The Enemy Within: Miner's strike and the Tories today

OGH's Libido · May 24, 2015

So I was born in '85 and have never really managed to piece the miners' strike together.

But it seems to me that a lot of people, my age and younger, have a great deal of antipathy to the Conservative's because of this time.

Seems like most people are agreed that the mines were loss making and so drained the government coffers in trying to keep them open. Seems like most people would say that Thatcher had 'bought' the Police, who were very heavy handed. I once dated a girl whose northern father delighted in tales of 'gravel rashing' miners in the north of England.

So my simplistic take on this is: shutting them down was the right way to go, but the mistake was demonizing the miners ('the enemy within') and a lack of interest in their future employment possibilities.

1) So, have I got this right? What am I missing?

2) Seems like there are a lot of young people who weren't around and have grown up in a completely different world who 'have never forgiven' the Tories for this period. When will the Tories slip loose from this association, if ever?

Cheshire Cat · May 24, 2015

The Conservative Party had never forgiven the miners for the previous strike under Heath. The idea was to destroy the power of the unions (especially the NUM), and Scargill was a perfect hate figure for them to rally against. The NUM's tactics also split the miners themselves which was disasterous for their cause.

Many of the mines were uneconomic (but not all), but Thatcher's stance was mostly political, not economic.

The police didn't cover themselves in glory either, by being used as an almost paramilitary force to crush the (admittedly often violent) picketing.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/06/how-miners-strike-1984-85-changed-britain-ever

Lenny Rider · May 24, 2015

It was a bit more than just the issue of the mines, in Arthur Scargill we had a Union leader who was fast reaching the point of being out of control, he had to be stopped, Thatcher effectively did that, unfortunately with some collateral damage but ultimately the whole fabric of the country was at stake.

colonies man · May 24, 2015

We had two leaders Thatcher and Scargill who were both guilty of taking the fight beyond the central issue.I would place the blame 60/40 with Thatcher being the 60.She totally lost the plot and wound up many which played into the hands of Scargill.Both were leaders of the worst kind a sad time for many.

knocky1 · May 24, 2015

Arthur Scargill should not be forgotten. Especially when he tried to buy the NUM council flat in the Barbican, London, years later under Thatcher's Right to Buy. He failed because it wasn't in his name. The enemy within, indeed.
I joined the strike in picketing Neasden Power station when a student in London. I did my part by drinking in the pub all day.

GreersElbow · May 24, 2015

*cough* Labour closed more mines under James Callaghan than Thatcher *cough*

Lenny Rider · May 24, 2015

colonies man said:
We had two leaders Thatcher and Scargill who were both guilty of taking the fight beyond the central issue.I would place the blame 60/40 with Thatcher being the 60.She totally lost the plot and wound up many which played into the hands of Scargill.Both were leaders of the worst kind a sad time for many.

But had he not been stopped how far would Scargill have gone? Thatcher did a lot of things wrong but she got this one spot one and for all our current problems this country is a better place today for what she did back then.

Cheshire Cat · May 24, 2015

Also the current government's reductions in public spending are far more political then most people seem the realise. Reducing the deficit is a secondary consideration to the political attack on the role and size of the state, and the extent of public services generally. The cuts to welfare in the next budget won't be pretty, but the real disasterous impact on vulnerable people will be lost in the ongoing but ultimately futile and tedious debate on "scroungers" and the undeserving poor which has gone on ever since the state took some responsibility for social policy over four hundred years ago.

Cheshire Cat · May 24, 2015

Lenny Rider said:
But had he not been stopped how far would Scargill have gone? Thatcher did a lot of things wrong, including this one and for all our current problems this country is a better place today despite what she did back then.

corrected for you

cjd · May 24, 2015

Let us not forget the other major protagonist, Mick McGahey. Leader of the Scottish miners and lifelong communist.

Giraffe · May 24, 2015

GreersElbow said:
*cough* Labour closed more mines under James Callaghan than Thatcher *cough*

This is something that should be highlighted over and over again when the lefties spout on. Thatcher just continued what Laboir was already doing, for all the right reasons.

Lenny Rider · May 24, 2015

Cheshire Cat said:
corrected for you

In your opinion.......

Given the choice between Thatcher or Scargill calling the shots, I'd have taken Thatcher every time.

colonies man · May 24, 2015

Lenny Rider said:
But had he not been stopped how far would Scargill have gone? Thatcher did a lot of things wrong but she got this one spot one and for all our current problems this country is a better place today for what she did back then.

I agree Scargill needed stopping but Thatcher went beyond that and damaged so many manufacturing industries which have never really recovered.Her legacy is one that no tory can be proud of.

OGH's Libido · May 24, 2015

colonies man said:
I agree Scargill needed stopping but Thatcher went beyond that and damaged so many manufacturing industries which have never really recovered.Her legacy is one that no tory can be proud of.

But manufacturing never had a chance, right? The Chinese were opening up and others were getting it together around the world, we couldn't compete on prices etc. - wasn't it a case of good judgement?

Lenny Rider · May 24, 2015

colonies man said:
I agree Scargill needed stopping but Thatcher went beyond that and damaged so many manufacturing industries which have never really recovered.Her legacy is one that no tory can be proud of.

The problem with our manufacturing industries is with the unions this countries workers were overpaid for what they did for a number of years and were priced out of the market when the Chinese and others came into the game.

colonies man · May 24, 2015

OGH's Libido said:
But manufacturing never had a chance, right? The Chinese were opening up and others were getting it together around the world, we couldn't compete on prices etc. - wasn't it a case of good judgement?

Good judgement thats the debate,but the fact is that during Thatchers time engineering for example was laid waste and Thatchers policies played a large part.I worked in engineering in England during the 70/80's and Thatcher was guilty of failing to support many companies via here rigid stance on fiscal matters.

1234andcounting · May 24, 2015

Coming, on my father's side, from mining stock, I would confess to not being objective about this. Broadly, I agree with Cheshire Cat's analysis. The hatred between the NUM (and its predecessors) and the Tory Party runs/ran deep, pre-dating even the 1972 and 1974 "victories" over a Conservative administration in which Thatcher was a minister. The General Strike of 1926 was essentially a battle between the miners, supported by the wider labour movement, and a Conservative government.

Working my way through David Kynaston's excellent series of books about post-war Britain, it is clear that the nationalisation of the mines (and indeed the railways, too) by the Labour Government of 1945-51 missed a tremendous opportunity to create a more consensually based approach to management. Subsequently, for the rest of the 50s through to the 70s, however, very rarely did any government, Labour or Conservative, fight too hard against miners' wage demands.

This, perhaps, had created unrealistic expectations and I think it is fair to say that Scargill misjudged the situation in 1983-84. It is also fair to say that the Thatcher government had to "break" the miners and was preparing to do so well in advance of the strike being called, eg, by stockpiling coal. Scargill was both a bad tactician and strategist, particularly in starting a miners strike in the spring rather than as winter set in. Whether the pits were uneconomic or not is hard to assess. For all every Conservative government's praise of the free market, all sorts of subsidies, overt and hidden, are given which make it very difficult, if not impossible, to asses the genuine economic state of enterprises.

The 1984-5 miners strike and the Wapping dispute (print workers) of 1986 were the death knell of organised labour as a political force in Britain. From that point of view, the free market at least won the battle. I would argue that everything that has followed, a country which is the fifth or sixth wealthiest in the world, but also has in excess of one million people reliant on foodbanks, for example, is a result of the defeat of organised labour. People must look to their own consciences as to whether or not they think that the misery and despair of maybe 20% of this country's population is a fair price to pay for the defeat of one trade union. I certainly don't.

I highly recommend the Kynaston trilogy (so far) - Austerity Britain, Family Britain, Modernity Britain.

W.C. · May 24, 2015

Even Norman Tebbit says he regrets leaving whole communities without work.

KZNSeagull · May 24, 2015

It is unlikely that you will get a balanced view!

Scargill refused to have a national ballot as he knew he would lose, the picketing and intimidation reached very violent levels with working miners and their families being attacked. The violence was condemned by many, including Kinnock, and this was partly responsible for the miners being "demonised". There were also Scargill's and the NUM's links to the Soviet Union and possibly Libya.

Thatcher saw it as a threat to democracy and the rule of law and responded accordingly, using the police to further her cause of smashing the power of unions.

It was a bloody mess, no side came out of it well, but as always in these things, it was the coal mining communities and families that suffered the most in the end - legislation had previously been brought in to restrict social security benefits of striking workers, the NUM were funding striking miners families but that money did not last very long.

So depending upon which side of the political divide you come from, it was either a necessary act (breaking the power of the Unions) that had to be done, or was a direct attack by the government on working communities and I am not surprised that antipathy continues today in some young people's views of the Conservative Party. It was a hugely divisive time and will not be forgotten quickly.

GreersElbow · May 24, 2015

Giraffe said:
This is something that should be highlighted over and over again when the lefties spout on. Thatcher just continued what Laboir was already doing, for all the right reasons.

Callaghan also emphasised the requirement for the UK to stop borrowing and become more competitive, it's a fact that's often completely ignored that Callaghan was buying into the growing global consensus regarding neo-liberal economics. As by evidence in this clip with Callaghan's speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFtwx39kJ28

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