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?

Its not odd; that was literally her tactic. Break up society and collective thinking, teach people to put their own selfish wants first.

Exactly.

I was just coming on here to say this! Wonderful film.

Wilson closed 253 Thatcher 115 pits

That’s been discussed up thread - very different circumstances

The scene with Bill Nighy making the sandwiches in Pride had me in floods of tears.

My knowledge is hazy. The doc is on my list to watch.

Wasn't part of the problem that Scargill didn't call a vote to strike? Hence some miners opting to cross the picket lines and keep working? This created the scab and antagonist relationships. The strike was an illegal one without a vote?

Grew up down in the south east. Was only a child mid 80s. But lived for many years in Nottingham. I think it was the Nottinghamshire miners that objected (as a generalist) to the lack of the vote.

Eh?

Does Orgreve mean anything to you?

There was a widespread culture of violence and harassment in the police force at that time. I will never forget the shocking police brutality I witnessed at the Greenham Common women's peace camp.

See also the violence against travellers - "Battle of the Beanfield"

(My uncle was a police officer in the 80s who was involved in the strike. I never really got the chance to ask him what sort of things he saw)

I've recently given a TEDx talk )
and have written a book about the strike in Wales - like others, I have vivid memories of it

The C4 programme is bringing back even more memories - it was a tumultuous time and none of the mining communities have ever been the same again.

All pits are closed at some point. You run out of coal.

Wilson closed pits while continuing to support the industry and to work respectfully with miners, their labour representatives, and their communities.

As profitable mines were closed it was clearly always about breaking the unions with no regard for the cost in human suffering.

I grew up in the South Wales valleys, I saw the outcome, the poverty, teen pregnancy, the drugs, the lack of hope or ambition.

I despise Thatcher.

I'm glad that 40 years on it is finally being talked about in some detail; at the time there was a lot propaganda in the press.

It was designed and calculated to break working people's rights and it was very successful in that. 40 years on you can see the winners and losers easily; the Labour Party never recovered either on the right to collective action.

It was a nasty time; police vs miners, same class mostly, one paid and much better resourced. It was really instructive as to what a motivated Government will do to its own people. That is why all these years later Tories feel discomfort. It showed the bottom line about how they thought about working people.

i remember the community spirit and the solidarity everyone pulled together. The local police were usually ok (remember they like as not had family down the pit) and I think we’re as shocked as the miners by the mets bully boy tactics. As others have said the decimation of the communities is still felt now generations on, Thatcher didn’t just take our jobs and our futures she tried to break us. To watch older men who had worked all their lives and taken pride in supporting their families have to queue up for the dole was like watching their pride be taken a piece at a time. Fucking heartbreaking.

Well they brought in the Met because the local police were perceived to be soft. So they were willing to act (and paid handsomely) in ways that the local police would not, simply because they didn't live in the area.

You did a turn on the pits, got paid overtime and then went home back South. Out of sight and out of mind. Your family didn't have a clue what was done, and there were no consequences emotionally for these officers, or impact on their communities except basically good money.

I don’t know, I think South Yorkshire police did a good shift for thatcher as well. She certainly had no compunction about using the police for political ends (miners strike, Northern Ireland both spring to mind). Lots of Hillsborough justice campaigners would say this is why South Yorkshire police had such an easy ride in the initial investigations into the hillsborough disaster.

There was a song popular at miners support gatherings at the time that went something like this (tune of Grand Old Duke of York, obviously)

The grand old Commissioner of the Yard
He had 10 000 men
He marched them up to the Northern pits
And he marched them down again
And when they were up, they were up
And when they were down, they were down
And when they were guarding motorways
They were neither up nor down.

Much more uncertain that police who were part of their communities, who had family links with striking miners/ were friends/went to school with them could be called upon to do what was wanted of them.

Thatcher wanted to close mines and had absolutely no plan B for the communities affected. In most of the areas affected the mine was the biggest single employer of working men.

I am just old enough to remember the effect of it on my grandparents community. I remember mobile soup kitchens coming around the estate feeding the families of the striking miners. And I remember buses being diverted to avoid going past picket lines because it got very tense. When the mine finally closed, half the estate was suddenly out of work.

Yes a lot of mines were becoming uneconomical and there needed to be planned closures, but with Thatcher, it was mainly ideological, to crush the unions, and she didn't give a damn about what it would do to the communities.

One of the reasons Germany did better at closing their mines is because they could see exactly what providing no alternatives does to the community. They learnt from us.

I wa 12, and my main memory is of two miners sitting on the ground with collection buckets by the entrance to what was then the Co-op I Hirwaun, and they just looked so dejected. We didn't have a TV, so I don't have visual memories if things in the news as many of my contemporaries do, but because of family connections, I spent quite a lot of time in South Wales (and ended up writing my history dissertation on the history of mining, but more about the 1842 Mines Act.)

What Thatcher and her supporters never grasped is that there were entire communities with a strong work ethic, and they were told ''and tomorrow you'll be on the dole''. They were expected to just suck it up, 'get on their bike' and look for jobs that didn't exist.

The Tories broke the social contract. They tried to make it look like the miners were to blame, and it makes me furious when I see people today saying we have lost our work ethic in favour of a benefits culture. Ask yourself how that happened.

I think they did, and they wanted to break that. Working class, mainly Labour-voting areas.

@Thelnebriati

Thatcher and her neoliberal sycophants grasped it, it was quite deliberate. They systematically did the same to all manufacturing industry and the effect on communities was felt the same in steel towns, print and mill works, trawler and fishing localities, even some large communities where the government was the chief administrative employer. They were especially clever after asset stripping the nationalised industries through privatisation by handing crumbs in the form of decent redundancy and share ownership, with no plan for future generations. Right to buy and subsequent restrictions on councils building more homes further created new reasons for these new Conservatives to feel separate from their communities. Unions were a helpful bogeyman, with the media stoking the division - the culture wars we see today and the demonisation of immigrants are a logical and, again, quite deliberate extension of this.