One for cashy!
 

BBC NEWS | Magazine | In the red corner, Scargill. In the blue, Thatcher

Mmm, so Maggie wasn't so bad for teh mining industry after all.........................

:D

Re: One for cashy!
 

yeh right,read it all n majority of comments sum it up.:rolleyes:

Re: One for cashy!
 

so ignore facts and figures.. go with the comments made by tom dick and harry instead... typical..

Re: One for cashy!
 

I really don't see the point. The stats are irrelevant. All they show is the level of coal production. They say nothing about the confrontation between Thatcher and the miners. They don't address the questions surrounding police brutality; and in no way, shape or form do they turn Thatcher into a buddy of the working class, or Scargill into its enemy. Smoke and mirrors .... is all .....

Re: One for cashy!
 

Was a very dark period for many and 25 years down the line its easy to say that things wernt that bad. They can chuck all the facts and figures around but it makes no difference. Heres my take on that chart; could be based on the average per man and as there were fewer then yes it would look good. It would look higher as many were on the streets fighting for their livelyhoods against a brutal force determined to crush them.

Re: One for cashy!
 

those are the real facts, summat that fools choose to ignore.:rolleyes:

Re: One for cashy!
 

mm, so no Miners attacked Police cordons etc, You'll be telling me they were all angels next..........

IME fighting and accusations of brutality are rarely a one sided affair.

What about those who chose to work being intimidated by teh strikers? Did that not happen? or is your view of this piece of history so clouded that irrespective of evidenec you will never accept that it was a 2 way street.

Re: One for cashy!
 

As far as I remember, the violence was instigated by the police, and very likely with maggies orders, and imo was retaliation, as for working while on strike, isnt a union just that, all out at the same time? It is likely though that the ones who wanted to work, had realised that scargill had too much power, and that the writing was on the wall.

Re: One for cashy!
 

it wont be long before history re writes itself
and declares, that there never was a miners strike/confrontation in 84

Re: One for cashy!
 

no its not clouded at all, as someone who so quite a bit, due to personal involvement in helping families, summat someone like you would probably never entertain, i have what i consider n adequate picture of all that went on.:rolleyes:

Re: One for cashy!
 

why are you deciding what I would or wouldn't do? You simply don't know enough about me to say anything like that and I'm surprised at you for making such a remark.

was all violence started by the Police, of course not. the strike attracted and would always attract the thug minority just like the football crowds did in those days. It gave them an excuse to riot. We all watch things like Life on Mars and now 'laugh' at the seemingly non PC attitude but back then that attitude existed all over.

As for people who chose to work. faced with the choice of standing on a picket with my family starving, cold, etc or brewakinga strike that 'my' Union was making little effort to compromise would not be top of my list of things I give two hoots about.

It is common sense that in a dispute neither side will 'win' its just a matter of how much you need to sacrifice to get to a position of mutual acceptance. Scargil was out to make a name for himself on the pretence that he was doing it for his 'brothers'. Compromise was not in his vocabulary and ultimately it probably cost the mining industry more in lost employment, mines, output etc than a simple compromise up front would ever have done. Maybe the fact he came up against someone equally stubborn in Maggie was the reason this escalated so, we will never know as those times are past.

Re: One for cashy!
 

Sometimes riot ringleaders wear the same boots as the police - ponder that then:eek:

Re: One for cashy!
 

The miners strike of 1984 could have been settled long before it was. The miners and the coal board had come an agreement on settling the dispute on three separate occasions.

It was the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who vetoed the deals.

Re: One for cashy!
 

Ponder it nope it is a tad to close to the truth methinks. As I was only a teen back then I wouldnt have picked up on that bit. Mind you if you could cross reference the number of arrests with the number charged then maybe just maybe there is something in that. Saying that though without names it would be hard and if the police were involved the info would be burried so deep it might never be found.

Re: One for cashy!
 

why would ya be suprised? i say as i see it right or wrong its that simple,n thats how i see it. Compromise to me, shows how little knowledge ya have about why the dispute happened, if it was about money, i could agree with you, but was nowt to do with money, it was about saving peoples lively hoods everyone is well aware scargill used the wrong tactics, what is beyond dispute is the guy was right, he even underestimated the job losses, what compromise can be in destroyed communities? please enlighten me.