Absolutely frightening how accurate the prophecies in this video turned out to be. Are these documentaries being shown in schools? no! this important part of our social history has been completely erased from school curriculum.
well bleeding said.... am proud to be working class... and am a trade unionist and believe in the union and the young uns dont understand and havent a fuckin clue about the the value of strength and a being a part of a community ..... Thatchers model is still here and its sickening... soul destroying....I got tears in me eyes writing this.......gutted....gutted..... were fuckin finished....
i just spoke to someone on facebook, a millilenial generation child , of course , had no idea! she said , 1st time that she had ever heard of it ! Cant believe that were not passing this on through our children ! those who remember bloody well should!
I grew up on a Mining Estate and now, 30 years on I wish there was a Community Spirit like there used to be back then, they were the best years of my life.
+stratos fun Im from Ireland myself so i am no fan of Thatcher to begin with, but what she did to the lovely little mining communities in England was unforgivable and makes me very angry. She wanted a cut throat, US style, me me me society and she has largely succeeded unfortunately.
This is a landmark in social commentary. Don't know where these people are now but politically aware, articulate and energetic, these people ought to be running the bloody country today. Yesterday I marched with the kellingley miners and heard much the same. Is the current situation just the death throes of thatchers -well documented-bizarre relationship with ted Heath? Anybody featured on the tape reading this, God bless yer.
How do you watch 45 minutes of footage of poor people being fucked in the ass by the rich and the government and end up complaining about other poor people?
@@Peasant_of_Pontus You sound like you've never had to live in government housing. I can tell you I live in Australia and it seems like we have very similar problems.
@@truck-a-bout1958 I don't anymore but I used to live in a council flat. UK doesn't build poor ghettos anymore, council flats are decentralised. Every new buliding gets a council flat or two instead of entire neighbourhoods of them.
fuckin dead right... sorry for swearing but this boils my piss .... working class familys fighting for their lifes communities .....1980s Britain coming back in 2020 trust me ....
I grew up in Easington Colliery in the 80s and 90s when the pit was open it was thriving Town full of life and a high street with dozens of shops where you would now everyone you walked past. Now almost 25 years since the pit closed its a ghost town full of strangers and take away shops. My grandfather worked there for 40 years and would be ashamed of how it looks now. Their is an entire generation that have grown up seeing their parents unemployed.
People moved to Easington Colliery because of coal, and when coal became a dying industry, their descendants, understandably, wanted to stay. But my father moved from Ireland to get work in the early 1950s. Towns dependent on a single industry are always vulnerable to economic change, if the demand for what that industry produces. And demand for coal reduced. But the miners had brought down previous governments. The Dockers had also held previous governments to ransom. The power of the unions "had" to be broken. Scargill gave Thatcher the perfect opportunity to break that power. I hated the woman, but nothing could have saved the coal industry. Gas and oil are currently predominant, but that too is changing. Oil towns will have to adjust in the future, or die. Easington Colliery is not a victim of Thatcher. it's a victim of progress, and economics shift.
@@davidkeenan5642 you’re right in some ways, but not entirely. Unions are supposed to hold the power, it’s a good thing. It keeps the power balance in check, and their wins trickle down into the non union industries as well. Coal was a dying industry, no doubt about it. It’s time was limited. Still, mines were closed without putting anything in place to transition the tens of thousands of workers to a different line of work. Nothing was put in place to support the support industries that served the pits. Nothing was put in place to support the countless cities and towns whose population of thousands existed because of their pit. Pit closures thrust entire regions into poverty overnight, and it was done by threat of policeman’s club. The cruelest irony was/is the continued use of imported coal to offset the loss of domestic consumption. Instead of taking the time to transition from coal responsibly, it was done so in a manner that inflicted immense damage to the working class, and the damage is no where near finished. Thatcher irreparably hurt the UK, while she got to live in a gilded castle insulated from the destruction she inflicted, never having to live with the consequences of her campaign. She gets to rot in the ground, corpse full of maggots, not a care in the world, while the miners and their communities are still living in dead communities rife with poverty and unemployment and drugs and crime that she forced upon them.
look at these miners, do they look as if they have half the lifestyle the politicians who destroyed them had?... People who begrudge folk who work for industries that prop up the economy a ordinary decent wage AND YET totally accept football players, celebs, and politicians (people who have very little effect on the standard of living) can earn limitless amounts of cash should be whipped!!!!
Lee Stephenson “I have no particular love for the idealized 'worker' as he appears in the bourgeois Communist’s mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.” - George Orwell
I think the economy should be there to serve the people not the other way round. The same with technological advancements making life easier, not harder. The Government handed power to corporations through privatisation. So therefore the government should all be made redundant for failing to their jobs.
was proud to have been part of the struggle.Solid for the whole dispute. When anyone ever says Scargill shut the pits they should look at what happened to the Notts pits which produced coal and those who scabbed, got the same treatment all closed. what happened to Greaterex notts union official. Jailed for stealing money out of the pension fund of his members.Yes we lost but better to die on your feet than on your knees
Scargill closed no pits down. That man tried his hardest to keep the pits open. But That tramp Thatcher and her cronies had other ideas. Thatcher punished the miners because they brought the Tory Government down after the 1974 strike
I was born in Sheffield in 1984, I grew up with the fall out of the destruction of the coal and steel industries. I know loads of former miners and my family were mainly in steel and engineering, talking about the strikes and what’s been lost is still a raw wound that’s never to be healed. They treated those men and their families like feral dogs, not human beings.
I was born in 1979 in Littleborough, near Rochdale. All I saw as a kid was the mills and factories getting demolished. My Nan would take me to see them getting blown up and destroyed. As a kid I loved watching the buildings explode!! Yet now I realise that they were getting demolished because local industry had declined big time. We had to move to London in 1984 because my Dad couldn’t find a job locally. My Grandparents stayed there so we would see what was happening when we visited them.
And it continues with disgusting treatment of workers in warehouses. Unions too busy following a middle class agenda for the most part, they don’t back up the working class.
I left the pits when I was 25 and now I’m not far off 60 and all those years, I’ve never experienced the camaraderie I had as a young miner. I left the area for work in 1986.
I wasn't born in 1984 but I'm from deepest Nottinghamshire and I feel physically ill watching this. I don't believe for one minute there's any difference between Notts miners or Durham miners or Yorkshire miners, but sadly for one reason or another they dug their heels in and ended up devastatingly colluding with Thatcher. Everything the lads say in this video is true. Communities have collapsed and it's like living in a nuclear wasteland here now. I've never been involved with the mining industry but I only wish the strike was happening today because I'd be on the picket line pleading with the UDM to come out on strike. What a fucking disaster.
+Bobby Jones It's also a forgotten subject, something not being taught in schools as part of modern history. Absolutely disgraceful how these men were treated, they're without doubt some of the bravest men of their time. I'm not sure I'd have the balls to work a 12-hour shift a thousand feet under the soil, not many could and if we had to rely on the ruling classes to find the nation coal, we'd have all died off about a hundred and fifty fuckin' years back. Labour till I die.
Gabriel Stone To be honest Gabe, the industry part of life is now so far gone that teaching about the destruction of it wouldn't really resonate with them. You've got to have had something or lived with it to appreciate the demise of it. I dare say my kids will be having this same conversation in 30 years time about the death of British steel and the NHS.
Watching this video Thirty plus years on with tears in my eyes pride in my heart. I still retain all those principles which I shared with the other 30 gentlemen in my group THE DiRTY 30. We have unfinished business! I am 84 now and I still believe we were right! I still share friendships with ex strikers from that era and am proud to carry our banner at the Durham Miners gala every June . Gordon Smith. 2022.
I agree with you buddy. My dads best man and the closest mate he had from childhood have never spoke since the strikes all because he wouldn’t do what was right by the minors and strike it should of always been one out all out
I was 11 when the strike was on. There was McGregor, Thatcher and the riot squad on one side, and Arthur Scargill and the miners on the other. I swear to God, I'm nearly 50 now, and from back then to this day I DETEST management.
From a Glaswegian, The UK Government should be ashamed for this treatment of upstanding grafters of many communities who fought for their livelihoods, we salute them.
I started working at pit just after the strike and had 30 good years and made a lot of good mates i would go back tomorrow. All of the pits have now gone. I could have giving years ago but i tried to keep moving from pit to pit as they shut down in the end i was traveling 64 miles each way their and back some times doing a 12 hour shift on top of travel even in snow and ice but the lads made it worth it . the last place of work was KELLINGLEY in Yorkshire. but know all have gone. I pray that the coal prices go though the roof and the government will see scene but its too bloody late SO SO sad. Every one says that you can have the same crack any were i don't think so can you imagine working in a bank and some old dear asking for a tenner and you reply saying is that all want you tight **** i only wish MAGGIE is a warm place
+TommyTightPants0115 I'm glad it worked out for you, but did you consider going in to a different industry? It blows my mind that a young man would have decided that mining for a career with a future at that point.
Daniel Trubman well not many families could afford higher education in order to get into many other industries and "what about the lower industries where they didn't need a proper education?" well, mining was obviously the main one but there were also steel workers and blacksmiths- oh wait, their furnaces had to be fuled BY COAL! Can't u c the effect this had on the economy? 😒
New mine being opened soon. We are importing from abroad and are bringing it back. Tbh the unions killed mining in the uk, made it to easy to import from abroad for cheaper
I’m from a family of miners from Derbyshire I was born just after the minors lost the strike and was forced back to work all I ever wanted was to go down the pit like all my family. My old man did the same went from pit to pit following the work, I was always told my old man was a amazing header so never went with out work but in the end he was travelling more and more and he got fed up. Iv still got some old NCB magazines with pictures of my dad working. When I was a kid mooregreen pit had a open day it was one of the best days I had as a child standing by my dads side just standing in the lift was amazing wish I’d got the chance to actually get on the pit face. Respect to all these hard working great British coal minors you did our country proud and the scabs I hope you was ashamed
I remember watching the miners getting beaten by the police while families suffered and fat Tories bloated on gluttony. I hope kids these days are taught this Era. It's as important now as it was then.
My great grandfather died down the pit. My granda and dad died of pit related illnesses. Coal miners daughter and proud of it. All these men wanted was the right to work to look after their families and what a bloody job, down a black hole. Good men. Respect ✊🏼.
Very strange comment. You're proud that three generations of your family died from coal mining and you're sad that Thatcher put an end to the dream of working a job which could kill others or at least shorten their lives.
@@wattage2007 No I’m proud of how hard they worked and the only good thing thatcher did was make sure no young man leaving school would end up down a pit for a living. Maybe I should have explained myself better.
I remember that the miners in Nottinghamshire refused to join the strike and several years earlier had formed their own union called the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. Eventually though they finally admitted that Arthur Scargill had been right all along.
To the lot of you harping on about subsidies fod thatchet and her tory cronies ever think to not subsidies british arms manufacturers or farming both of which would be unprofitable without massive taxpayers help.
Labour closed twice as many mines than Thatcher The strike was between the unions and Scargill taking on Thatcher and Thatcher not backing down Thatcher didn't screw the miner's , Scargill and the unions did
All of this takes me back to the good old days. Back when there were good communities who stuck together. Don't really see this nowadays. People got fucked over by the Government . 😢😢😢
30 Years On, the miners are still fighting and although their pits have long gone their unity still stands the test of time proving Thatcher could never break their will
You're absolutely right, these people are some of the hardest-working and honest folk that this land has ever known. Never let it be forgotten what the Tories did to them.
Of course you are right, those Notts miners that came out and stayed out were the salt of the earth and did have it harder than the rest of us. They are not forgotten my friend
In Leicestershire, there were so few that struck that they got called "the dirty thirty". Oddly enough, these 30 men were often called "scab" by other miners in Leics. They were perceived as having betrayed their colleagues and sided with another area. After a while, there were collections done in other areas to raise money for them.
It was never about economics from the word go,Thatcher made her mind up what she wanted from her investiture,the breaking of the NUM and the downfall of the industry.Lots of Nott's men stood firm,some did not.But your end statement I agree with in spades.
I was a striking miner,I did the full strike picketing and all.Now 70 and retired loooking back at these times via these videos, I just fill with pride .These men older now and wiser, we did our best but you can't always win. But those women! Them lasses! Brilliant,our wives. Mothers and sisters.Such determination and loyalty, I wonder if 40 years on if todays women, some who can't be bothered to get out of their pyjamas to take the bairns to school some of them daughters of striking.miners wives could do what their parents did Now and again I see some of these women in the street,in shops and the like, and I think ,yes we went through the strike BLESS you all .
I love the Miners there families and the communities but sorry Arthur Scargill walked them right into the trap set by Thatcher. They had record stocks of coal, he did not have a ballot. The Nuclear industry got a subsidy he should have taken that to court as unfair competition the moment that hit the court all investment in Nuclear would have stopped Sorry but Thatcher played a very clever game Scargill played a very stupid game and the Miners there families and the communities paid the price.
I was 9 when this strike took place and within 10 years I lost my first friend to drugs the after another 10 years I lost the rest of my friends to drugs. I believe the destruction of the unions,mines and eventually the close communities we had lead to the deaths of my old pals.
lee jarvis The Unions caused alot of problems, as they were full of communists & they brought it on themselves. They were a problem that needed to be dealt with, harshly. Ken Livingstone did the same thing in the GLC & that got dissolved by Thatcher, because of militants ousting the rightfully-elected leader. However, innocent people in these communities, like mining, ship-building & car manufacturing all paid the price for those militants.
Sorry to hear that my friend. The miners and their communities were the salt of the earth, and what was done to them(and the rest of the working class) is going to hurt for decades more. We haven’t yet seen nor understand the full extent of the damage Thatcher and Reagan did to the English and American working class. Criminals, both of them. May they rest in piss!
Ask scarily where the Russian money went.😢. A scarily took his full back pay after the strike. The union had to take him to court to reclaim a grace a favour flat in Central London 20 yrs after the strike 😢..
Look how grimy and down at heel the eighties were. Things had to change. Mistakes were made on all sides, but to this day I never understood how it was cheaper to import coal from the other side of the world.
sorry, this is a video about a class struggle. classes are composed of people of all kinds, united by material economic conditions. the colour of one's skin has no matter. get your head round it or sod off.
The way the police and the establishment stitched up hundreds if not thousands of normal working class people during the miners strike is nothing short of disgusting.
They were so convinced the coal was worth the money, truth was it wasn't worth jack shit which is why the money didn't ever turn up, the only place it was worth burning was the power stations MGR system. But leaving behind a body of working men the size of this was a fucking disgrace, and those towns were destroyed.
Shame those miners were so stubborn and stupid to listen to a far left subversive like scargill. I also hate how they treated the so called "scabs", the miners who went back to work to look after their families. That was just disgusting but not really surprising given they were people who would never listen anyway.
The thing about the pits and the mining communities is that there was one type of work and no other. These places relied solely on the pit for employment and there was nothing else. also the men wernt trained in anything else. when the car factories closed most people got other jobs quickly. also you had a variety of folk working on the tracks- hairdressers, plumbers etc who could fall back on their trades.
just recently posted an Emotive Tribute to ALL Coal miners everywhere plus those that were killed in the biggest mining disaster in Scotland UK at the Blantyre pit, its done in pics and music .. would be grateful for your feedback Alex Hodgson "Blantyre" A Scottish Mining Disaster
In mining you are battling against Mother Nature.Sometimes you come across a white face caused by a collapse in the strata and a pit would become uneconomic. But that can change. A pit may have a bad year, then find anew seam and have 30 more good years.Also, when the closures began, we had already developed and opened a clean coal plant. But when you are involved in revenge, when you are determined to do better than Heath and tame the miners, rationalisation and reason go out of the window.
What strikes me is, thees man and women are facing losing their jobs possible their home but they aren't swearing or attacking people. My partners grandfather was a miner and she is really upset by the mines closeing, that's why I'm watching to see what went on
It was never about profitability of the odd pit, the coal we mined went predominately to power stations that where built around the mines. these stations did then and still do today make vast profits! the profits they made went back to the public up until that evil witch privatised them. In 1984, she closed a receiving pit, Cortonwood. A receiving pit has a long life ahead of it. It is not uneconomic.
I'm wanting to talk to someone who crossed the Pickett line just to get a insight on their thoughts and feelings behind it. With all the strikes currently taking place and cost implications of doing so it will be good to see the difference from 40 years ago. Can anyone help
@@Mod-rw9cw that is a conflation, police work for capitalists who tend to side with fascists and individual officers are more likely to be sympathetic to fascism, but honestly if police are all fascists we would live in a fascist system rather than a capitalist one which is bad enough!
11.40 that chap looks a bit like Jim McDonald- for all the Corrie fans. In seriousness though god bless these men and women who worked and fought so hard
My Dad worked down the Stoke and Lancashire Coalmines for almost 40 years. He loved his job and couldn't settle down in any other form of work. The Labour Party actually closed down more pits than the Tories Did but it was Thatcher's attitude to the Miners that caused the 1984\85 strike. She hates the Miners because of the way they topped the Heath Government and made sure to cause the strike and beat the strongest Union so that the rest of the Unions would also fall and her plan worked the might of the Unions was over
I was a miners strike child and remember the hardship and the money issues as a child growing up realised there and then the class disparities in the UK which have only got bigger and wider
@@Ukipmiddleleft I was a miners strike child too. 1972\74 the 74 strike finally brought down Heath and his cronies. But the 84 strike actually broke the NUM and that was exactly what Thatcher wanted when she broke the NUM all the other Unions fell like Domino's
would love to know where these people are know the back bone of Britain and its working class infrastructure Maggie turned us from we we we to me me me
Union should have recommended strike and give us a proper ballot No one would have gone through the picket line if they got the result for strike from a National ballot Everyone would have been out
I remember all this but looking back 40 years later I get the impression that people back then were less worldly wise than people now but at the same time we’re more mature and responsible in their outlook.
at time of writing this video has had 1684 views, that's less then the number of prats that been invited to her send off. those who think its " SO COOL LIKE" to download "Ding Dong" here's an old song that sums you lot up The working class can kiss my ass I’ve got the foreman’s job at last. The system I’ll no more resist, I’m going to be a capitalist. Now you can raise the standard high, Beneath its shade to fight and die. But brother, please don’t count on me I’ve up and joined the bourgeoisie
