25 yrs ago today - The Miners Strike

[alanmayes]

Just seen on the BBC News that it's 25 yrs ago today,that the most bitterest of industrial disputes began.

It's very easy to just personalise these events,with regards to Thatcher,Scargill and MacGregor.

The effects upon individuals and communities still last to this day.

I remember seeing a BBC2 documentary on 'The Battle of Orgreave'.I had never seen the police behave
in this manner before.

The full weight of the state was used and Brian Clough in an interview back in 84,said that Nottinghamshire
had been turned into a "Police State".

Policemen from the home counties, waving fivers and tenners at striking miners raised the temperatures.

It changed the political and industrial landscape.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7925552.stm

[DMR]

The most bitterest eh? That's well bitter.

[dell boy]

After the miners strike came the printers strike, Eddie Shah, all the miners came to the printers picket line in London it was really scary times, but in a funny way good times. Scab, Scab noiser than any football ground and very violent.

[ronnie21]

After the miners strike came the printers strike, Eddie Shah, all the miners came to the printers picket line in London it was really scary times, but in a funny way good times. Scab, Scab noiser than any football ground and very violent.

The same Eddie Shah who now lives near Wotton Bassett!

[Reg Smeeton]

Fuck me....time flies.

The left in Swindon put in a lot of effort into supporting the South Wales miners...I guess in my heart of hearts I knew it was a doomed project, but I suppose being an STFC supporter, you get used to being on the losing side.

We had a lot of fun though and some great events...the Onllwyn Male Voice Choir singing in the Beehive being the highlight.

 

[THE FLASH]

The same Eddie Shah who now lives near Wotton Bassett!

I liked that TODAY newspaper.

[chalkies_shorts]

Bitch Maggy treated the miners as terrorists and used MI5 and God knows who else to infiltrate them and find out their next move. I wasn't a great fan of Scargill but he had the kind of popularity that Bitch could only dream of. Roy Lynk was used to divide the miners and was then dumped.
I remeber seeing Christy Moore at the Wyvern and there was big support for the miners.
There is no doubt in my mind they were treated disgustingly by this Government and the police got away with murder - literally.
Mamsfiled away was fun that year with chants of Margaret Thatcher's Black & White Army at the police. Chants also about them being scabs.
It changed the landscape but not for the better.   

[mexico red]

i got sacked from my paper round for refusing to deliver today.

[Ardiles]

Some of our fans cheerfully started calling 'scab, scab' to the Mansfield fans when we played up there a few years ago.  You could see the local coppers roll their eyes, thinking 'shit, not this again'.  It's really quite sad that many of those communities have never really recovered from the end of coal mining.  Objectively, the industry was always going to die...but the death could have been a whole lot less traumatic.

[Colin Todd]

A loss making industry that was heavily subsidised by the government was rightfully scaled back.

Must have been shit for the miner losing their jobs, but you cant run a country or an economy by offering people a job for life when it costs the nation more than you produce to keep you employed

[yeo]

There seems to be a movement in the Media of late to try and portray Thatcher positivly,probably because shes got alzhiemers and she's dieing.When she does die there has even been talk of a state funeral I believe.If that were to happen Id imagine there would be a lot of people queing up to spit on her Coffin and id be one of them.

[Batch]

Must have been shit for the miner losing their jobs, but you cant run a country or an economy by offering people a job for life when it costs the nation more than you produce to keep you employed

Unless you are a bank(er)

[Phil_S]

Each to his own, but I take the opposite view. When she got elected, this country was a basket case. She turned it round totally. OK the medecine wasn't alsways nice to take, & she lost it in the end, but on the whole she gets 8/10 from me.
C T hit the nail on the head, you can't run any economy the way it was.
Gordon Brown, (who I would rate as 1/10 max), has now wrecked the economy again, again spending our money like it was water for over 10 years now.........we are going to need Cameron to be as tough & uncompromising as she was. (Can't see it).

[mexico red]

i would quite happily stab thatcher.

[Ardiles]

The 3 or 4 most recent posts go to show that you can't really view an 11½ year stretch in Number 10 in black & white.  There were many of Thatcher's policies that I disagree with (even if I was too young to at the time).  I'm left leaning...I recognise my own bias.  But I also accept that we needed a radical in the job at the end of the 1970s.  The country was screwed.  I do have deep respect for the trade union movement and what it represents, but it had morphed in to something quite ugly in the 1970s and Callaghan was in no mood to peg it back.

So I don't think I am part of the crowd that will be breaking open the champagne when Thatcher does die.  I think history will portray her as a brilliant, but flawed individual who achieved much but also inflicted a fair amount of collateral damage along the way.