miners strike 84/85

[pinkmonkey]

I'm from a mining town

What do I remember?

Nearly every shop on my high street closing down.

Our local supermarket removing all the shelves and stocking nothing but beans, bread, milk and sugar sold from palletts on the floor.

Kids at school begging you to buy them crisps and hungrily eating them. Kids stealing your packed lunch. A woman in the next town starving to death to feed her kids

Walking to school past the houses of 'scabs' which had every window smashed and paint and excrement daubed everywhere.
The kids of 'scabs' being violently beaten up.

My school (pupils not teachers) going on strike one afternoon in support of the miners -we kept it hush hush for days and at two O'Clock one afternoon we just got up and all walked out and stood outside the gates. The telly crews turned up and all.

My school headmaster going ballistic in assembly the next day as a result, saying how we had shamed him (Tory twat -my dad was right - he was an idiot).

Scargill marching down our high street with our local majorettes as acompaniment.

My grandad dying in a lung cancer ward full of other miners, they were not properly protected against the coal dust in the old days.

It was a fucking awful time and our town took years to recover.

I was one of the lucky ones as my dad was on the dole at the time (having been made redundant as a result of the above.)

I'm sorry I can't remember anymore.....

 

[danny la rouge]

Originally posted by wurlycurly
I have very strong memories of the strike. Was living in a tiny predominantly National Trust-owned Scottish village called Culross which housed the only working miner in Scotland at the time

This is an unbelievably small world! You have therefore seen me, wurlycurly, as I was there on several occasions!

 

[Zapher]

Spud, thanks for your comments re. mine. I know about unemployment; I was unemployed for nearly 3 years. (I was also homeless for a while.) I also remember the miners' strike; I'm 44.

I acknowledge the suffering you mention, and accept your points on that exactly. But if the strike hadn't been broken -- and other unions broken around the same time -- there would have been MUCH GREATER suffering.

Union militancy had almost destroyed the economy. It caused the 3-day week. Bodies lay unburied. Rubbish piled up in the streets -- all this through strikes -- and rats ran amok. Red Robbo up at Longbridge virtually destroyed our car industry. I could go ON, but you get the picture. Had all this been allowed to continue, the economy would have become TOTALLY fucked, more and more businesses would have gone broke, and we would have had MASSIVE unemployment.

Then there wouldn't have even been scrap dealers in business to pay people the odd £20 on the side.

Suffering? You saw nothing in comparison to what it COULD have been if solidarity from the neck up was allowed its head.

Icepick: yes, I built a business from NOTHING, and now employ 7 people. I pay the best wages in my industry, AND my people are on profit-share. That's because I've been through the shit myself, and I'd never rip anyone off.

 

[pinkmonkey]

Zapher has a point.....some of the stuff i saw go on was totally out of order.

Yeah, there was solidarity, but what happened to some of the scabs was sick, they only went back to work for their kids ffs. The woman who starved was held up as a martyr. It was tragic.

Some of what went on was identical to that Sara payne paedophile witchhunt that happened the other summer. Mindless. Everyone was suffering.

It really went too far. I distinctly remember my family debating what was going on re. the strike most evenings.

My dad has been a member of Nalgo all his life, but although totally anti Thatcher, he did not have much good to say about the Scargillites.

I think that some of what went on has been glamorised a bit. Believe me. It was a total nightmare. It makes me upset when people use it to publicise their political causes.

I was 14 at the time, so excuse me if I'm a bit fuzzy about the details, it was just the way that me & my family saw it...

 

[jiggajagga]

Zapher. Re the AOL poll of best PMs...er AOL is AMERICA on line (i.e an American company where most users are over there). Of course they'll love her. The USA is where maggie the anti-christ learned her right - wing trade. She loved the American model of society (You know, privatisation, fuck the weak etc etc). I suggest that if the same poll was broken down into countries the vote would NOT be 65% or anywhere near!
Yet again someone is spoofed by the press.
May I suggest 'Hidden Agendas' by John Pilger ISBN0099741512. Chapter VIII - The Media age. It might interest you and it may open your eyes and your mind a little.

 

[bluepaul]

Zapher, I've seen other poles that show a similar result. As I have mentioned before I think Mrs T was the bees Knees, only wish I had been able to vote for her. She did orright for me and my family and all my friends, but I didn't grow up in a mining town.

So what should have happened (*serious Question)? Should the great British Tax paying public subsidised the mining industry. An organisation dealing in an environmentally unclean commodity that no one wanted to buy. And if so should we (the taxpayers) of subsidised all the steel workers, car workers, ship builders as well?

BP

 

[Maidmarian]

Zapher ----

I disagree VERY strongly with your anti-TU remarks !!

It wasn`t the TU movement which caused the economic "downturn" -- but rather YEARS of under-investment in industry --- due to the greed & un-patriotism (investing abroad for bigger dividends) of shareholders !!!

 

[Maidmarian]

Also --------
as to "Subsidising the mining industry ---"

I saw Scargill make a wonderful speech in which he demonstrated that , had the govt been GIVING away sacks of coal with a £20 pound note attatched ---It would STILL have been cheaper to the tax-payers than "clean" (sic) nuclear power !!

 

[TopCat]

I remember the miners strike alright.

I try not to most of the time as the feelings the memories bring up are a bit too pasionate for easy living.

In fact this is all too painful.

Maybe more another time.

 

[The Black Hand]

I can remember going to a girls school across town to do an economics a-level and was the ONLY one in a class of 7 arguing for the miners... i don't see those girls any more, nor do i care what their politics are. As for Zapher, it wasn't the 'unions' who 'fucked the economy' along the lines you describe... It was systematic low levels of investment, and changing economic conditions which led to the workers struggles. The original sin belongs with capitalists as Mr Marx showed...
btw i don't know what you call massive unemployment but over 3 million as Thatcher the bastard created is massive to me.

Blue paul - actually coal use was GOING UP around the world until at least 1995. As for subsidising the mining industry, we subsidise the farmers all the fucking time, bail them out with foot and mouth payments and no fucker like you says a word... but then i forget, it's down to CLASS isn't it...

 

[bluepaul]

Black hand - Not in this country, we hardly produce any coal now, and import very little either. Until the mid 80’s the main purpose for coal was in the production of electricity, this was then replaced by using natural gas, which is a far greener and more efficient form of energy.

I take your point on the farmers, should we really subsidise any industries and if so what?

 

[William of Walworth]

History

Major respect to this thread. Our group didn't raise much money, only about £350=

Respect to Maid Marian, Black Hand, Bruise, wurlycurly, Pink Monkey, and above all SPUD MURPHY.

This thread is recent history and was very affecting to read ... so many memories, and like TC it's hard to talk too much about it ...

Zapher it was the attitudes of people like you ... sneering superiority and sarcastic "lets all go back to horse and cart" type comments whenever LOST JOBS AND LIVELIHOODS are discussed, and assumptionism that Trade Unions are wicked and evil, that my grandfathers, and later TUnionists like the miners, fought against all their lives.

I agree with Kaka Tim too, it was a turning point, there is unlikely to be any such widespreadly supported TU action in the near future ...

I am critical of parts of Scargill's strategy but not of his analysis. His predictions of the early 1980s have been proved correct time after time.

 

[TopCat]

All I will add is that many lessons were learned.

Should we get a "re run" type of event then I am sure we will have a chance to show how much better opposition can be done.

 

[William of Walworth]

Only one memory from me because I was in London pretty much all the time : on the day the strike finished, myself and my then girlfriend were sitting on the top deck of a 253 bus through Hackney, on our way home after a pretty depresed night out.

The conductor like ourselves was wearing those yellow support the miners stickers and TGWU badges etc. ... he said I'm not taking any money off of any NUM supporters today.

Respect. That stuck in my memory, along with much else.

 

[Revolting]

Zapher, leaving aside your politics, your conclusions about economic performance are just plain wrong.
Thatcherites go on and on about how she sorted out the country and made industry lean and mean, etc. The shrill rhetoric to this effect was in inverse proportion to the reality, and it seems to have successfully pulled the wool over many people's eyes.
She did nothing of the sort, and her motivation for breaking the unions was purely based on class war, not on economic "rejuvenation". Britain's economy became "leaner", only in the sense of becoming smaller.

It's ironic to go on about Red Robbo (whoever he was, I'm only 34) destroying the car industry, because it was the Tories who actually killed it off. Britain was perfectly well able to sustain a car industry throughout the so-called bad old days of the 70s.

Then, while trumpeting the "inevitability” of the decline of heavy industry, Thatcher raved on about her favoured sunrise industries, so let's look at the results there.
In the 70s, Britain had ICL and Inmos, but by the end of the 80s, the native computer industry no longer existed either. In the 70s and early 80s, Britain was also a major innovator in software, but now we just buy American packages.
University research was also snuffed out, during the 80s.

In the bad old 70s, Britain was one of Europe's richest countries, and its GDP was on a par with France. By the end of the 80s, Italy’s GDP had overtaken it. Yes, chaotic strike-ridden, unstable, sclerotic Italy, which is supposed to be epitomise everything that's wrong with the Euro model.
The only reason Britain’s GDP has leapfrogged Italy and France in the past few years, is that because their GDP is now denominated in Euros, it has suffered a relative devaluation of 20%. That is an external factor to economic policies, and is not a permanent state of affairs.

Britain curently has higher employment than France/Germany, only because our McJobs are worth less, both in their renumeration, and their economic value. I came across a recent report showing that productivity per person per hour is higher in most European countries than the UK (and in turn, the UK is higher than the US, precisely because we are not yet fully Americanised).

If I was a cynic, God forbid, I would say that Thatcher destroyed the sort of jobs which provided a basis for large scale unionisation of organised labour. Deriding them as obsolete was just a smokescreen.
The fear that the strikes of the 70s struck into British bosses was not the fear of economic decline, but the fear of change in the balance of power, between the classes.

All these real, high-value jobs were replaced by froth and the service sector, and distribution of imported goods. These just shuffle money around within the economy (or to be more precise, from the poor to the rich). They don't earn money for the country, and the employees are left too fragmented and vulnerable to trouble their masters.


Bluepaul, The Tories (and now this Labservative government as well) are willing to subsidise just about anything apart from industry, especially their pet PFI consortia, backed by American banks. Funding British industry is normally called investment, not “subsidisation”.

I’ve gone considerably off topic again, but by way of redemption, a last word about coal. We didn't stop needing coal, but we just began importing it instead.

 

[bruise]

Respect to all - and, to pick up what Pcanning said - it was the first time that 'gay rights' and heavy industrial unions got it on. It was fantastic to see, and demonstated in practice that whole point that any division (sexism, racism, homophobia) weakens us all.

Zapher - I'm glad you've got some morals and ethics when applied to the micro level. That said, wouldn't it be great if the people you 'employ' got decent renumeration by right, rather than just because they happen to have a slightly nicer boss than the one down the road.

On the other hand, you are relying on completely discredited sources of information on the macro level, as others have pointed out.

TopCat - I wish I shared your optimism about the present level of preparedness. I'm not convinced that we have learned from those defeats (and yes, I'd include steel and wapping as also epoch-making events).

pinkmonkey is right that it would be wrong to glamorise or wallow in nostalgia. I'm not sure I bleed too much for scabs, but there were some horrible things that happened, and, while there was a great sense of community, it was largely because there was huge stress which demanded that mining communities and their supporters rose to the challenge or they would be destroyed, and they knew it.

BTW, does anyone remember the 'Union of Democratic (sic) Mineworkers' now? Also - as well as the power workers - the pit deputies not joining the strike was fairly decisive as well.

 

[TopCat]

There is a well respected school of thought that says that NACODS vote was riggeed!

 

[marty21]

I was at uni in Swansea during the strike, the union did send coaches to support the picketing miners, most students also gave money to the regular collections in the city centre.

agree with those who have said that Scargill made mistakes in the strategy of the the strike...but he was also brought down by outrageous abuse of power by thatcher, m15 should not have been involved, it wasn't a threat to national security, and scargill has been proved right, the tories set out to destroy a national industry and succeeded...

I was in swansea during the recent petrol blockade and was speaking to a shop keeper there, she told me that the road hauliers and farmers didn't get a lot of support in South Wales because of the way they shafted the miners in 84/5. Even nearly 20 years later, the way hauliers and farmers acted during the strike has repercussions...

 

[William of Walworth]

Bloody fuel protesters ...

Right on, Marty!!!

 

[A. Spies]

Um,
This threads great.
But stereotyping AOL as used by thick + rich bods is dumb.
We use AOL and this may come as a surprise but we use it cos it’s fuckin cheap.
It’s like a quid more than BT or something and you get over double the time.
We’re not thick but we aren’t computer genious’s either, AOL is quick n’ cheap, I realise it’s a corporation etc, but sometimes only the Middleclass (J/K ) have the power to choose.

 

[Zapher]

Maidmarion, re "years of under-investment". Yes ... why the hell would anyone have invested in industry with union wreckers in charge? May as well throw your investment down the nearest drain.

Revolting: I think your analysis is interesting but wrong, perhaps because I actually lived through it and you say you were 10 years younger. However, the Thatcher philosophy couldn't have been far wrong, because Blair copied it to get elected, ditching the un-electable Old Labour which you (and much of this board) seem to favour.

 

[William of Walworth]

When TF, ever, were unions "in charge" of industry?

Is that what the Daily Telegraph told you??

 

[Roadkill]

Much respect to a lot of people who've posted on this thread, especially (though certainly not only) pinkmonkey, Spud and Revolting. This is one of the best threads I've seen in ages - I just wish I'd read it earlier. I haven't much to add, sadly. I'm too young to remember the Miners' Strike in detail, and most of what I might have said has been very ably said elsewhere on the thread.

But there is just one thing. Zapher:

Red Robbo up at Longbridge virtually destroyed our car industry.

And I suppose Red Robbo had responsibility for investing in new factories, distributing the finished product, and designing the cars in the first place?

Look, management was as much at fault for the disaster of BL as any other factor. Even if it had been put together in the most state-of-the-art factory, with decent labour relations, that wouldn't have made the Austin Allegro a bestseller. It was a shit car, period. The fact that it was badly designed (even the original designer, Harris Mann, was furious when he saw what his creation had been turned into by the time it had got through various design committees and managenment rationalisation exercises), badly marketed and launched to replace a very popular car indeed (the 1100/1300 range) was hardly the fault of Red Robbo and his mob, was it?

The All-aggro was hardly an isolated case either; every car that BL was making at the time, the Princess/Ambassador and Maxi especially, was crap. The only exception was the Mini, and then the Metro, which was designed and introduced before Mrs Thatcher's union-busting drive but after there'd been a measure of reorganisation, especially among desing and management. Coincidence? Probably not.

Of course Britain was up shit creek in the 1970s, but fool be you if you swallow the Tory propaganda and blame it all on trade unionism.

 

[William of Walworth]

It's Tory propaganda, Zapher!

Thanks, RoadOscar. My point exactly.

 

[exosculate]

I was at school during the miners strike (secondary school- so I am old enough to remember it). Just something I wanted to add.

I had a Physics teacher who thought the miners strike was great....... you can always rely on lefty/liberal teachers I hear you say.

But NO......

She was very right wing. She liked the strike because her husband was a Met police officer (on secondment) to the strikes. She explained that he was being paid triple-time wages for nigh on a year. She said that even when off duty because they were on call they were paid continuous overtime rates. They were able to put in 18 hour days frequently a large proportion of which was pait at triple timerates. I cannot remember the exact details now as it was a while ago.

Anyway - needless to say her husband earned an absolute fortune as a result of the strike. Enough she says in one year to virtually pay for the house that they were buying.

My point of course - the police were paid serious amounts of the good old taxpayers money to break the strike. At all costs the strike had to be broken as far as Thatcher was concerned and the price of victory was a secondary concern.

The political nature of the police force was shown in its true nature in the strike, and the class nature of society in general. In my opinion the breaking of the strike quite literally broke the backs of the British unionised working class and it has never recovered.

Thats me done.

 

[Zapher]

William, you ask when were the unions ever in charge of industry. Answer: when they, not the management, controlled workforces.

Oscar (preferred "Roadkill"; more bite to it!): there's truth in what you say. British Leyland cars were crap. Much of that responsibility did indeed lay with management. However, a bad situation was made MUCH worse by the likes of Red Robbo.

 

[Roadkill]

Really? I came to hate "roadkill": it always sounded too nihilistic for my liking!

Labour relations were exceptionally poor at British Leyland. However, put the scenario into a wider context. The unions at BL were operating under exactly the same rules as those at other car plants. Ford and Vauxhall (both foreign-owned, but that makes no difference to the union legislation at their British bases) were heavily affected by strike action in the late 1970s. Doubtless they had their share of militant shop stewards too. But they pulled through it. Why? Could it possibly be that they were better managed and organised, and because against BL's sorry Allegro, they were producing cars like the Chevette and Escort?

 

[rightisgood]

Mr exosculate

to the best of my knowledge the police have never ever been paid triple time, they only get double time on public holidays. given the shit they got from the commie cunts they deserved triple time.
So stop fabricating your left wing crap and go and picket outside Scargills house

 

[vimto]

Rightisgood.

Are you a communist?

 

[Zapher]

Oscar, your post above is spot-on. I actually agree with it!!! I'd still say that union militancy didn't HELP Brit Leyland, though. But never mind

Rightisgood: oh dear. I don't appreciate ANY help I can get