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@tictax wrote:
it was a joke cas gawddddddd :(
They’re really sensitive these women about their baby talk tictax.
………… maenwhile – back on topic ………
@pete wrote:
The executive voted to recommend a return to work they couldnt end the strike themselves that was up to the miners themselves
In the light of this a vote was taken by the NUM National Executive who voted 98 to 91 in favour of an organised return to work. The strike formally ended on 3 March 1985, almost a year after it had begun.
Here’s a bit of history for you tictax:
Mining communities grew up around pit heads where shafts were sunk to extract coal. Coal became a source of great wealth as it became the primary fuel used in Britain which led it to be nicknamed ‘King Coal’.
The prominence of coal as a fuel in Britain meant that the National Union of Mineworkers [NUM] was a powerful union.
During the 1970s evidence of the power of the miners and their union was demonstrated. In 1972 the miners went on strike for the first time since 1926, bringing the entire country to a virtual standstill and forcing the introduction of the three day working week.
The miners went out on strike again in 1974 with the same result. On both occasions the miners obtained the wage increases they were demanding.
The 1984-5 strike was different from the earlier strikes in the 1970s. This strike was not about obtaining an increase in pay but rather it was about jobs, industry survival and ultimately family and community survival.
The announcement in March 1984 that twenty pits were to be closed including Cortonwood Colliery near Barnsley in South Yorkshire, on which several million pounds had just been spent upgrading the pit, sparked the conflict. The proposed closures would result in 20,000 job losses across the industry. Various mines began to strike as a result of the proposed closures.
On 12 March 1984 Arthur Scargill, president of the NUM, called for the strikes at the various coal fields to become a national strike.
The Communist Party of Great Britain donated money to help the miners, specifically requesting that it help them to attend a march in London
For the first time Communist Party members joined men on the picket lines and formed part of flying pickets. In what often became a violent and confrontational situation they were in the front line, and like the miners on the pickets were injured as a result.
Despite the hard work they had put into the strike, as financial hardships increasingly took hold miners began to break the strike and return to work.
In the light of this a vote was taken by the NUM National Executive who voted 98 to 91 in favour of an organised return to work. The strike formally ended on 3 March 1985, almost a year after it had begun.
In the years following the strike there was a systematic closure of the majority of deep pits in Britain. The removal of the pits caused the death of a way of life and with it the communities that had grown up around the pits. The strike was a life changing experience for everyone who was involved and for many it was a wake up call.
The central issue is not that Margaret Thatcher set the miners up so that they could be defeated – although this is what actually happened.
You have to see this strike in the light of previous strikes – strikes that very effectively brought the country to a complete standstill; wrecked any hope of sustained economic growth for many years; and by forcing sometimes wholly disproportionate increases in wages, put up manufacturing labour costs to such an extent that rampant inflation and job losses became the ‘norm’.
Striking and secondary strikes – enforced with violent attacks on both workers and police officers – at that time had become an almost everyday event. A lot of these strikes were funded by the East European / USSR communists through a variety of seemingly innocent sounding front organisations. They had their own agenda to follow which included bringing down capitalism and democratic government – the unions were largely controlled by CPGB members and were only too willing to assist in bringing about a ‘working class revolution’.
@University of Glamorgan – History Research Dept. wrote:
Moscow Gold” and the 1984-85 miners’ strike
January 24, 2008
Researching relations between Britain and the former communist German Democratic Republic, historian Norman LaPorte has uncovered new evidence that ‘Moscow’s Gold’ – contrary to Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev’s assurances to Prime Minister Thatcher – helped fund the 1984/85 strike.
The documents make clear that miners’ leader Arthur Scargill was in contact with the East German ‘Free German Trade Union Federation’ (FDGB), which contributed a ‘high amount of foreign currency’ to a slush fund run through communist-led World Federation of Trade Unions. Scargill was assured by the East Germans that he had their ‘moral and material support’ in what his communist counterparts described as ‘a struggle that was, from the outset, political’.
Although Arthur Scargill made no secret of his pro-Soviet stance during the Cold War, these documents indicate that relations between the miners’ leader and East Bloc were much closer than previously thought.
Communists and former Communists who remained pro-Soviet were prominent in the miners’ leadership. Hitherto unused material details, for example, the visit of Scottish miners’ leader and veteran Communist Mick McGahey to East Berlin shortly after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In a private discussion offering support for the suppression of the ‘Prague Spring’ by Soviet tanks, McGahey stated that, ‘Your problem is the construction of socialism; our problem is dying capitalism’.
One of the project’s most important findings was the extent of these contacts and connections between British trade union officials and the hard-line East Germany. By 1978, 24 members of the TUC‘s 44-man (there were no women members) General Council had ‘fraternal relations’ with their East German counterparts.
Whilst I understand that feelings run deep, as they did back then, the fact still remains that this strike WAS an attempt by communist inspired trade union leaders to attempt the overthrow of a democratically elected government.Mrs. Thatcher did what had to be done – nobody made those people go on strike; we are not talking about a famine or an earthquake or some such act of “God”. This was a deliberate rational considered decision, made by the NUM leaders, to try and bring down – or at least emasculate – an elected government.
Amongst all the anger and bitterness that clearly still remains …… have you ever REALLY stopped to think what would have happened had the miners ‘won’ their strike and the Governement fallen?????
You seem to entirely forget, as many including the BBC, do, that this was first and foremost a political strike.
The Soviet Union in all its glory was alive and fomenting trouble in the West. Scargill and co took their politics from Marxism, Trotskyism and all the other ‘isms’ of socialist revolutionaries. Ludicrous though it now sounds the editor of ‘The Miner’ ran off to East Germany as a political refugee!
It may be that the miners, or at least some of them, were lions, but they were led by Marxist donkeys. Socialist revolutionaries plan civil mayhem in order to take over governments – that’s how they work. It was no different in the UK. It was in effect a low key civil war for the political heart of the country.
There is the other side of the argument.
Bottom line is that Scargill “lost” and the NUM was finished as an effective trade union.
It wasn’t me Guv’nor – honest :lol: (Wish I’d thought of it though).
I remember Arthur Scargill fomenting this strike to make a stand against the then Government. Of course he dressed it up as the miners ‘fighting’ against forced redundancy and pit closures ec and made the usual impossible ‘demands’.
I recall that he refused to allow the ordinary members of the NUM (as it was then) to have a vote, or indeed any say at all in the calling of the strike, – but instead he and his inner circle decided to hold it and made it “official”.
There was an almighty row about this but Arthur stood his ground and flatly refused to put it to the NUM membership.
There was also an enormous scandal over a large amount of ‘missing’ money. Apparently the Russian ‘mineworkers’ had donated some millions to help and assist the striking UK miners (they didn’t get strike pay as the strike wasn’t “official”). This money never made it to the strikers but somehow – allegedly – became …..er …..diverted en route. nobody was able to pin the loss on any particular individual – but there were a helluva lot of fingers being pointed.
You’re all a bunch of horrid ‘ageists’ and I’m off to report you to the Equal Something-or-other Board for gross discrimination or something ….. so there !!!
Charming eh??? Well I guess I know who my friends are (NOT!!!).
