To think that these T-shirts are disgusting?

[GreenD]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19560284

Whatever you may think of her, this is hardly in good taste is it? It just makes the unions look bad to have this sort of thing on sale at their conference. Can you imagine the CBI having T-shirts looking forward to the deaths of Tony Benn, or Shirley Williams, on sale at their conference?

did daddy tell you that they were all standing passively and the horrible miners got shirty with them? did your dad and his pals get a massive pay rise to put them in hock to the tory government?

to do violence to desperate people who were losing their whole communities, is your dad proud of that? are you proud of that? as long as you were okay, everything is okay. what about my question about the police getting nice fat pay rises, did your dad get one? is that why maggie is your hero?

Creighton, usually agree with a lot of what you say but in this case your posts read like a school bully goading their unfortunate victim.

Thank you creighton That was the point I was trying to make but in your impartiality you put it much better than me. It was the barrage of questions that I found horrible.

Sorry I meant thank you craic. It's getting late.

I don't read it like that. I read it as someone asking questions of someone who refuses to acknowledge that the police goaded miners with their pay

Divide and conquer.

Kayano She didn't say that - she said that wasn't the experience of her father. Why is her experience less valid than the others mentioned? One of the main things I remember being told about from the miner's strike is a group (including Ricky Tomlinson) of miners chucking concrete blocks off a bridge onto a motorway and killing an innocent driver.

Some police behaved in a disgusting way, so did some miners.

The driver was driving a scab miner to work. Doesn't make it in any way, shape or form right but that was the context.

This thread is really interesting, thank you to posters who have posted real experience of the whole thing, I have learned a lot.

Seems like there are two sides to every story, and I'm understanding more why some people have such a strong reaction to MT.

I am a socialist but I would be sorry to see Margaret Thatcher put in her grave... she should be put in a wheely bin and set on fire.

Actually she did. She said it was 'completely made up'

I have spoken to police officers who worked the miners strikes, who deeply regret the role that they played. They never again want to be used by the government to bully civilians who they signed up to protect. I am sure that some police do not feel that way but some certainly do.

I might be wrong here as I am no expert but isn't some of the anger re the mine closures because whilst closing down our resources she then organised for the same materials to be imported from abroad, so instead of supporting our families and our economy they went cold and hungry while others elsewhere profited?

I would feel wrong to celebrate anybody's death, but I will never forgive that woman for what she did. We have never known desperation like it since then, I suspect it won't be long now before we do again, I really really hope there is some strength still in the unions.

Sorry kayano .You are correct. She did say that. I still don't think anything she said warranted such attacks though. Her dad was just doing his job and was violently assaulted- you can see why she feels as she does.

the craic dealer- i goaded the poster because she deserved it. the police were used to attack citizens of this country. she pointed out that her family was poor until thatcher put police wages up thus buying their loyalty and allowing themselves to be used in a disgusting way. the police have not changed since then.

mrs thatcher's aim was to break the unions and offer working class people as cheap labour for her big business buddies.

Outraged

My first home had rates of £100 a year - afffordable on my £8000 sallary. The poll tax took it to £2000. The only reason I didn't go to prison was because I managed to get a loan to pay it. And I just had to hope it would ba abolished.

One way to avoid it was to move and not register to vote, there are people in Scotland who are still not registered to vote. There are people in Scotland still paying off their poll tax.

Living in a northern town in the 80s was depressing. You would come home from school / work and put on the TV to see how many other companies had gone bust.

In school every morning was a discussion on who's parents were made redundant. There was no alternative employment.

The rules on housing benefit changes, so people whe were made redundant used to be able to claim their mortgage and continue to live in the family home. When the rules changed HD would pay for rental but not a mortgauge so homes were repossesed, in many casses families moved to a house next door or down the street. The rent was normally more than the mortgage had been.

Loosing a job, having to move, knowing the 10 years you have already paid your mortgage has been wasted and it doesn't matter how well your child does at school they will only find work if they move south puts a strain on a marrige so many people lost their job, their home and then their marriage.

I moved to Oxford in the early 80s, a work colleague said, about unemplyment in the north, "If they really wanted a job, they would find one, work as a cleaner or in McDonalds", she just could not grasp the idea of a McDonalds with a big sign saying "sorry, we have no vacancies", and when they did have a vacancy they would get 200 aplicants.

Entire towns died, if you lived in a mining town the main employer would be the mine, but other businesses needed miners to be working and spending money, so when a mine closed so did all the independent retailers, they just did not have any customers. This is why high streets all look the same now.

The only careers for people in many of these towns is inthe public sector, and just like with the mines the other businesses rely on the custom from public servants, now these jobs are being cut.

In contrast London was booming, you had yuppies weraing watches that cost more than a home in the north drinking champagne and not knowing what manual work is.

I was in a northern town that whilst affected, was not as affected as those in the NE and Scotland.

She pitted working man against working man.

Just like now, but worse, hopefully Dave doesn't get long enough.

Mrs T changed the atmosphere in this country completely. She called the miners 'the enemy within'. How hollow that sounds now. The miners' families were desperately short of food and other essentials A vicar near where I lived collected tins of food, nappies and such like to take up to one of the coalfields. He went (not very far) up the M1 and the police would not let him off at the junction. When he argued the police made it clear that they didn't believe he was a vicar. I don't ever remember the police stopping people leaving a road like that before.
I lived in a mining community that didn't strike. I remember our MP, Edwina Currie, saying in the House of Commons, "My boys are still working". It made no difference, our local pits closed anyway. Now we are dependent on oil from the middle east and gas from Russia.
I wouldn't buy the t-shirt but I share the anger.

Scotland will never forget or forgive. It scares the shit out of me that in essence it doesn't matter a jot what we vote, if England want the Tories in Britain gets them. We're a bit protected from them now with our own evolved government with certain powers but back then we weren't.

A Tory government does a hundred times more for the independence arguments up here than the SNP party ever has!

Yes the tshirts are disgusting.
I think it's disgusting for anyone to wish any other person dead and celebrate their death no matter who they are.
Makes the person celebrating no better than the person whose death is being celebrated.

MrsTerrysChocolateOrange

According to this Thatcher indeed killed lots of people.

That article appears to be saying that liberal democracy kills more people than socialist dictatorships. Are you certain you're signing up to that man's point of view?

YokoUhOh

I wonder if any of the self-identified Thatcher fans on here have seen Boys From The Blackstuff (as mentioned by another poster earlier)? How can any sentient being fail to be moved by the plight of the 'three million'? People who revere Thatcher care only about their own life chances.

From the moment that the major industries of the UK were nationalised, those people were living on borrowed time. By the 1970s, British coal was too expensive and there were too many employees. By the 1980s the situation was critical.

It's amazing how the far left have converted the miner's strike in to something other than vicious, self-interested greedy profiteers bullying the state to keep other people's money. You want to talk about selfish? Take a look at the unions who ran the country in to the ground.

conferencepear when I see Currie on the tv being the jolly celeb, my blood boils. I still remember that she was one of Thatcher's most ardent and enthusiastic lackeys

And even today in the news, we see evidence of Thatcher's contempt for ordinary people (especially those from the Liverpool she particularly reviled) when we will find out the extent of cover up and misinformation which she directly sanctioned over the Hillsborough disaster

"You want to talk about selfish? Take a look at the unions who ran the country in to the ground."
I agree that something needed doing to curb the power of the unions. That doesn't mean that what Thatcher did was right. The way she ground the faces of ordinary working people into the ground was despicable and completely unacceptable.
I was not directly involved in any of it, but it changed the way I view the police forever.

Agree with you again conferencepear I think, in the long run, Thatcher did the police a great disservice. Many millions of people like me, law abiding, middle class, middle aged, have a deep and abiding suspicion of the police because of the way they were allowed themselves to become her bully boys in the 80s. I am thinking of the miners strike and the inner city riots in particular

1. Labour did continue to both build and improve housing stock.
2. Couldn't build under Thatcher due to capital receipts.
3. More people voted against Thatcher than for her. No, I have no grudging respect for her. She was cruel, she did nothing for women but stated that they could achieve as she had. Rubbish, and interestingly had no female cabinet members. She also stated that if you lived on a council estate, you were a criminal. (1989 Housing Act).

There are two excellent songs written about that time.

The first is Ghost Town by the Specials, which spent weeks at no. 1; the second, not quite so well known, is Shipbuilding by Elvis Costello: I think Suede were one of the groups that covered the latter. Both describe the utter desperation of those communities affected by Mrs.T's policies.

It wasn't just the North that was affected, by the way. She didn't do great things for the Welsh or the South West either.
And, while much of the South East was booming, it made things so much worse for any family that was not. My father was mostly unemployed for three miserable years thanks to firms going bust. Although some of the girls at my school were also affected, some were not and made our lives hell. I can still remember being bullied because I lived on a council estate, wore a hand-knitted cardigan to school, got free school meals, couldn't afford trips etc.