Lady Thatcher

[Dave Wells]

So did the miners (left wing or was it centre forward ?) intend to bankrupt the country - no I doubt it. They were just shit scared of losing their livelihoods.
Did the rich definitely TORY wankers (has a mis spelt b in it) intend to bankrupt the country - no I doubt that too !
The difference is that the miners ended up with fuck all and the wankers got million pound bonuses and still do and always will do because they're all probably Tory public school boy TWATS in bed with Davey and Boy George !

[max_tranmere]

Hi David. Thanks for the link and the explanation. I suppose much of the continual shrinking of the coal industry would have happened anyway but it was hastened by her. I am certain that if these areas were true-blue Tory regions like Kent and Berkshire rather than largely Labour voting areas things would have happened differntly. There would not have been the brinksmanship which led to the Miner's strike, there would have been more liaison between Government, the Coal Board and Scargill's outfit and things would not have gone the way they did. I find it odd also that Maggie's promise of Trade Union reform programmes from 1979 onwards still had things unimplemented by 1984 - 5 years on - namely the ability of a Union to take its members out on strike without a ballot.

[max_tranmere]

My view is that Thatcher stood up for Britain except when it was politically damaging for her to do so. She signed us up to the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) even though she knew it was bad for the country but it would have cost her her job if she did not. The prospect of her losing her second Chancellor within a year was too much for her, it would have ended her career, so she went along with it. Lawson had quit, Major was her new Chancellor and pushed hard for it. As Ken Clarke said a few years ago on TV (I remember watching the interview): "she couldn't lose two Chancellor's, so into the ERM we went...". The cost was very heavy, it cost the nation billions on Black Wednesday when we were ejected.

[max_tranmere]

The Poll Tax was very unfair, I specifically remember that in the borough of Westminster in London (and 'Westminster' is not just that area of London but a huge borough which covers many districts and makes up about half of central London) the Poll Tax was ?36.00 per person. You could live in a mansion in one of Westminster's milllionaire districts like St Johns Wood and a rich couple paid ?72.00 between them - that's not even ?1.50 a week. A poor area of east London (in the borough of Haringey or somewhere similar) had to pay something like ?500 per head, a grand for a couple who lived in a modest flat somewhere. It was said by many that for a Duke and a dustman to pay the same was not right - in reality it was regulalry the case that the dustman paid 15 times more than the Duke did! Extremely unfair.

[max_tranmere]

Working down a mine was certainly unhealthy but at least it gave them the pride of having a job and supporting their families. A lot of the people in these areas die younger now - drugs, suicide and so on. It's very tragic what has happened to these regions of the north, the midlands and south Wales.

[max_tranmere]

"We used to burn coal fires to centrally heat homes.The clean air act in 1950s changed that
We used to have steam trains.
we used to make coal gas to supply gas cookers before North sea gas.
We used to have a steel industry that used lots of coal"

It seems inevitable with the shrinking of demand there would be a need to shut down many pits. I just think it could have been managed better, if these pits were kept open by continued Government subsidy for a year or two longer, while the Government saw to it that new means of employment were being set up in these areas so that the workforce could make an easy transition from the mines to the new jobs in the areas, then it would have been OK. Instead most were just thrown onto the scrap heap. It took a long time for new industries to be set up in these places and most did not offer work suitable to the locals with the skills and experience they had, there was also not enough new jobs to employ all the people who became jobless with the closures. And, as I said in another comment just now, if all this was happening in true-blue Tory voting heartlands the closures probably wouldn't have happened at all.

[max_tranmere]

I saw an ex-miner from the north east saying this week that we import something like 56 million tons of coal annually into the UK. That's over a million tons a week. It seems rather odd, crazy even, that our coal mining workforce was laid off yet we still have the demand - and have to import it from overseas. Even if it's cheaper to do so it is more expensive in the long run when one looks at the huge cost of subsidising areas of the country with vast amounts of Benefits now that most of the people in these regions depend upon them.

[max_tranmere]

There was certainly a large stockpile of coal, and Scargill not acknowledging that and his mad idea to start the Strike in the summer when demand is at its least, was very silly from his point of view and further confirms what an idiot he is.

[max_tranmere]

Apparently Neil, sorry Lord, Kinnock can't make it next week because he "has another engagement". This is clearly him boycotting, if it was a close relative he would obviously reorganise his diary. This is strange and very unlike what the Westminster club normally does when one of them die. Every senior politician and ex-politician who has passed away that I can ever recall always has their opponents attend and their opponents are always willing and happy to go. It's very un-parliamentarian of Kinnock to boycott it.

[Gentleman]

Because his paid for your GP, police, teaching amongst all the other services you've had or use that's what society is about.