Is it time we gave the miners thing a rest?

[kevthegeordi]

25 years on? Did not one of these people consider retraining? You can't honestly blame a run down community now on what happened 25 years ago. How long had the conservatives been out of power?

 

How could you retrain when 181 pits out of 186 in northumberland and durham closed,There was no other work.Not just the pits suffered but all the sub industries.Communities do take years to recover especially when the local economy has been destroyed,some villages up northumberland dont exist now.gone in 25yrs?

[Guest]

You see what you've started Tony. By starting a thread telling people to stop going on about the miners strike, you've encouraged the loony lefties to come out and start ranting about it again!

 

I can assure you that I am not a loony lefty!

 

I would not vote for the Tories at gunpoint and would prefer a labour government BUT, I was disgusted at the antics of the last the last Labour government and was glad to see them thrown out.

 

I didn't agree with the war on Iraq or the war in Afghanistan.

I don't agree with benefit scroungers but believe in helping those genuinely in need.

I don't believe in uncontrolled immigration.

I don't agree with getting into massive debt by spending money we haven't got.

I didn't agree with using terrorist laws against the ordinary man in the street and, I was appalled at Labour's refusal to let us have the promised referendum on Europe.

 

I was stupid enough to vote for the Lib Dems at the last election but never again.

 

Do these views make me a lefty?

 

You Tory lovers are too eager to put everyone who doesn't agree with you into the lefty bracket because you don't have sensible argument otherwise.

[Tony Erikson]

Most people have moved on. However, the events of 25 years still cut deep into the lives of most of the people that live in the communities affected. Most communities have recovered reasonably well and some haven't.

 

I thought this thread was about the strikes, not the communities post pit closures?

 

The thread is about whether or not after 25 years the arguments still stand.

[Tony Erikson]

How could you retrain when 181 pits out of 186 in northumberland and durham closed,There was no other work.Not just the pits suffered but all the sub industries.Communities do take years to recover especially when the local economy has been destroyed,some villages up northumberland dont exist now.gone in 25yrs?

 

Were the miners given the option of a pay cut?

 

I agree that for some retraining would have been hard but not after 25 years.

[Agent Orange]

The thread is about whether or not after 25 years the arguments still stand.

 

 

If that's the case, then memories should be even more fresh in the minds of all concerned. It was 25 years ago since the strikes, not the closure of Britain's collieries, which is the grand scheme of things, is more recent.

[Mr Prime]

Loony lefties' political ideass are still stuck in the 1980s so it's not surprising they keep dragging up the miners strike.

 

Ironically if Scargill had won we'd now be living under a Communist dictatorship and forums like this would be banned. Thank God Maggie saved us!

 

That's quite an imagination you have there. If Scargill had won then the government would have been embarassed and maybe failed at the next election or an internal coup would have replaced Thatcher. I have never understood why the miners winning would cause parliament to explode, MI5 to turn into the KGB and the police into the Stasi.

[Mr Prime]

You make it sound like the turn of the century when people were earning £3 a week, I think at the time the miners were pretty well paid.

 

Yes, while they were employed but they were on strike and not being paid and then pits closed hence the lack of money, it ain't rocket science. They were well paid in indiustrial terms but it was not megabucks.

[fake]

Yes its time to forget it all and just put it down to a political nightmare.

 

When a business is not viable and cant make a profit then what do you expect to happen, it either restructures or shuts down.

 

British Coal was not subsidised whereas coal could be imported cheaper from subsidised industries abroad. What would you rather have happened, a large heavily subsidised industry paid for by the taxpayer or a smaller profitable one?

 

Mr.Prime

 

The pay was terrible for the conditions imposed.

[kevthegeordi]

The thread is about whether or not after 25 years the arguments still stand.

 

they do still stand.it was premeditated by the government by the fact you said the miners had held the country to ransom.Did we have any power cuts ? NO.Because at the power stations massive stockpiles had been stored,waiting for the massacre,because that is what it was.Premeditated.I will never forget.

[HeadingNorth]

What I've always found bizarre is that the people who refuse to forget the miner's strike are the very same people who refuse to remember what a God-awful state the economy was in and why such drastic action had to be taken in the early 80s - because the unions had blocke any attempt to reform the economy for about forty years until it finally collapsed and went bankrupt.

 

If they'd had sense to let the reforms go through thirty years earlier, the pain would have been minimal. Any fool knows that the longer you fall before landing, the harder the landing is going to be.