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  Let's try once again with using facts (The Truth), not personnel feelings, ideas or propaganda.
  1 year prior to the strike ALL mining area's held ballots and the unanimous outcome was to take industrial action if the Coal Board tried to shut any colliery other than "for reasons of coal exhaustion or with geological problems".
  Millions was spent on Corton Wood Colliery and the workforce was told they were safe for at least another twenty years. Thatcher new about this ballot and when the time was right, for them not for us "in the spring" they shut Corton Wood. Knowing some but not all areas would honour and stand by that Ballot.
  Here in Kent, we phoned Scargill and told him we were on strike in support of our comrades at Corton Wood. He did not call us out on strike.
  I am sorry if that does not fit in with your little ideologies of your recollections but they are the facts.
  So the argument is, if you think the strike was wrong then blame the Kent Miners, not Scargiil.
  We went on Strike to save our pits because we knew we were next. We lost the strike and lost our pits and in this corner of Kent we lost thousand of jobs, broken societies and was left with many other problems.
  It was never about the coal it was all about smashing the unions. The balance of union power had become unstable and I believe it was a problem that needed to be addressed but Thatcher went far too far in treating the rank and file as Enemies Within. Forcing us into fighting for our future and our children's future was barbaric and unnecessary. The large majority of miners were not union or politically motivated; they were just working lads who wanted to keep their jobs and communities alive.
  Beware, because the Russians are buying up coal reserves in America and in this country and we are sat on 200 years of the best coking coal in the country. What she did all them years ago has not finished affecting this area yet and wont ever, but that's only an opinion.

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