The blessed Margaret ..

[Canadian Break]

Langley's request

OK - my final contribution. Spooky - you throw around figures and half-truths as though they are fact. Here's a fact for you:

"The next day the unions were told that Cortonwood was only the first of a wide-ranging programme of closures that would see 20 pits shut and 20,000 miners lose their jobs.
Scottish miners joined the action and by 12 March, half Britain's 187,000 miners had downed tools".



This means that approximately 10.7% of the miners lost their jobs as a direct result of the 1984 strike. Here's another interesting fact, below are the figures for the number of pits that closed during the Wilson (2 terms) and Callaghan (1 term) Labour governments.

1964 545
1965 .. 504
1966 .. 442
1967 .. 406
1968 .. 330
1969 .. 304

1974 .. 250
1975 .. 241
1976 .. 239
1977 .. 231
1978 .. 223
1979 .. 219

This would indicate that the collective Labour process closed 231 pits; compare this to the 154 closed in the Thatcher years. Now, do we assume that Wilson and Callaghan closed pits because they were economically unviable - one would hope so given that they were in charge of our collective finances. So, can we ascribe the same reasoning to the Thatcher administration - given the capitalist mantra of "profit, profit, profit" I think it's a safe bet to do so. Now, my question to you is this: where were the NUM when the Labour governments were closing pits - with the loss of many more than 20,000 mining jobs? I don't know - so you see it really is a genuine question to you.


Here's another thing - given that the pits were closed in 1984 because they were uneconomical to work i.e. that the coal seams were not large enough and stable enough to be worked with efficient machines, then by his actions in trying to keep them open Mr Scargill was effectively condemning his members to go deep underground into old pits, and use 19th Century methods to extract the coal - dirty, dangerous and often fatal work. Does that strike you as the actions of someone who has him men's best interests at heart? I would say "No" - therefore he must have been driven by another motive. What do you think that may have may have been?


To answer you question at post 380 - I would suggest that the figures you give tell us that there were 2.3 million people in the UK engaged in hugely unprofitable work - subsidised by the State making useless cars, mining expensive coal and building ships using technology that couldn't compare to that used in Japan. What would you read into the figures?



So, you see Spooky, when we elect people to Govern us, we should understand that they have to take difficult decisions "for the greater good". I would not wish to belittle the problems of those who were made redundant as a result of the 1984 closures - but I would absolutely insist that the enstire episode was seen in the wider context and, if that is done, then I think that Mrs Thatcher will be judged by history as an extraordinarily competent leader.


PS all the facts/figures quoted here come from a variety of BBC websites.