Every government since thatcher had a chance to do something about it. Blair could have done that instead destabilising the middle east for another 15 years.
sorry but 30 years on even i can't honestly say 100% it's all thatchers fault.
The Battle of Orgreave
- Thread starter Danthus
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Every government since thatcher had a chance to do something about it. Blair could have done that instead destabilising the middle east for another 15 years.
sorry but 30 years on even i can't honestly say 100% it's all thatchers fault.
By the time the strikes were done, it pretty much was. The rest of the country did not want to compensate or reward the communities for causing disruption.
Thatcher was a very lucky lady, she had some good enemies !!!
Having said that in the long run the pits would have closed regardless of the government in place at the time.
I grew up in South Wales and now live in Sheffield and work in Rotherham so have seen first hand the devastation left behind by the loss of the UK's Coal and Steel industry. Saving the industries wasn't necessarily an option but abandoning the communities who had served the country and fired the industrial revolution was more than a little unfair.
Not sure we need another public enquiry they just seem to burn millions of pounds to reach the same conclusion everyone else already has. Interesting that they are looking to abandoned the second phone hacking enquiry!
It absolutely was 100% Thatcher's fault that after she shut the gates she left communities to rot. Just as it was 100% the following governments fault that they did nothing either.
It wasn't just miners though(it was even most of them either) mechanics, logistics, etc whose work depended on the pits lived in those communities & were affected. We can argue whose fault the strikes were til the cows come home, but it is never the governments job to abandon citizens who are in need.
This is particularly what I disagree with. Thatcher won another term in office after the event. The Tories won at least one more term after that (I think it was one more, think that takes it to '97). Each General Election the Tories were elected by the voting population.
Thatcher was not 100% at fault. She said she was going to take a tough stance and she did. The people approved of that idea. They approved after she broke the unions and they approved again. Take issue with society if you must, but it certainly isn't "100% Thatcher".
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but neither is it their job to continue subsidizing loss making industries with no future
Of course she was at fault, you just can't leave whole communities to rot, you can't just take away their jobs & leave them with nothing. This affected everyone in those communities, miners or not.
Can't believe people think it's acceptable for a government to abandon people they don't like or didn't vote for them.
There were pits that were profitable, there were pits that could've been modernised to extend their lives. People would've lost jobs, that was inevitable but nothing like the destruction of communities that happened.
If a government is taking away the main employer in the area then they should be investing in the area to promote jobs in other sectors. They should never say "I don't like you, rot in hell!".
I didn't say she wasn't at fault. I said she wasn't 100% at fault. Society at the time condoned it by re-electing her (and then re-electing the Tories). Blame society at the time not Thatcher.
She didn't get re-elected to leave the ex mining communities to rot, that's just not true.
But even if it was, any responsible government wouldn't have even campaigned on that to start with. As the government they have a responsibility to all the countries citizens, no matter what another group citizens think.
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But she did get re-elected after destroying communities.
this is exactly what happened, i remember it clearly.
The germans modernised the way the tories were proposing and they are still going (relatively) well.
the unions destroyed the mining industry themselves by giving thatcher no choice - the public were behind her all the way, not with standing a few whining lefties that everybody ignored.
if i remember correctly the gov proposed that 2000 jobs go and the industry modernise to save all the other jobs.
Scargill refused to let a single person be laid off and also wanted a 33% pay rise for everyone or else (might have been 25%) - either way thatcher had no choice.
Cool. Let's ensure we all get our fair share of public spending first though, so about transport funding for outside London?