3 governments taken down by miners strikes the three day week, rolling blackouts ,the winter of discontent. Going begging to the IMF for a bailout in 1976 , thatcher was elected on a union busting ticket she made no secret of it and the public voted for that after strikes had annoyed the public all through the 1970s. I voted for thatcher it was the first time I voted , put that down to what you did in the 1970s
"Get back underground ya lazy twits". Yes, anyone that unionises to the point where they're trying to bring the country to its knees deserves a little ridicule.
And a Tory cabinet minister saying homeless people were those he stepped over on coming out of the Royal Opera House. And another, on being asked about mass redundancies when the Rritish Aerospace plant in Hatfield suddenly closed, replied: "they have been liberated from those jobs"
If Arthur Scargill had arranged a vote to call out a miners' national strike, he might have won, but he didn't have the guts, because he knew that the Nottingham miners would not back him. He led that unofficial strike, which was, in the end, his downfall. He deserved everything that led to his union's downfall, and to the industry. Thatcher played her hand when she knew that the power stations had plenty of coal, and Scargill reaped the bitter reward.
I remember listening a TV interview of two miners at the time of the strikes. One was on strike and the other was not. They were both asked why they held their position. The striking miner said that he was fighting to ensure his son still had a job going down the pit. The non-striking miner said that he was not striking to ensure his kids had an education so that they never had to go down the pit. Regressive vs. progressive thinking. That was the turning point for me.
In her defense, she was way ahead of her time in terms of ending the use of fossil fuels. And she made the economy recognisable from the mess that was the 1970s. And she put a lot of Tory elites in their place.
@@zenzombie72she was a asset stripper that deregulated the banks while maintaining Keynesianism for the wealthy... But now with nothing remaining what comes next?
@@zenzombie72 She got rid of the British Coal industry and imported our coal from Russia and apartheid South Africa instead. At the time it wasn't allowed to use gas to generate electricity and the Tory government of the day changed that and allowed all the newly privatised energy companies to plow through our gas to make electricity. Google "The dash for gas". It wasn't till much later that renewables started to make a difference in our energy production. So we moved basically from coal fossil fuel to gas fossil fuel. As I write this, we are importing 42% of our energy needs through imported gas (16.6%) and interconnection to six European countries (26%). Tonight is a good night for wind at nearly 40%.
I'm no expert on coal, though, I'm aware that coal is still in use in the industrial world today and there is still an abundance of coal below the ground in UK. The choice, to import goods rather than to produce is ideological.
@@boogalaloopala2738 there is more to it than just asserting it is an ideological problem. the mines shut because they where unproductive and the unions demanded pay its workers where not producing
@@red_ed5715 It is possible that the UK coal requirements could be met by using the coal indigenous to UK. The reason for coal to be mainly sourced as imported, via external export, rather than home produced is likely driven by corporate profit motive, in other words, to benefit private profits of corporations rather than UK demand, or to benefit collectively the people of UK. The so called UK 'energy crisis' whereby ordinary people struggle to pay their energy bills is a clue to it's ideological nature.
@@boogalaloopala2738 No, it's to save the taxpayer from having to subsidize a domestic coal industry, only to produce no coal because the miners are on strike because they want a 60% pay rise. Besides, there are different kinds of coal. A lot of the coal we burned was used to cook coal into coke. It's far cheaper just to import from Australia. There are many places around the world where it is far cheaper to mine coal because of geology. However, we are sitting on a load of shale gas, which could be cheap. The reason we don't have a fracking industry is because of ideology... so coal stands no chance of a revival any time soon.
@@billlansdell7225 Ah, to 'save the tax payer', not for private profit at all. And the 'greedy miners'. Corporate propaganda in full flow. It's also 'cheaper' to let the pensioners freeze.. Again, ideology.
I imagine you have very little understanding of economics. Let's say that the mines had never been nationalised. What power would Mrs Thatcher, or the Labour governments before her who closed more mines than her, have in closing coal mines?
