Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
One of the nastiest strikes ever.. started off on this very day 25 years ago, and many of us remember it as if it was only yesterday. Some of the brutal encounters between the striking miners and the police were the worst ever seen in an industrial dispute. The strike started, at I believe Ollerton Colliery, as its closure was announced on this very day.
Following the closure announcement the miners immediately walked out on strike and slowly but surely the strike spread throughout the nation in a total industrial war. Something like 52,000 miners were on strike. All went out except for some bizarre reason the miners in Nottinghamshire. Nottingham kept the country supplied with coal which was seen as a terrible scablike betrayal.
The strike didnt achieve any of its goals. It lasted a year and The Miners lost. Their industry was devastated, with all the pits closing one by one. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people lost their jobs, and their special communities died, never to recover. An era was gone forever.
The Conservative Government under Mrs Thatcher, who wealded the axe, promised new jobs...but alas years and years later the replacement jobs were of the call centre variety.
GaryC will know more Im sure especially the impact the strike had in Kent.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
If Scargill called a secret ballot and went into the strike with such an endorsement the Nottingham miners and others would have been out with them. But he was afraid that he would have lost such a ballot, because his extremist bully boys would not have been able to intimidate his members into voting the way he wanted.
He thought he was above the law and above needing to adhere to the wishes of his members, he lost and deserved to do so. He was guilty of encouraging violence and intimidation during the strike against those who decided to carry on working and it is those working miners who held out for democracy and the right to work who deserve our respect.
Sid Pollitt
I believe the strike started at Cortonwood Colliery where some miners had had to take transfers from other mines that had closed. The strike was about pit closures rather than pay and conditions and at the time there were 170 mines employing 170,000 miners. It seems to me 25 years on that the former miners have come to terms with the past and their opponents are still coming out with the same dogmatic spin they did at the time.
Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
Sid you are quite right..it was indeed Cortonwood Colliery as I heard on Radio 4 this very morning. I should have written in down. It somehow turned into Ollerton in my brain between then and the posting. Im needing notes these days.
Just to add there is an interesting piece by Rhys Griffiths in todays Dover Express about Kents miners. I havent read it yet but it looks interesting, will do later. So for those interested it should be a worthwhile read.
Guest 684- Registered: 26 Feb 2009
- Posts: 635
The hypocrisy of Tebbit's opaquely insulting attempt at 'sorry' to the miners after all these years is gobsmacking. How dare he?! It was his government who initiated a highly-politicised assault on miners and their communities in 1984-85. Then, when the mining industry was done for, the seamen copped it unfairly in a similar fashion three years later.
Is Tebbit perhaps related at all to any of the country's fatcat bank chiefs, those squillionaire fellow purveyors of the meaningless, mealy-mouthed 's' word?
Get on your bike Norm and don't stop at the end of the Admiralty Pier.
Guest 674- Registered: 25 Jun 2008
- Posts: 3,391
Wot a man that TEBBITT is IF you believe in summat stick by it.
Everyone at the time was telling Maggie and her Conservatives what the closures would do for the mining communities, and the wider community.
But Maggie was determined to take on the NUM in an attempt to smash them and trade unions in general.
Arthur Scargill may well have got parts of his message right on pit closures
but I don't feel any ballot would have changed the minds of the nottingham miners
remember the UDM working hard with employers also to break the workers.
Scargill probably should have had a ballot, but thats history as is the mining communities that even TEBBITT now having a change of heart on.
2 faced or what!!!!
It was a sad time then, and sadder now, and will like many other things that Maggie did never be forgotten.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
the miners strike and the pits closseing along the seamans strike etc certanly killed dover off the map for shops etc.
Sid Pollitt
I've just seen an former Tory MP on the telly saying that the miner's strike was politically motivated, by Scargill. What a turn up, most people I know reckon it was the Tory government motivated by their desire to break trade unions and to get revenge for the defeat of the Heath administration by the miners in the 70s. I've heard comments by police officers quoted today saying they were used a political pawns during the strike, I wonder who by. I know the victors write the history but if it was politically motivated, and planned for, was that done by the miners themselves?
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
my memory recalls a leaked government memo detailing pits to be closed.
the government then denied the existence of such a list.
scargill, not being the sharpest tool in the box, walked straight in with his size 12's called a strike, when stocks were incredibly high.
right through the whole affair he played into the government's hands.
nett result.
no pits or jobs.
Guest 664- Registered: 23 Mar 2008
- Posts: 1,039
We have five or six deep coal mines left in the UK. It is a disgrace - we import over 20 million tonnes p.a., two thirds of our consumption.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uks-coal-output-falls-to-preindustrial-levels-769769.html
It is what went after the strike that was so destructive - especially 1993 when we closed 31 out of 50 pits. It is bordering on criminal - sheer industrial vandalism by a vindictive, doctrinaire psychopath. Coal miners are the salt of the earth.
It would teach us a lesson if we had another war and had no fuel, but then I suppose we would end up chopping down every single tree in the country to burn.
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
I will contribute to this thread but I will only post personal facts and I will not repeat myself.
Forget Scargill. Kent Miners took no orders him.
Nearly a year prior to the strike, Kent Miners and every other area, including Nottingham, held an Area Ballot, every area returned a near 100% vote to take industrial action should the coal board try to close any economic pit.
Many miners were transferred to Cortonwood and over 1 million was spent on refurbishing the washery on pit top and the men were told their jobs were safe.
This made it very easy for her to start the strike, she new that announcing the closure of Cortonwood would trigger Kent and many other areas to strike in support of Cortonwood Miners. Scargill did not want us to go on strike at that time and asked us to return to work, we refused to return to work and to wait for a National Ballot. We had already held our ballot and having our last National Ballot overturned by Lord Denning, we were not prepared to give them the satisfaction of overturning another. PaulB There was no bizarre reason for Nottingham not going on strike, a couple of years before the strike our national bonus agreements were thrown out and a new one was thrust upon us, a very simple one, the more coal you send out of your pit the more money you got, fixed sum per ton. Sounds fair eh. No, coal seams in Kent averaged 3ft, average in Nottingham 14 ft, ergo, Nottingham Miners would hit the Jackpot, 4 times more bonus than Kent and other areas. Kent rejected this new scheme and a National Ballot was held and the decision was to reject it, Lord Denning overturned the ballot and allowed the Coal board to implement it and Notts miners were quid's in, along with the promise, just before the strike, that if they didn't support the strike, their pits would be safe. It came as no surprise that they would not strike.
I'm sure I will get usual rhetoric about scargill, but if mistakes were made, we made them and yes we were outflanked, for years we went about our work, many oblivious to the implementation of the Ridley Report, and Thatcher's establishment of a special inner cabinet of senior ministers who met twice weekly to direct strategy, the battleground upon which the government should take on and defeat the unions, had to be carefully selected and prepared.
Even Mcgregor admitted she ordered the strike before he died, many people from police to politicians are beginning to face up to what really happened, with more to folow i'm sure of that.
Question for BarryW, you being the money man, why were nearly all police in the country given a £1000 bonus 6months before the strike?
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
The strike was totally for political reasons, Scargill's....
On the night of the 1983 election,he openly called for a revolution in the streets against Mrs T in a live BBC interview. He never did have the best interests of the miners at heart and those who followed him were mad as hatters.
His sheer stupidity and that of the miners is underlined by their going on strike in the spring and knowing that the Government had wisely prepared by stocking coal for what was an inevitable confrontation.
The miners reaped what they sowed, allowing themselves to be led by those nose by that Marxist idiot.
One interesting fact between 1945 and 1979 there were 750,000 jobs lost in coal mining. Of those about 350,000 jobs went in the 6 years of Harold Wilson's Government between 1964 and 1970. That puts the 170,000 miners in 1984 Sid referred to into perspective.
I am thankful that the miners were led by that fool as the defeat of this Union was essential to bring the economy back to sanity. There was nothing machiavellian about this, what happened was all down to Scargill, he bit off more than he could chew.
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
BarryW
I wasn't wrong then with your answer, which bit did you not understand, the Kent Miner took no notice of Scargill, we went against his wishes, but that does not fit in with your story line does it, so you choose to ignore that and many other facts, and again you never answered the one question I asked you.
I never stated the miners were any better under a Labour Government; we have always been on our own, but i think you will find many of those pits you were talking about were uneconomic for geological reasons and exhausted pits, both of which the Kent miner has never disagreed with.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 660- Registered: 14 Mar 2008
- Posts: 3,205
I t was a sad time for all,me Ex Father in law decided to go on strike,but he had returned from a double hernia only a week before,I had friends in my football team who fell out over the strike.I saw the hardship in villages like Eastry where people only managed with food parcels and handouts.It was a brave decision by the men unfortunately they were against probably the most aggresive leader we ever had.Maggie T who was out to use the miners to show the 'working man'that she was in charge.Her reward was her friends to stab her in the back....Justice.
If you knew what I know,we would both be in trouble!
Guest 649- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 14,118
I can not add to what you are all saying, but I do know we need to open the mines again now,as said before it will gave 1000s of English workers yes English workers, back into work.
Stop puting our funds into the banks that is not making jobs and they will only to withit like they have done in the past and we will not get anything out of it only pick up the bills.
Coal will help get England on the move again.
King Vic 2nd
Guest 671- Registered: 4 May 2008
- Posts: 2,095
JHG,
I agree, it was a sad time for thousands and should never have hapened.
She was used to beat the unions and when the job was finished, they turned on her, and I don't think the Maggie bashing is over yet, anyone watching BBC and listening to Radio Kent, will have heard some very interesting admissions this week from all involved in the strike.
"My New Year's Resolution, is to try and emulate Marek's level of chilled out, thoughtfulness and humour towards other forumites and not lose my decorum"
Guest 674- Registered: 25 Jun 2008
- Posts: 3,391
Regarding Maggie sad state of affairs, they all looked to stab her in back in the end, and now tebbitt her close friend now admitting she was wrong.
All to late,
The strike caused rifts in families/streets/villages and still bitterness,
caused mayhem to everyone needed finking through