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?

But there was no national ballot prior to strike action being announced. So no official collective decision. Unless I’m mistaken? Even then, going to work should have been a choice that an individual was able to make, without having their children shouted at in the streets and bricks thrown through their windows. I agree with a pp, it has no place in a civilised society.

I come from Selby. I know exactly what life was like during the miners’ strike. The 1987 election was a landslide for Thatcher for a reason.

it’s the same when anybody discusses the current train strikes. In the real world they’re a fucking massive inconvenience but not on MN.

Decades of Tory propaganda has ensured that people are happy with the benefits of union membership but don't understand the notion of collective bargaining and solidarity.

Yep, you only need to look at the threads on the various strikes last year where people objected to the idea that if your union achieves a strike ballot you have a duty to strike even if you personally voted against. Happy to have the protection of the union, to benefit from any increase in wages they achieve but not prepared to support the union in collective action. Disgraceful.

Thatcher caused much devastation right across the mining communities back then. She decimated local communities. Livelihoods gone in the blink of an eye because of her policies.

This is very much the sentiment from most of the older generations where I am from too.

My dad was down the pit from 14 till the closures. Police brutality at orgreave etc was horrendous. He had the shit beaten out of him with batons and when he got to the police station they already had the arrested miners 'statements' ready for them to sign without an interview 🙄

@jannier - it was still well paid. And there was stability for families and their children. My grandfather was a miner during the war and after. He could sustain a house for his wife and children, both of whom then achieved well enough to pass the 11 plus and onto university in the early 1960s. These were very ordinary working class girls who got scholarships at a time when perhaps 3% of school leavers went at all.

It really is a different world in terms of social mobility; steady, well paid unionized employment supports children very well. If you have a workforce in debt, poorly educated and with insecure employment with few rights children stand far less of a chance to achieve.

Anyway, those times are well past.

@Pleasebeafleabite of course strikes are an inconvenience - they’d be completely fucking pointless if they weren’t!

But we need unions to protect workers - that’s the point that was being made.

Yes. Workers have a right to withdraw their labour. That is liable to inconvenience people.

But not on MN. We all salivate at an extra day WFH and break out the bunting.

Meanwhile, back in the real world..

They got it too; as soon as Labour were elected in 1974 they awarded the miners a pay rise of 35%, and another 35% followed a year later
They really did have that kind of ability to hold the country to ransom, hence Thatcher's decision to curb it

That said, I agree with many PPs that while the imposing of some restraint was necessary, it's the way it was done which caused so much damage

I wasn't disagreeing about pay but there wasn't a big job choice of alternatives so close the pits all jobs went.

My dad was a farmer but we lived just outside a mining village, the miners strikes were awful for those families who had fathers/brothers/uncles etc down the pits. They were literally starving, they couldn’t heat their homes and had no money to pay bills. Many farmers in the area like my dad pulled together to provide food and whatever else they could to support everyone affected in the village. I often used to go to the community hall with my mum to help make soup and meals for those affected and everyone mucked in, everyone was equal and standing together no matter what you had or didn’t have. I remember we all went to that hall for our Christmas dinner that year and everyone spent Christmas Day together. My dad was incredibly angry about the way the miners were treated and I have a hazy recollection of him saying something about Margaret Thatcher stockpiling coal in the county.

I wasn’t aware there was a documentary out, thank you, I’ll definitely watch it.

This has been a very interesting thread to follow and very unusual as usually any mention of Thatcher on MN brings out people who sing her praises.

Wow.

so true

in our house if anything goes wrong we say
'you know who I blame?'
'Thatcher'

and while she isn't actually to blame if we run out of milk, many wider social ills can be traced back to her, it's the promotion of individualism and the loss of community and solidarity

Plenty of people have answered the question if why she wanted to close the mines.
Re your other questions: the mines were owned by the coal board (which was a state owned organisation), but she couldn't just close them.
The best question you asked was why was a striking going to to stop the mines being closed? Answer, it didn't, and was never going to. It was a flawed plan!

NDYC is absolutely right. As was Arthur Scargill.

That god awful woman decimated entire regions of the UK. I still hate her now, even though she's dead and gone. I hate that she pitted (no pun intended) groups against each other, fostered hatred. We're feeling the effects of many Thatcher policies still; social housing shortage, greed, entitlement, hatred of those claiming any sort of benefit, fuel insecurity.

I never voted for her/never voted tory,,,, but I think you exaggerate her influence to some degree over the average person. People like individualism, they dont like community and solidarity, read the threads on here day to day and see what is happening day by day in society, no one cares about lack of shop assistants or closing down of groups, people think its great that you dont have to engage with someone or talk to someone. Every second moment is someone explaining why they cant be with/around other people, they want to work from home so they dont have to be around people, they want their own individual needs to take priority in business, work, leisure, education, health care etc

@soupfiend and that was partly driven by Thatcher’s ideas of individualism. She drove the idea that we should be out for ourselves only and fuck everyone else. Cameron and his ilk continued her legacy.

All that has happened since Thatcher. There used to be such a thing as society.

Agreed but it wasnt something rejected by the public was it and its not being rejected by the public now.

She probably is to blame for the milk issue in the previous posters house though, she took childrens milk away in school!

It was starting before her, how do you think she became attractive to the public at large. There was 'society' but if you didnt fit in, werent part of it, was the wrong type of person within it, there was no society for you, so it became attractive for a whole host of reasons to dismantle that particular society

If people didnt want her type of government and politics, she wouldnt have been voted in. Its the same despondent story now, we have had a tory government for 14 years, they will be voted in again, people dont see anything wrong with them and yet the same people will moan about losing services, not getting an operation, not having a school place for their child. They cant seem to to join the dots.

I don't agree that people 'naturally' favour individualism, it's been promoted to us. And Thatcherism was part of that.
People have explained on this thread about the traditions of collectivism and solidarity. And it wasn't just within the mining communities, there was support from all over, sustained support, providing food and money for the miners families, not just because we sympathised with the strikers but because we could see this was a massive threat to ordinary working class people and our rights to organise.
And turns out we were right, not only were those communities devastated but union power has been steadily eroded ever since.
The fact that people moan about rail strikes shows what a number the Tories have done on us. Like paid holidays and sick leave?
Thank the unions.

Sending your family best wishes.
Yes to statements already being prepared. Mine was when I was arrested for ' obstructing the police in the execution their duties '
All I was doing was trying to shield the little kids from being harmed and screaming at the cops to stop.
Those batons back then were made from solid mahogany and could render a grown man unconscious with a fractured skull in one swipe.
They fucking hurt, as my perforated eardrum would tell you!
Bastards!

I do thank the unions so you're preaching to the wrong person

But its a mistake to underestimate the level of antipathy people have in this country and this was way before her time, for joint enterprise as such. Personally I think she took it and ran with it, it suited her economic ideology and it was popular

You're either attractive to the people or not