I have no time for drunk drivers

Yes I know. And I reckon it would have played out differently without
King Arfur.

 

No bikes either

 

Ok. So, you maintain that without Scargill, the pits stood a greater
chance of survival?

If so, I'd disagree. Maggie simply wanted to close them.

 

There is the POV that if TUC General Purposes Committee hadn't stabbed
ASLEF in the back [1] in 1982 then the Miners strike wouldn't have
happened.


[1] Or ASLEF losing its bottle after the TUC decision.

 

But if the miner's strike hadn't happened, Maggie would still have
closed the pits. She had the idea in her head pre-1984, right?

 

The Tories may have harboured a wish to close the pits but the miners
must be defeated before any closure program could go ahead.

The big three of steel, rail and coal and their associated union muscle
needed to be quelled before embarking on any radical redrawing of the
industrial landscape.

She took on and beat the rail unions in the shape of Aslef with the
flexible rostering dispute. The TUC GPC declared they wouldn't support
Aslef. Aslef bottled it and the door was now open against the rest of
the Labour and Trades movement.

If she'd failed at this hurdle then she wouldn't have been able to go on
and mount the more ambitious campaign against the miners.

 

Ben Blaney wrote

A bit simplistic.

The Tories were, as always, very much agin the unions and their still
rather Marxist leanings. The miners were the big one, break them and
you break the lot was how the theory went. It worked too. The trades
union movement has not recovered from the drubbing it got and prolly
never will.

 

Why was that? I was never entirely sure.

--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
Alfa 116 Giulietta 3.0l (Really) Sprint 1.7
Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Yes. But as it turned out they probably would still have been closed,
because ...

Not really. Maggie wanted to break the power of the unions which was
politically driven . The closure of the pits was driven by short-term
economics. Who know's though, if the political will had been there to
invest in modernising the industry and sustain it through the bad
times then it might be viable today.

 

Catman wrote

A huge increase North sea oil/gas fired power generation and an
increasing supply of New Clear stuff. We simply didn't need the coal
for domestic use and what coal we did need was supplied by the Poles for
a fraction of the cost we could.

A similar story with Iron /steel production and heavy engineering.

The unions couldn't see the writing that Capital was doing on the wall.

It didn't help that the only word in an official union officials
dictionary was "strike".

With hindsight it was all pretty inevitable really.

 

So economics was the reason then? (coupled with the other bits) Makes a
certain amount of sense.
--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
Alfa 116 Giulietta 3.0l (Really) Sprint 1.7
Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Catman wrote

Economics coupled with stupidly entrenched politics and a complete
misunderstanding by both sides of the social effects of technological
progress.

 

Ahhh. A simple answer
--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
Alfa 116 Giulietta 3.0l (Really) Sprint 1.7
Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Catman wrote

Naturally. Life was much less complicated back in the good old days.

Never forget that during the 70's British womanhood was discovering a
freedom never before known in history and were going crazy fucking us
blokes into the ground. We simply didn't have the time to question
those who were forming our political attitudes so we just went ahead and
did what they told us.

 

It is interesting to look back on a period of history that I was aware of,
but not in any way connected to IYSIM

I only came to the country in 74, and was only kid.
--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
Alfa 116 Giulietta 3.0l (Really) Sprint 1.7
Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

I don't think that's true. She wanted to break the unions; it was
important that the mines remained *after* the strike with compliant
workers to show the rest of the unions how futile standing up to her
was.

 

wrote

Maggie broke the miners union because she wanted to close the mines not
to keep the nasty dirty things open.

That and a bit to do with the killing off the heartland of Marxism.
Which was to be found in those areas where trade unionism was very
strong: coal, steel, heavy manufacturing/engineering, the print and the
nationalised industries.

 

I thought the crushing of the unions was more important than the closing
of the mines.

 

wrote

Contingent upon each other really. The unions weren't wanted and the
mines not needed.

I suppose the mines were a more particular case in the importance of
crushing the unions as, in general, they were among the most militant.

Militant of course also translates to better organised and with a
membership much more inclined to know the words to the red flag. The
nature of the job made them a little harder to defeat than the rest but
they went eventually.

 

I was only worried about the Reds at that time due to the only newspaper
I ever read being the Daily Mail.