeings meted out by masked men for human beings making a fucking choice to go to work and earn cash and not to let their families suffer, or the fear many strikers had for even saying the wrong thing in the wrong company. That smacks of fascism and totalitarianism ... the parallels with and Orwellian dystopia there to see. In the 80s this nation had to grow up and accept that as a producer and an exporter we were finished against countries who could produce and export at a fraction of the cost at least whilst our workforce was controlled by a cabal of nefarious bullies, themselves on fucking eye-watering salaries, and pushing the cost of production and our competitiveness down the shithouse, head first.

And yes, had the unions been reigned in in the seventies when they almost bankrupted this nation and left it exposed, paralysed and vulnerable, I doubt Thatcher would have had such a landslide in May 79 and gone on to hold power for a decade.

pommpey
 
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OnmiEdson said:
Okay so couple of things
Firstly I have the pleasure of living and working in Nottingham so I can attest to the view that whereas the county fans are pretty much salt of the Earth in my experience, the degree of entitlement expressed by the massive forest fans is only second to the truffle snorters north of Sheffield
I have also witnessed the bad behaviour of the forest fans on many occasions when going to and from the ground or being sat in the away stand with piss in plastic bags being lobbed on my head along with spit etc
Consequently it is pretty much the only ground where I always wear a wide brimmed hat
Also I have seen crap behaviour that some of their fans engage in at the lane many times.
As such, whilst it is a minority of their fans and we have our own unhelpful minority, I sincerely hope that somehow we get a result tomorrow to shut up these loudmouths and no trousers once and for all
But having said that, in relation to the scab business, there may be an irony.
I lived through that time, but was not a miner nor did I live in a mining community, but my understanding is that a large portion of the Nottinghamshire miners involved were from pits in the very north of Nottinghamshire and my understanding is that many of them would have been blades actually
Certainly we have long-standing blades supporting groups in those areas.
That’s my understanding anyway and accept I could be completely off target.
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North Nottingamshire pits belonged to the Yorkshire NUM.
 



Maurice Maurice said:
Very well written that Pommpey, and very wordy as usual. All bent and twisted to be sure that it gets your Thatcher loving, union hating ideals out there, but well written none the less 😷
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Unions are not - repeat not - a bad thing. The workforce needs representation and protection against bad employer practices. But if a business is folding, and adjustments have to be made ... or if the projection is that it will have a terminal date yet the unions are insisting nothing shall change and no one will leave, then what is their function, save to prolong the inevitable?

And do yourself a favour. Thatcher planned to butcher my line of work by 35% in 1981. It was only Galtieri's ventures which paused that for eight years. The Royal Navy is one third the size in manpower and one fifth the size in assets from the day I joined, three weeks after Thatcher swept into power. So don't give me 'Thatcher-loving'. I admire her leadership and political strength. That's it. It was needed, because there was no one in her cabinet (save for Tebbit, who would have been far worse) would have had the grit and fortitude to face down the unions to stop the nation grinding to a halt. And if you think we'd have had the growth we had in the subsequent years - even under Blair - without Thatcher then you sir are severely polarised.

pommpey
 
Nothing you can say will convince me that Thatcher was anything but a class conscious, hateful vindictive bastard and you made a point of calling out posters who rejoiced in her demise, I'm one of them. Hated her then and I hate her now and if this thread gets to 500 pages, nothing will change my feelings for the heinous old bag.

UTBFTP
 
nopigfansintown said:
Quite. I'm from a long line of miners. From my great grandfather to my own father who married a Sheffield lass. These men were the backbone of the country as were the unions which founded the Labour Party via Welsh miner Keir Hardie and the the Unions that predated it. Everything good about this country was fought for by these men - a long time before Maggie Thatcher came along. Thatcher and her cronies deindustrialised Britain and left us with a corpse of a country lagging far behind the likes of Germany which, incidentally, lost two world wars whilst gaining its hegemony - due largely to its industrial base and more equitably mixed economy. We are tied to the financial sector and service industries now, to such an extent that the speculators can effectively bankrupt the country with no real repercussions (see 2008).

Everything is imported: no primary and very little secondary industries to speak of. If you can pay them starvation wages in outer Mongolia import it:- neo liberal globalisation runs this circus. The working classes of Britain can work in call centres and Amazon warehouses where they have backbreaking toilets so you don't dare take more than three minutes having a shit. Progress you see. It's far better than this in the opencast mines that still exist today for your information - my dad has worked in them for the last thirty years. My old man earns £19 an hour plus bonuses and does 35 hours per week. My dad was always moaning about the deep miners (when some remained) because those in the remaining deep mines in Britain earned far more than him.

My grandfather worked in the deep mines and was based in Swallownest. He kept a family of eight on his miner's salary. My grandmother never worked as she didn't have too. The job was dirty and hardly safe, but it paid well. He was involved in the Beighton Colliery disaster in 1958 - shattering his leg https://www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire/content/articles/2004/10/22/beighton_miners_feature.shtml . stringer might be interested to know that his picture was on the front of the Star grimacing in the cage. He'd dodged bullets in Germany not long before and walked with a limp for the rest of his life after the disaster. In some ways the job was brutal: after smashing his leg to smithereens the rent collector still came to the door for the rent for his pit house on the "White City" - the following Monday. My gran walked several miles down to the pit (kids in tow) to have it out with the gaffer. He was subsequently given an on site office job for the rest of his career by the mine. You see, they looked after their own: the men wouldn't let it be that their mate was laid off because he was incapacitated. The gaffers knew that it'd be folly to even attempt something like that. He was at pains to point that out in the 1980s

When the miner's strike happened he hated the Scabs far more than he hated the Germans that had tried to kill him. He saw them as being beneath contempt. Class traitors. The enemy of their own communities and their own children. Incidentally, when the miners strike was going on my mother was working in Sheffield cop shop. Her opinion of Orgreave is that a de facto army was shipped in from around the country to deal with the miners. She's given witness testimony to that effect. These brave and hardy men who went into the bowels of the earth to power Britain's post war recovery were set upon by a right wing army that essentially wanted to beat them into submission like one would an invading army. Thatcher was willing to change the equitability of Britain's whole economy to break the possibility of working class men getting a decent wage, for a hard days graft.

Thatcher's attack on the miners was ideological. The goal was to break the back of British Unions and class solidarity. To create a society of individuals looking after number one. Her legacy is crime, drugs, poverty, lower real terms wages, reduced union membership, higher real terms public service costs (and lower quality), far higher real terms housing and rent prices and far less expendable income for working class people. Also a lack of community cohesion and neighbourliness. The current commodity crisis powering Russia is a legacy of her lack of foresight. The Labour leaders in power that followed Thatcher were Thatcherites. This is Thatcher's Britain.

Oh and Scab is a stain that can never be erased from Nottingham. The two good things associated with Nottingham come from Yorkshire: Robin Hood and Brian Clough.

Lady Macbeth on Nottingham:

“Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!”​

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Mate - if could give that a dozen likes it wouldn't be enough.
 
I'm in my 70s and I remember the hardship during the Thatcher era, my father work at orgreave, and was made redundant, l myself found it hard to get another job, but I retrained in Electronics, and moved down south to work for the MOD, the southern people did not understand the miners strike, I had to explain to them the reasons, why it was necessary at the time. My grandfather, uncles, cousin work in the mines, Burley, Treeton, Dinnington and many more, it was coal that kept the northern industrials going, but Thatcher wanted to destroy the unions, and the working people, a bit like today, where the Tory's don't care about the real working class.

It is quiet eronic that a while ago, they had to fire up a power station in Nottingham, due to the need for extra power, since the renewable could not supply the country with enough energy, the coal came from Australia, when we are sitting on tons of coal within the UK, since Thatcher has used all the Gas to power the boilers at the Power Stations, which was never a good idea.

I get that Thatcher was a strong leader, we need a strong leader today, with the cost of living crises, high energy costs, lower wages, higher mortgages.
 
Ludgblade64 said:
I'm in my 70s and I remember the hardship during the Thatcher era, my father work at orgreave, and was made redundant, l myself found it hard to get another job, but I retrained in Electronics, and moved down south to work for the MOD, the southern people did not understand the miners strike, I had to explain to them the reasons, why it was necessary at the time. My grandfather, uncles, cousin work in the mines, Burley, Treeton, Dinnington and many more, it was coal that kept the northern industrials going, but Thatcher wanted to destroy the unions, and the working people, a bit like today, where the Tory's don't care about the real working class.

It is quiet eronic that a while ago, they had to fire up a power station in Nottingham, due to the need for extra power, since the renewable could not supply the country with enough energy, the coal came from Australia, when we are sitting on tons of coal within the UK, since Thatcher has used all the Gas to power the boilers at the Power Stations, which was never a good idea.

I get that Thatcher was a strong leader, we need a strong leader today, with the cost of living crises, high energy costs, lower wages, higher mortgages.
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Not sure what you mean about “Thatcher using all the gas to power the boilers at the power stations”

The renewables and green agenda is something which has come in way, way after Thatcher and is part of the wests utopian desire to move away from fossil fuels at all costs.

Gas is still a viable option for power and energy in the UK along with Nuclear (which has a massive push at the moment) and some renewables. It’s clear from the data on the UK’s energy demands v supply that renewables aren’t reliable enough.

The UK needs to use its own Gas as well as importing gas from overseas
 
Yellarbellyblade said:
Newcastle/Sunderland - civil war
Portsmouth/Southampton - 1930’s dock strikes
Millwall/West Ham - General strike
Liverpool/Manchester - Manchester ship canal late 1800’s
Nottingham/Derby - industrial revolution
Etc.
Football is just a forum for long held grievances. Like I said not likely to pass anytime soon.
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The Sunderland / Newcastle centuries old animosity is a fantastic price of British history.
Sunderland becoming Cromwell’s coal export hub at the expense of Royalist Newcastle if I remember correctly..
 
If gas is viable then why are Gas boilers being phased out, the reason gas is too expensive and running out. We didn't build enough nuclear power stations, the UK is paying the price, NOW, from Thatcher's policies and successive governments. We are just traders on the open market, no UK industries,

The reason that you don't understand is that Thatcher, put all her eggs in one basket GAS, and sold of the industries GAS, Electric, which are now owned by foreign companies, when we have coal, which can be made smokeless, after all it's a hydrocarbon like oil, and you can get oil from coal, we are a long way off nuclear power stations, I've work at Power Stations, it takes a long time to build and commission stations
 
Ludgblade64 said:
If gas is viable then why are Gas boilers being phased out, the reason gas is too expensive and running out. We didn't build enough nuclear power stations, the UK is paying the price, NOW, from Thatcher's policies and successive governments. We are just traders on the open market, no UK industries,

The reason that you don't understand is that Thatcher, put all her eggs in one basket GAS, and sold of the industries GAS, Electric, which are now owned by foreign companies, when we have coal, which can be made smokeless, after all it's a hydrocarbon like oil, and you can get oil from coal, we are a long way off nuclear power stations, I've work at Power Stations, it takes a long time to build and commission stations
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The reason gas boilers are being phased out has nothing to do with gas being expensive (presently). It’s purely a climate change thing to get people changed over to ground source heat.

Gas and oil prices are currently high, partly for the reliance on Russia, partly for lack of production and partly for putting our eggs into the heavily subsidised (at consumers cost) renewables.
 
Maurice Maurice said:
Nothing you can say will convince me that Thatcher was anything but a class conscious, hateful vindictive bastard and you made a point of calling out posters who rejoiced in her demise, I'm one of them. Hated her then and I hate her now and if this thread gets to 500 pages, nothing will change my feelings for the heinous old bag.

UTBFTP
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It's sad when people use the 'nothing you can say' statement when faced with historic precedence. Thatcher was always a long way from perfect, but this nation when she took power was slumped on the ropes and sinking to its knees, simply because of the invested power of collectives largely funded by coins from the rank and file's pockets but mainly from interested parties behind the Iron Curtain. Callaghan was a socialist patsy and his cabinet a shambolic shower of idiots. The Labour Party back then felt it's debt to the union movement was so deep that it sat on it's hands whilst inflation rocketed, boosted by spiralling wage demands. It was a left foot/right foot scenario, and Labour could do nothing about it but go cap in hand to the IMF. You hate Thatcher? They gave you Thatcher. Think on also that in 1982, she was a year away from the polls with spiralling unemployment, a massive trade deficit, and the economy tanking again. Yet all Labour could put up was Michael fucking Foot, Tony Benn, Tam Dalyell and the rest of the schonky Marxists fag-stinky convening rooms were full of. I went to a Labour meeting in 1984 hosted by Denzil Davies, the then Shadow Defence Secretary and I was fucking horrified at the language being uttered. My dad, a AEU and AUEW convener and shop steward described his meetings in exactly the same way - it was like a fucking Shakespearean play, with the most bizarre references and language being used leaving you with no doubt, this movement was fucking done. Archaic, antediluvian and out-of-touch. A complete fucking shambles. And it would stay like that throughout the Kinnock years until the brief glimpse of hope with John Smith, the greatest Prime Minister we never had.

So please try to understand that Thatcher was a cunt, but she was enabled thus by Labour - and it's inbred Marxist movement. It is a strange repeating of history today with Starmer this generation's Kinnock, picking up the wreckage from Corbyn who has basically enabled a fat buffoon to get away with literal murder and will do until they get their shit together, purge the left and get their locomotive back on track with a votable PM elect. And no, I don't mean Streeting either.

pommpey
 
LSF said:
I don't much contribute to the emotive stuff on here, but as I've some first hand experience on the subject discussed, here goes...

I worked in the mines for 10 years, 1978-88, hence was employed there during the 84-85 strike (coal face craftsman after serving my apprenticeship in the steelworks).
Steel had been decimated by foreign imports and Thatcher had brought in McGregor to cow the steel unions into submission, I went into the coal industry hoping this would secure my work prospects for several more years than in steel.

But of course, she turned McGregor on to the coal industry with a mandate to decimate it.
Don't get me wrong, there have been arguments made by some posters that hold weight and some that haven't a fuckin clue but like to weigh in for arguments sake.
I'll start with the strike itself - I believed in it. I Stayed out the full duration despite having 2 children aged 10 months and 3 years when the strike began and only my wage coming in.
As for Scargill, mixed feelings, a bit too far left for my taste but a great orator and he was prophetic about what subsequently came about. But as some allude to, the sacrifices he expected ordinary men to make were extreme.
Scabs.... Not a term I like to fling about willy nilly. I had some great lads as mates at my pit and one or two went back early. The hardliners had no grey areas, you went back, you were a scab.
I couldn't discriminate as such, there were some horrific cases of debt, poverty, mental health issues, marriage break up threats that all contributed to some going back. These guys had stayed out in some cases 11 months and caved in as a result of reasons above. I couldn't label these people as scabs and totally blank them forever.
Some of course went back because you knew they would, if a poll had been taken at the beginning of the strike as to who would break it, all the favourites were first back...
As for the police...
I was at Orgreave early days, before the real nasty stuff started. It was reasonably good natured and even banter with the cops who were mostly local.
The a sea change occurred, police bussed in in droves, the MET came with an attitude of "we'll sort these northern monkeys out proper". The atmosphere and events turned poisonous and I witnessed stuff that will stay with me forever and made me anti police for years afterwards. The army were certainly involved as one of my workmates spotted his brother who was in the army in a pair of police overalls (no ID number) laying into miners with cosh and riot shield.

All this made us bitter and determined to stick it out as the government turned its entire forces on a group of workers fighting for what we felt was a just cause.

When we were forced back, marching back in to our pit on that first day was such a sad (but proud) event, a defeated army returning home.
Thing were never the same post strike, management had us by the bollocks and twisted them. The atmosphere was awful and I genuinely felt sorry for some of the lads who caved in near the end.
One bloke who was hard line, got changed near me and one morning heard me exchange daily greeting with a guy who had gone back a week or two early. He asked why I was speaking to a scab, I told him to mind his own business and fuck off. He never spoke to me again and labelled me scab lover.
It didn't bother me as he was a cunt anyway so it did me a favour, but that's an example of how it was afterwards.
Our pit reduced capacity by 50% in 88 and closed in 91 under the "economic closure" plan. I went in 88 at 35 years old, thinking I was young enough to find another career elsewhere as I'd got some qualifications at least. Some of the lads had only known pit work and I felt so sorry for those.
In hindsight (and I'm coming up 70 now so do get fucked @Fallowfield Blade) leaving the coal industry did me a huge favour as my work career went onwards and upwards and I achieved stuff I never dreamt I was capable of. Whereas, had the pits survived another generation I may well have stuck there and payed the price health wise as I saw in many of the old timers I'd worked with, they were totally fucked after a lifetime in mining. Life takes many turns and sometimes such turns end up being good ones, this one was for me, but others I know never recovered from losing their jobs.

I'd say these days I'm a moderate, but a Labour man through and through and my feelings towards Thatcher and her ilk have not softened in the intervening years. She was a cow.
Scargill expected (and got) too much from ordinary working men, but give me him over Thatcher any day of the week.
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Without doubt the best post on the subject, not surprising as you lived through it and for that I have incredible respect for anyone that sacrificed like you did, whether they got to the end or they worked, I think it would be very easy for me to criticise "scabs" when I've never had to face that decision. I'm also a Labour man as many are I'm sure on here, although I like to think I can also see other peoples points of view in most subjects, even Wednesdayites - 😂
 
pommpey said:
Um ... there was no ballot. So the strike was illegal. Universal consensus there was none. Picketing - yes, but beating people up or damaging their property because they decide to work?

What kind of fascism is that then?

pommpey
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Met 1 miner on strike in 1984. He told me that the "ballots" to continue on strike were a show of hands . Anyone who didn't vote or voted to go back to work was "interviewed" the minders who stood in the doors to the hall (in "KIng Arthurs Palace") in Barnsley. The bloke I was talking to was no weedy wimp He was about 5' 8" tall & 4' at the shoulders! Just to verify all this he was the ONLY honest man I met in 30 years of dealing with the great British public. In 1982 (approx) Mr Scargill took possession of a British Racing Green Jaguar XJ6. Nice work if you can get it. UTB
 
MagnifiqueShorehamStreet said:
`This area still hasn’t recovered from the vengeful and deliberate destruction of it by Thatcher and her boot boys.
If you feel she destroyed the mining industry and proud mining communities as an environmentally friendly act for the country, you are more delusional than any of our friends across the city.
She chose to the destroy the industry and more importantly century old communities to teach the enemy within a lesson.
`There was no strategic plan to reinvest in those communities, and they were just left to rot and die.The only plan was to kill the area off, and make vast fortunes for her cronies out of playing the stock market, and giving them cheap shares to profit from by privatising national assets which didn’t belong to her.The rest of us could rot in our own cheap call centres..
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She didn't choose anything of the sort. The mining industry was dead on its knees. And by the way, Labour closed more mines in the 70s than the Conservatives in the 80s. Fact
 
I was close to what was happening on the management side of the NCB during the 84/85 strike working for Government on a consultancy basis having previously been employed by the NCB. I was in and out of Hobart House NCB Headquarters giving advice on EEC funding across a range of issues, one being retraining for redundant workers.

The European and Coal Steel Community policies of the EEC had impacted financially on both industries with the influx of cheaper imports. Thatcher wanted to reduce the amount of subsidies, the solution, Privatisation. To achieve this they had to be profitable, enter the axeman Ian Mcgregor. Having downsized the Steel industry in record time IM was installed as NCB Chairman and the scene was set for confrontation with the passing of the 1984 Industrial Relations Act requiring secret ballots for industrial action.

IM set about purging NCB management sympathetic to the unions. I know because my ex boss mysteriously retired a few weeks after suggesting to IM that they should discuss the rationalisation plans with the Unions. Pits had always closed but within a defined criteria whereby reserves were virtually exhausted or conditions underground were not safe. IM came in and tore the rule book up and insisted on new criteria for what determined profitability at a pit. This put at risk 20 pits immediately but NCB management realised that if applied rigorously it affected more than half the 170 pits still working meaning in excess of 85,000 could lose their jobs. IM was belligerent and insisted on lists being drawn up secretly. I saw one of the early versions in later years, it had near to 100 pits on it, most with years of workable reserves left. IM was having his strings pulled by Thatcher as he refused to listen to the more pragmatic managers who proposed a phased approach to closures through negotiation. I'm certain the rumour at the time that it was NCB management that leaked the list to AS was true. They could see the Industry being decimated.

I've commented before on how I felt AS got it wrong strategically over the strike but not even he would anticipate that IM encouraged by Thatcher was secretly negotiating with Roy Lynk and a few other members of the Nottinghamshire NUM to form a breakaway union. Its true to say during the first few weeks of March 1984 99% of miners were supportive of the strike, jobs were at risk not pay. There was an expectation a ballot would follow in the next few weeks, it didn't.

To understand the depth of feeling towards Nottingham you have to look at the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. Lynk, Greatorex, Wood and a few others created an alternative Union in the belief their pits would be saved from the axe. The irony is they weren't yet they advised IM on how to get round NUM rules in an attempt to weaken AS. Its like some of the existing staff at SUFC create a new Sheffield United, get them to play in blue and white stripes and does its best to bankrupt the existing club. Yet at the end of the day both clubs go out of existence. Would you forgive and forget that?

Previous strikes had lasted no more than 8 weeks. As the weeks went by positions became politically entrenched. Violence occurred on both sides but the actions of the police at Orgreave were shameful. Yet in October a weary IM called AS in for negotiations as public pressure was growing to end the dispute. AS recounted to a colleague of mine what happened next. They had all but agreed a return to work when IM asked for a recess. AS saw IM on the phone in the corridor. When he returned to the meeting all bets were of. AS was convinced it was Thatcher who was on the phone refusing any compromise as she wanted to be seen to be grinding down the Unions.

The mining community was loyal and proud and not militant prior to 1982. My mothers side were Miners, my cousins had the same experiences as LSF. Yes the industry had archaic working practices, was resistant to change and had a militant union leader. Yet there were still a considerable number of profitable and sustainable pits. There had to be change. Unfortunately the Industry and communities became victims of a class ideology war between Privatisation and Nationalisation, Government v Unions, Left v Right. The end was more rapid than it should have been leaving a legacy of bitterness that remains to-day.

The mining industry had some of the best training schemes in the country and a skilled work force enabling many to pursue new opportunities following redundancy and avoid future health problems being out of the working conditions. I was studying my final year in management development and training at the time and was asked regularly to comment in the Industrial relations class on the strategic implications of the dispute. As a result I went onto study Law which shaped my future for the better.
 



pommpey said:
Some understandable recollections from posters here. It is completely right to still regard the Miner's Strike with sourness, especially against Thatcher and the tories of the day. I doubt she was wholly set on destroying UK plc industry as such. We just couldn't complete with the spectre of rocketing inflation and wage demands. One begets the other. If you want another example, see British Leyland. A productive industry ruined by militants who would have the shop out of the gates because a fucking canteen door opened the wrong way, with a static, silent production line and orders laying unfulfilled.

Whilst many blame Thatcher entirely, I'd counter that with the obstinacy of Scargill and his dismal brothers in the NUM. They'd triumphed against Heath and broke the back of a shockingly weak Labour successor and Scargill wanted the nation paralysed and martial law enforced. It would be interesting to see people's extrapolations on what this country would have looked like if he'd succeeded, the Thatcher government collapsing and a 1984/85 snap General Election returning a daft arse like Kinnock, with his party as riven with militants as Starmers is today. The country would have been back on it's knees a decade from the last social/economic disaster. And I guarantee the military I knew then would not stand idly by as he and his missus sucked the cocks of CND and denuclearised, just at the apex of Cold War tensions.

Thatcher was yes, brutal, yes, unfeeling and yes, a cunt. But unfortunately (take heed Johnson, you fat wanker) she was a political heavyweight who studied every outcome incessantly and asked for advice from many sources. She was informed, astute and politically brilliant, and her cabinet were frightened to death of her. Brexit under her would have been done and dealt with. Russia by now would be withdrawing it's troops. The COVID pandemic would have been a damned sight better managed and shitheads within her reach (like Hancock) taken out the back and quietly shot. Whilst this might not auger well with her haters, it's a pretty-much well conceived assumption.

So when it comes to dealing with the sad, inevitable slump of UKplc and it's donkey-led workforce (themselves, clever, inspirational and grafting) it was only going to go one way with one outcome. Scargill was engaged in a war he was never going to win and was feeding the poor fuckers in slumping mining communities into the barrel of his gun, to fire at an Iron Lady. He also fired a shot straight upwards which came back down on his head in that constitutionally, he needed permission from his union rank and file to strike. It's as undemocratic as you can get and when people speak loudly of the accepted-as-fact brutality of Orgreave, they whisper at the shoeings meted out by masked men for human beings making a fucking choice to go to work and earn cash and not to let their families suffer, or the fear many strikers had for even saying the wrong thing in the wrong company. That smacks of fascism and totalitarianism ... the parallels with and Orwellian dystopia there to see. In the 80s this nation had to grow up and accept that as a producer and an exporter we were finished against countries who could produce and export at a fraction of the cost at least whilst our workforce was controlled by a cabal of nefarious bullies, themselves on fucking eye-watering salaries, and pushing the cost of production and our competitiveness down the shithouse, head first.

And yes, had the unions been reigned in in the seventies when they almost bankrupted this nation and left it exposed, paralysed and vulnerable, I doubt Thatcher would have had such a landslide in May 79 and gone on to hold power for a decade.

pommpey
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As ever you make your points in the usual inimitable, eloquent some may say, style.
However, on the ballot issue, you are somewhat wide of the mark (see my 2nd post on this thread for reference).
Beyond that, some of what you say is pure conjecture. I've tried to stick to my experiences from the inside of the situation.
All healthy debate, regardless.
 
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