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Ding dong the Witch is dead
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Actually if one person could be said to have destroyed the mining industry, it would have to be Scargill, because, for his own political ends, he refused to allow any compromise with the government, and tricked the miners into thinking that if they protested enough, somehow their industry could be kept alive in the UK... their dirty, highly polluting, dangerous, black lung causing industry... could be kept alive for their children and their childrens children to be able to go underground. Thank goodness he failed.
Yes, war is really nasty isn't it ?
Surely this is one of those historical events that has to be seen in the context of the country at the time. To her credit, she was a politician who believed in her policies, not one who just pandered to popular opinion, like so many of late.
Some of the issues that have been laid at her door are very significant indeed. The concept of ' there is no such thing as society' took Ted Heath's ' no lamle ducks speech' to a new level. The hatred held for her in parts of the country is deep-seated. To understand things from the perspective of a mining community, you have to be able to understand the suffering that she caussed.
Her manner was unrelenting and at times downright vitriolic, look at how she treated her ministers.
She had positive virtues, and was a skilled politician. Perhaps Britain needed modernising. My thoughts are that the speed and ruthlessness employed were soul-less. I do believe in society, and compassion towards others, so I guess i am different to her.
Barkles, I don't accept that she really caused (your word) what happened to the mining communities, and more than that, I don't even think any government could in the long term have prevented it. If the accusation was just that she lacked compassion about it, that might be realistic, but caused it, no.
Ok, I'll clarify, the issues with the mining industry were deep-rooted. I am suggesting the manner of her actions caused suffering.
Yeah, she had no interest in looking nice.
Change was inevitable, its a question of how you react, how fast ( are you watching Cameron) and how you communicate that.
Hated her, her party and her policies and as someone who revelled in ruthlessly grinding down her opponents or anyone not politically expedient to her i see no reason to extend her an iota of sympathy.
In fact I was happier when she was on the cusp of insanity, frail and in pain as I liked the thought she could spend some time seeing her policies unravel and know what it is to feel vunerable.
Margaret Thatcher ran this country on 4 hours sleep, that should be the tagline for Nytol's next ad campaign.
I guess I can agree with that!
Personally, I'd send my children to work in a shop rather than down a pit.
sussex..our mining villages didn't even have any low cost service jobs to go to.....a factory that employed women on minimum age and nothing else.......
they gave up and thats how we have got massive unemployment in the area and families that have become dependant on welfare for a couple of generations......
that didn't exist before the mines and major industries connected with them closed.....
service jobs still haven't arrived..
and we closed to cheap imports.......are they just as cheap now......and we sold off the wtaer and gas and electric so that they could be better managed in private hands.......are they really any cheaper...but just rich share holders
and the council houses were sold off and not replaced and so now we have to pay thousands in rent benefit to line the pocket of private landlords
If the jobs had bee replaced, and the infrastructure not dismanted with total disregard for the future of the communities, things would have been better.
It was n't the jobs down the pits that were the issue, really - it was the jobs fullstop.
a woman on the radio there berating 'that evil woman' for closing down her local pit.
it closed in the 60s.
we need to try to separate the fact from the fiction here.
You sick sick excuse for a human being!
Yeah, we are going to hear some insane shit over the next few days!
and at least we can save ourselves hundreds of thousands of pounds now as she had still been claiming benefits even though she was doing no work........
talk about benefit frauds.,.............this allowance was set up by John major after she was ousted.....nice job....major and blair both get it as well........
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15486792
The differing opinions on the woman are pretty evident to me. Im from Doncaster and half an hour ago was watching the national news from outside downing st and the reports were largely positive about her and acknowledged her achievments in terms of being the first female leader, the first to win 3 elections etc etc.
The local news has just started and it's fair to say the presenters have been rather less affordable of praise toward her and instead have decided to go down the "interviews with local people on the streets" route type of reporting and, unsurprisingly for Yorkshire the vast majority of people interviewed are clearly of the opinion she was a truly vile and evil individual.
I'd say the same is probably true in Dundee, Gareth, and certainly Glasgow.
However, my grandfather (shipbuilder) is representative of a not insignificant number in such areas who were grateful to Thatcher for curbing the power of the unions. regardless of politics, his experience of that time was violence and intimidation from trade union groups. windows smashed in, my grandmother physically and verbally assaulted in the street, because after years of fruitless striking he dared to want to go to work.
That is not to say that communities did not suffer significant upheaval during her tenure as prime minister. they did. but that is his, and my, memory of the time.
One thing I will say about the coal industry: cheap foreign coal was a factor in its demise but what really killed it stone dead was Thatch exercising the veto in the european parliament over gas-fired power stations. Piping gas directly into people's homes is far more efficient than using it to generate electricity. Technology was available at the time to clean up coal-fired power stations and reduce emmissions, but Thatch and co preferred to bin them altogether and build new gas-fired stations.
Why? Because they needed to break a powerful union. To break them, and pour encourager les autres. Because it suited the corporate world to reduce the protections available for working people - after all, they would just get in the way of wealth creation. That'd be the wealth that never did actually trickle down.
We see her legacy now in estates where generations have forgotten what it is to work and earn a wage.
Margaret who?
Scargill was simply outwitted by her.
Because he never had the balls to ballot NUM members, those that chose to work enabled her to stockpill enough coal to last longer than what the miners could hold out for.
Think it was a pretty close call in the end, but ultimately she won, the country lost it's mining industry and thus the unions were finished as an effective power in British politics.
As a result of which is why the bankers and big business effectively control the countrys parliament.
Very well put
Found the answer to my own question, sorry
Mrs Thatcher stopped being PM over 20 years ago. shame for some people that they are still carrying their little black knots of spite and vitriol around with them. bet you are all a bundle of sunshine and delight. sad cases.