Question about miners strike

[garlictwist]

I've just watched the channel 4 doc on the miners strikes. Very interesting as I wasn't around at the time and didn't know much about it.

What it didn't explain though was why they were striking in the first place - was it that they wanted more money? Or were the mines being closed?

And was this to do with the three day week and the power cuts?

And maybe a dash of democracy ?

With a bit of gerrymandering thrown in

Ha!

An antiquated form - first past the post - that keeps two parties on top, as in America.

Disastrous consequences in both places.

Wow the NUM who seeked funding from terrorist groups to get money!
Like Libya’s Gaddafi and the Pakistan terrorist group.

Scargill was dangerous wasn’t he?

I’m all for strikes and trade unions. I’m a member of a union myself.

But defying the High Court? Violence and intimidation? Funding from terrorists? That’s not a union I could be a part of.

Scargill was largely responsible for all of the above.

Useful article from the Times about that: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/from-the-archive-scargill-in-secret-talks-with-gadaffis-regime-5vrmc9n08mj

It needs adding that the NUM have always denied receiving funding from such sources - including Russia - and make of that what you will, but even with just an allegation it's not hard to see why the security services got involved

Are there any working mines left in the UK? I know there was one in Wales that recently announced it was closing.

Here you go, @Paul2023:

https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/coal-mining-uk/

I don't understood what Scargill thought he could gain. The power stations had months (and some years) worth of coal stock piled. He couldn't expect the miners be on strike for months and months on end??

Lions led by donkeys. Scargill overplayed a poor hand with a ruthless opponent who had a plan and wasn't afraid to use every resource of the state. I don't know what he really thought about Thatcher but at some stage he must have realised he was finished. I didn't like her but he was a fool. She got him to fight on her terms. A loser

He did expect them to , knowing that his members were skint and couldn’t pay their mortgages and feed their families.
He was in his full pay as union president.

There was only going to be one winner, the establishment. They knew eventually workers would return to work. Scargill was too ignorant or stupid to quit.

He really was a dreadful man wasn't he.

Not nearly as dreadful as the woman he had the temerity to stand up to.

@BIossomtoes What did he achieve during the strike? I'm genuinely interested. I was very young at the time so don't know a lot. Apart from the fact the power stations were never going to run out of coal.

Sadly the strike achieved nothing. But at least the miners stood up against the destruction of their communities and livelihoods. They can hold their heads up and know they went down fighting. The entire episode was sad and unnecessary.

Part of Scargill's plan for a drawn out, nationwide strike, involved paying striking NUM members a stipend from money donated by the Soviet Union. He completely failed to take into account that the UK government could simply have the banks seize this money as it amounted to a seditious action on the part of a hostile State. He was a fool. Well intentioned, but completely naive, and did as much to bring about the ultimate failure of the strikes as Thatcher and the police did.

I have a relative who was serving in the Police at the time. He was stabbed by a striking miner while trying to quell what turned into a full-blown riot after picketing members took it upon themselves to attack "scabs" who had decided not to participate, given that the lack of a national ballot meant the strike action was technically illegal. He actually knew the man who stabbed him, they had frequently drank together in the same pub when both were off duty. The police undoubtedly acted outrageously in some places and in some instances, but it wasn't universally true that they were the aggressors in every instance. This is what Thatcher ultimately achieved though, the complete breakdown of any sense of society, the destruction of egalitarianism, and working men who were formerly friends and colleagues brutalising each other in their own streets. I can vividly remember him breaking down in tears for months after the stabbing incident, and it wasn't because he hadn't recovered physically. I think the emotional toll of being pitched into a melee with men, some of whom he'd been schoolmates with and had considered life-long friends, just shattered him mentally, and I don't think he was ever really the same afterwards.

Echoing what a pp mentioned- this was another insidious aspect of how the government and police approached the whole question of policing the strikes. They knew damned fine police from the local area were far less likely to have any sort of relish for "policing" men from their own communities with the robustness that Thatcher was demanding, hence why so many were drafted in from other forces and regions. The Orgreave episode of the documentary covers this quite well, with the miners themselves detailing exactly why the different approach of the police and the sheer scale of their presence on that day made many realise that there was something afoot. It's a scandal that the senior policemen escaped prosecution.

Yep much easier to send Met and Merseyside Officers up to police the miners, they weren’t local, had no connection to the area, no friends or acquaintances etc.
Bigger forces were used to policing cities rather than small mining communities.

Lots of Met officers were rude and antagonistic to striking miners, and locals, some waved ten pound notes in their faces boasting about the overtime they were on.

The police overtime payments and resources must have been costing millions and clearly couldn’t just go on and on.

Lots of Met officers were rude and antagonistic to striking miners

Understatement of the year. They were brutal.

The Met were Thatcher's stomtroopers. The biggest gang in the UK.

As one young miner in the North East put it : 'Our police are not police anymore - they are Black and Tans.'