Britannist

Thank you for your agreement, Mountaineer. I like your English flag/map logo, by the way.

Britannist

As you know, C-Steam, the miners of South Derbyshire (for those who don't know it - that is the part of the country C-Steam lives in) wisely voted to break free from the Scargill-controlled Miners' Union to join the anti-strike Union of Democratic Mineworkers.

It is true (as you state above, C-Steam) that there is still coal which could be dug up - but Mrs. (now Lady) Thatcher took the view that our country could not be held to ransom again by Scargill and the militant trade unionists and reliance on coal had to be
reduced.

Indeed, even if the UK had continued to use large amounts of coal after the 1984 Miners' strike the EU would have forced us to cut down using coal as it did, indeed, go on to do.

Which is why two large coal-fired power station have closed in South Derbyshire (the most recent power station demolition, as you know C-Steam, last year).

By 1984 it was cheaper to import coal from South America than it was to dig it up.

There is the possibility that if Scargill had not been on the scene some of the coal now still underground at mines in the UK could have eventually been dug up. It is Scargill's fault that this did not happen. He and the militant miners - through their strikes of 1973/4and 1984 - made the UK Government move rapidly away from coal-generated electricity to other sources during the 1980's.

I would argue that it was not Lady Thatcher who destroyed the proud mining industry - but Scargill.

Phil Sheldon

Had Scargill been an army General and failed to see the trap he walked into he would have been Cashiered. Anyone who halts production of a raw material for 13 months and then bleats that his industry 'will never be the same again' deserves the Marxist 20/20 Hindsight Medal.
I know of at least three instances where miners were deliberately lied to about food and cash contributions,the Christmas toys appeal and Union funds spent on dubious 'Expenses'. The NUM was infiltrated by MI5, hence the Police's ability to target certain vehicles, carrying known militants on their way to visit other pits. Ian McGregor devised and helped with the formation of the UDM; another nail in Scargill's coffin.
Scargill was fighting for Scargill and it is noteworthy that none of the Labour Shadow Cabinet offered practical help or advice to the Trades Unions last dinosaur.

kernow

I was hoping for a reply from c_steam.

kernow

In my opinion spot on!

Mountaineer

Cheers not my design though.

A good point and reason to leave the EU.

Britannist

Yes, of course you are right Phil. Scargill did not treat the miners in his own union well. He used them as a political tool to pursue his own agenda to try to bring down a democratically elected Conservative Government.

Labour should have publicly condemned his actions in organising a strike.

As I wrote earlier, I can't understand how Scargill and his supporters thought for a single moment that they could beat Mrs. (now Lady) Thatcher. Scargill had lost before he even started his strike in 1984.

Mountaineer

HENRY Hyndman (1842-1921),
was an early British socialist and one of the founding fathers of the Labour Party. He was also one of the groups of patriots who, when Labour began to drift away from being the party of the British working people into internationalism, stayed true to his patriotic principles. Henry M Hyndman graduated from Cambridge and read for the Bar, before becoming a journalist and entering politics. He was repelled by the capitalism of the Tories and the internationalism of the Liberals, so stood as an Independent in the 1880 General Election prior to being introduced to the ideas of socialism as a radical alternative to the global rule of greed. In 1881, he founded the Social Democratic Federation, which was to become one of the groups that later merged to found the Labour Party. The SDF was to the fore in the fight for British workers’ rights in the face of exploitation by late Victorian Capitalists and soon established itself as one of the major forces in this new Labour Movement. Hyndman was also at the forefront in urging that the infant Labour Movement unify and establish itself as a serious electoral force in its own right, rather than, as some had urged, seeking to work with the existing establishment parties. These efforts bore fruit on 27th February 1900, at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street, London. Hyndman and the SDF agreed to combine with the Independent Labour Party, the Fabian Society and leading trade union figures to establish the Labour Representation Committee, which became the modern Labour Party. However, Hyndman began to have growing doubts about the willingness of the new Labour Party’s leaders put internationalism, what was to become political correctness, ahead of the interests of British workers. In 1911, Hyndman had finally had enough of Labour’s lack of patriotism and formed the British Socialist Party, which went on to support the Ulster Loyalists in the 1912 Home Rule crisis and the war effort in the First World War. He supported British intervention in the Russian Civil War of 1919-21, but only if Britain backed the radical nationalist Greens who were fighting both Bolshevism and Czarism.

Hyndman’s radicalism and patriotism impressed even the Tory Morning Post, which on 28 November 1918 described him as “a sound Patriot, an Englishman who does not allow his socialism or his democratic passion to produce anti-nationalism.” Sadly, Hyndman died in November 1921. In March 1922 a Hyndman Memorial Committee was set up whose members included the playwright George Bernard Shaw, and Wickham Steed, editor of The Times. Bereft of its patriotic socialists like Hyndman.
The Labour Party drifted into mindless pacifism, the effective defection of its first Prime Minister and much of the Party leadership to the Tories while in office, and one decent but short-lived reforming government in 1945. Following the cynicism of the Wilson and Callaghan years and the infantile leftism of the eighties came the final betrayal and defection to the camp of international capitalism under Tony Blair.

HM Hyndman would have seen the radical patriotism and commitment to the interests of ordinary British working people, for whom the Labour Movement was set up.

rjt

Thatcher learnt the lessons from Heaths mistakes and started preparing for the strike as soon as she came to office, she knew the economic program she was proposing for this country would be bitterly opposed by the left.
It is too her credit that she implemented these policys even in the face of opposition from within her own cabinet. Her appointment of Norman Tebitt to repalce the Heathite Jim Prior at employment in 1981 was a critical one, on the issue of Union power they were ideologically united, it had to be curbed for the good of the country and therefore her governemnt were able to put the required legislation in place.

For that and so much else this country owes Margaret Thatcher a great debt.

__________________
Mr Delors said that he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the community, The Commission to be The Executive and The Council Of Ministers The Senate. NO! NO! NO!
(Margaret Thatcher 30 Oct 1990)

Ignore List: The Prophets of ST Al the Unelectable.

Mountaineer

NO ONE knows how many men and boys have died doing their duty for their country in our coal mines. 90,000 died in mine disasters alone in the sixty years before WW1, and including coal dust related diseases such as chronic bronchitis and pneumoconiosis, the total casualty figure is well over a million. This Labour Government has given the police their own Police Memorial Day for officers killed in the line of duty, and there should also be a Miners’ Memorial Day. There needs to be a special occasion when the country remembers all those miners who gave their lives miles under the ground, hewing out the coal that was the vital energy source in Britain of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.