Today was the start of the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984/85.

[Jeff Robinson]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/24/miners-strike-photo-don-mcphee#

 

[durruti02]

Don't be fooled - she was one of those violent pickets holding the 'country' to 'ransom' with their unreasonable demand to not lose their livelihoods, the ones that that Foxy recognised.

Both her and the Miner she was helping were hospitalised as far as I remember - the Miner for a long while. The copper got his overtime and, probably, a pat on the back.

have you got the 'after' pic? .. not nice

 

[belboid]

i really disagree mate .. i saw the rcp banging away about this at the time, and was not sure then, was more interested in doing collections etc, but with hindsight i am convinced it was an achilles heal all the way through

the rcp? jesus, they were as useful as soggy sock at the time

It would have made no odds, those who said they'd support the strike 'if only...' we're, overwhelmingly, full of crap, and they'd never support the miners whatever they did

 

[durruti02]

Yep, Orgreave as well - thats the mass picket that the BBC edited to turn events on thier head that evening - showing the miners (who were in practice responding to police violence) chucking stuff at the police and then showing the police charging them.

Lads there were shocked by just how violent the coppers could be - clothes ripped off backs, pickets in t-shits (hardly ready for a ruck) beaten senseless, returning home to see themselves presented as the attackers

i think it important though that actually the miners were regularly on the offensive before being attcked .. in my world they had a right to do so

i remember being in sheff during the strike and listenning to police radio which you could do then .. miners in bentley or some other village built barrciades across all the roads and set them allight at about midnight .. you could hear the police were shitting themselves as they went in .. but lol there was no one there when they got there!

 

[durruti02]

dave douglas on scabs

http://www.minersadvice.co.uk/ourview_forgive_and_forget.htm

 

[Das Uberdog]

*sighs*

So what exactly is it that you disagree with in the sentence;

"A strike is an act of democracy"

?

 

[durruti02]

This was the best book .. amazing access to the yorkshire pit villages particulalry and unlike other books showed miners 'on the offensive'

The Miner's strike 1984-85 in pictures / [compiled by] News Line
New Park Publications, 1985.
Call #: 331.892822 Q
Corporate Author: News Line

ISBN: 0861510704

 

[durruti02]

and some of those ones here

http://www.peterarkellphotos.co.uk/80s&90s/miners/index.htm

http://www.peterarkellphotos.co.uk/80s&90s/miners/pages/Miners026.htm

http://www.peterarkellphotos.co.uk/80s&90s/miners/pages/Miners034.htm

can any one make these links into photos?? i'm crap at that

cheers dawg

 

[Das Uberdog]

 

[Das Uberdog]

 

[Das Uberdog]

 

[dennisr]

i think it important though that actually the miners were regularly on the offensive before being attcked .. in my world they had a right to do so

i remember being in sheff during the strike and listenning to police radio which you could do then .. miners in bentley or some other village built barrciades across all the roads and set them allight at about midnight .. you could hear the police were shitting themselves as they went in .. but lol there was no one there when they got there!

its also important not to fetishise violence for the sake of violence especially given the way the whole thing is manipulatd by the press etc. The strike was the offensive, the organised defence of communities was the offensive.

the example you give is hardly an example of beating the crap out of someone already lying down the way the coppers did at orgreave. you can be sure by the end of the strike and the experiences of those involved that miners did give em a good kicking on occasion - its hardly the same thing.

orgreave was hardly a 'fair fight' - a simple point

i spend quite a few months on flying picket buses (once accepted by the older miners - precisely because you did not like hothead outsiders). i can tell you, for all the occasional banter these were not embittered ejets who resorted to violence unless it was absolutely necessary to defend your own. the exception remains the exception. they were not forming military organisations at this point (not to say some para-mil organisations were not in use but its not the same thing) - simply workers defending their livelihoods - whatever the ultimate gameplan may be for revolutionaries. you have to keep a head and see things for what they are not how you may or may not wish it to be.

i can understand the actions of those who dropped the rock on the taxi driver for example - i don't condone it neither did the vast majority despite their anger - it was tactical idiocy.

 

[dennisr]

not worth the effort so deleted

 

[Das Uberdog]

So, seeing as that is all that I've said, what is it that you disagree with? What is it that you find 'incoherant'? Did you decide to shtum the kiddywink without thinking through the implications of your argument?

 

[audiotech]

This is the classic image (nicked from another poster on another thread):

Orgreave, 18 June 84, Lesley Boulton from the Sheffield miner's support group shouts for an ambulance for an injured miner. A mounted policeman swears at her and hits out with his truncheon and she can only raise her hand for protection (Pic: John Harris)

Frickley miners in Yorkshire copied that image onto t-shirts, I still have one in red.

In her own words.

 

[dennisr]

not worth the effort so deleted

 

[ViolentPanda]

Some seem to think they were trying to bring the government down.

Thing is, even before the miner's strike there was at least a hundred years of history showing the over-reaction of capital to any manifestation of organised labour, panics about "the end of civilisation", "the enemy within" or "the death of parliamentary government" if organised labour was allowed to assert itself.
There was nothing about the strike in '84-85, even the airing of a bit of Marxist political rhetoric, that differed historically. What was different was that the state was presided over by a government that was committed to "breaking" labour organisation in order to facilitate a shift to a neo-liberal economic system.

 

[articul8]

What was Marxism Today was saying about the Miners Strike at the time?

anybody...?

 

[audiotech]

anybody...?

I have a phamplet of their's published at the time - somewhere?

Marxism Today's focus on the strike wasn't that great. The energies of those who produced it seemed to be directed elsewhere, with internal conflict inside the CPGB.

At a meeting in Manchester after the strike, Scargill accused the CPGB of a campaign of vilification against himself and NUM General Secretary, Peter Heathfield:

During the 1985 miners’ strike the gulf between the different wings of the CPGB widened. For the first time the Party actually lost members during a campaign. Criticism of the miners’ strike, and Arthur Scargill’s leadership in particular, came from Marxism Today and Peter Carter wrote a deeply critical pamphlet of Scargill’s leadership which was suppressed for the sake of unity. Scargill, a former member of the YCL national committee in the late 1950’s, was deeply resentful of the “line” taken by Marxism Today and accused Carter of compromising with the class enemy and vilifying the NUM.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that despite these internal conflicts many ordinary Communist party members involved themselves in solidarity activity and were instrumental in building miners support groups.

 

[belboid]

MT really did have surprisingly few articles n the strike - they're all available online http://www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/collections/mt/index_frame.htm

 

[derf]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7929811.stm

Former union leader Arthur Scargill has claimed Margaret Thatcher blocked five separate deals during 1984 which would have ended the miners' strike.

But Lord Walker said there never had been a deal, and insisted that the NUM leader had never deviated from his position that no pit should close.

He also asked why, if deals had been on the table, no mention had been made of them at the time.

The bunfight continues after all this time.

 

[articul8]

cheers - not having read them yet, I suspect it will be critical of lack of national ballot etc. (broadly Kinnockite position, although even Militant agreed on this after the event)

 

[Das Uberdog]

*sighs*

what implications are these idiot? that I credited you with some sence at the beginning?
that you would derail the thread anyhow? there's a surprise...

Look read up about the miner's strike - learn a bit about the arguements used at the time and still now - its what Scargill was defending in the recent Grauniad article. Your generalised and very poorly explained platitudes about the 'democratic' nature of a strike are at best meaningless in the context of what was actually happening and the arguements of either side (even on this thread 25 years later).

You really are the most embarrassing form of 'revolutionary' - you cannot help but ruin your own organisations arguements even when you are right. Thread after thread after thread of idiocy. Sorry, but that's what most folk think on the P&P boards - and it isn't because of the distain many have for your organisation. You really do come across as the worst sort of cliche. Honestly.

Now you could have left it at as the gentle, quite evasive one liner which conciously did not get personal - but you couldn't do that could you? (feck I even added a similey...)

This thread was about the miners strike - one of the most significent events that many of us here lived through - it and the results of it shaped the world we live in now
It really was not about desperate dog and his inability to string a coherent arguement together.

Oh shit! And I've spent my entire life worrying what the P&P regulars think of me! There's my social aspirations down the pan.

Who said I was trying to give some kind of expert commentary on the nature of the miner's strike, you patronising fool? What did I say, exactly? Was I talking to you or engaging with something you'd said? Can there be such a thing as an undemocratic strike? Do you understand the meaning of the word 'platitude'?

Questions, questions, questions.

I also think it's ridiculous you can try to 'claim' the issue of the miner's strike from these boards as the self-appointed arbiter of acceptable and reasonable commentary on the matter anyway. I could have just left it at your "gentle and evasive one-liner" my arse - what made you think I would accept your 'gracious' route out of the discussion (oh-so benevolently given) Pater Familias?

Fucking bizarre.

So don't answer the question if you don't want to, or if you think it's irrelevent. Stop trying to make me 'back down' in principle, just to assert your misplaced masculine domininity over the thread.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to point out how perverse it is that you're accusing me of egotistically devaluing this thread.

 

[durruti02]

deleted as point made cheers

 

[durruti02]

its also important not to fetishise violence for the sake of violence especially given the way the whole thing is manipulatd by the press etc. The strike was the offensive, the organised defence of communities was the offensive.

the example you give is hardly an example of beating the crap out of someone already lying down the way the coppers did at orgreave. you can be sure by the end of the strike and the experiences of those involved that miners did give em a good kicking on occasion - its hardly the same thing.

orgreave was hardly a 'fair fight' - a simple point

i spend quite a few months on flying picket buses (once accepted by the older miners - precisely because you did not like hothead outsiders). i can tell you, for all the occasional banter these were not embittered ejets who resorted to violence unless it was absolutely necessary to defend your own. the exception remains the exception. they were not forming military organisations at this point (not to say some para-mil organisations were not in use but its not the same thing) - simply workers defending their livelihoods - whatever the ultimate gameplan may be for revolutionaries. you have to keep a head and see things for what they are not how you may or may not wish it to be.

i can understand the actions of those who dropped the rock on the taxi driver for example - i don't condone it neither did the vast majority despite their anger - it was tactical idiocy.

^^ generally agree ..

but there is also a fetish/myth of 'behaving yourself' of 'non violence' in the 'decent working man' that we are forced/supposed to comply with too .. that it is ok to be beaten but we must not react (qoute any TU /Lab politician at the time cept NUM )

actually i firmly believe that violence on our behalf is usually a symptom of failure but it is worth being aware of the above

 

[trevhagl]

What was the fuss about?... All these goverment haters needing a big friendly government to keep them employed even if the industry they were in was losing millions? Mining, steel and any other British 'industry' were on their last legs when Thatcher came to power.

The 3 day week and all that malarky All Maggie did was close those antiquated practices and drag this country kicking and screaming into the modern age. So people lost jobs? Shit happens. We used to have over 500,000 blacksmiths in this country...but guess what? We don't travel on horses anymore. Are you upset about their demise? Thought not. So work it out...Would you shut the internet down to keep libraries open?

The miners were holding every working man and his family to ransom every year demanding above-inflation wage rises, which of course was ramping inflation and alternative fuel prices up, and leaving old people unable to keep themselves warm. Thatcher was forced to choose the lesser of the 2 evils by importing coal at 1/5th of the price from Australia. They got what they deserved the f*cking smug, blackmailing greedy c*nts

Thatcher was a visionary. Closed down 100's of polluting coal mines in the 80's despite protests and violent demonstrations. Now the descendents of those 'liberals' that protested against pit closures are now protesting against coal. 'Coal not Dole' the badges said back then. I just saw a sticker on a lampost that said 'Say no to Coal'. F*cking idiots. One day all will understand that Thatcher was the greatest leader this nation, if not Europe, has ever seen.

You utter KNOB

 

[Kaka Tim]

This thread brings back a few memories.

Personally the strike politicised me - I was 17 at the time. I was gobsmacked when it became clear just how distorted the media was and by the sustained violence of the police.

I wasn't involved other than getting stopped getting the brightlingsea port in Essex.There were cops everywhere trying to stop pickets getting to the port where scab coal was being unloaded. They thought me and my mate were pickets - when we were actually just trying to score some blow - But the incident brought home the police state nature of britain in 1984.
Police also attacked a miners benefit gig in colcherster and my mate hasd his arm broken and his guitar smashed by the cops.
The cunts could do what they wanted in those days - as was clear in Wapping and the Beanfield a year later.

The defeat of the miners was a disaster. It broke the back of organsied labour and it gave thatcher (and her nu-labour heirs) a free ride in delivering this country into the hands of the bankers and corporations.

 

[butchersapron]

This thread brings back a few memories.

Personally the strike politicised me - I was 17 at the time. I was gobsmacked when it became clear just how distorted the media was and by the sustained violence of the police.

On this point, the camera crews unions even threatened to strike when they saw how what they had filmed was being presented on the news.

 

[treelover]

As I said in my previous post on here, I was re-politicised by Thatcher's actions 25 years ago. I'd been lefty/CND for my teenage, student and early twenties years, but settling into a profession didn't leave a lot of energy for politics. Then I had that bit of epiphany at the Dartford tunnel (with the police preventing cars from going north to join the strikers -

Read this on Guardian CIF from a poster, anyone know about it?

 

[dennisr]

dennisr and uberdog .. please no more of this public row .. it is not relevent, and is distrcting, to the thread .. tbh it would be good if people deleleted their unneccessary posts as well as i will do with this post after 48 hours

you can delete posts - oh - i'll try that when I work out how.

as for dog i'd kick his teeth through the back of his head if i ever met the prick