Coalminers daughter here👋. My Da died at 63 years of age from pit related illnesses and yet he fought for his job and for his community. A community that is now in tatters, we are now reaping the trash that is thatchers legacy. RIP Da, my Hero❤
And that is very sad but do you think that the economy should just support failed industries indefinitely? We get coal cheaper from Poland and South America etc
A British industry supporting British workers. There were plenty of mines that were still making a profit, the miners showed that with Tower Colliery @@mincemead2027
@@MarkHarrison733 Shoooosh, don’t let my coal fire hear you say that! I toast my feet at it every night and before you go off on one about climate change, you give up your car and I will give up my coal fire. 🔥 Braw, better than therapy and cheaper, you’ve never lived!
Lovely man & that wonderful deep Welsh accent is so nice on the ear. Whatever your views, Thatcher turned this island into a low wage low skill society & the legacy is clear, the British state has deluged this island with East European labour who don't mix & send as much of their earnings as possible. out of this economy. I don't blame them. however, I have a complete contempt & disdain for the corporate run British state & how they have ripped the heart & soul out of this island. Shameless, selfish people who would never ever want their off-spring working as skilled manual workers but are determined to cut tradesmen earnings for their personal greed & gratification.I am a Scot who works as an electrician in London & we were earning the same in 2008 as we are now where sites are often 90% East Europeans due to decades of no investment in apprenticeships. The corporate financiers are truly dreadful people & a cancer on humanity, they created a large underclass that has existed since the 1980's that never works & deluged with drugs & hopelessness.
@@dingopisscreek the union executive is elected by the membership and has a right to call a strike. All members in mines shortlisted for closure got a ballot. It is not the place of miners whose jobs were not threatened to vote on strike action at closing mines.
Thank you . Its important that these stories are kept alive so future generation know what these people had to go through to try and save their communities .
Our communities are English greek and turkish now... they wont be the same but the mines or an equivalent will be reinstated now that gentrification has filled the valleys again..
My father worked in st John's in maesteg !!! then he got taken up to glyncorrwg after getting trapped and hurt by a rockfall under ground in st John's. I am a Baitup and my father was called "Mel Baitup" . He was young and was learning to be an explosives man till the collapse, it squashed his friend too . I wonder if any of you can remember that ??? He must've been down there in the 60 maybe . Wish I knew more about that era of his life . I also wish I could see where he worked back then because he said to me that it was the most scary and dangerous place he'd ever been to work. In south pit glyncorrwg he worked above ground in the offices and was the man who came around to see how much coal you've pulled out of the ground. If any of his friends had a bad week and didn't bring much up he'd lie and say they brought up more coal so their pay wasn't lessened .
One reason that failed to get the support they expected, was that they tried to 'force' workers in other areas from working. By whatever means they could. It was not a 'stone' it was a bloody lump of concrete targeted at the car, no 'accident ' 🤬 It is amazing how at the time they had no issues with being 'hard men' but now they are claiming to be sweet innocent that would not hurt a fly.
It had nowt ti dae wi us...he said.....he has forgotten that the Welsh Miners came up north to wor pits in Northumberland and Durham,before we had wor ballot..it seems he can remember wat suits him best!.. and bugger the rest of us!
That's not right. We all knew the NUM would have another go at the Tories and the Tories knew that too, it was very obvious. When Arthur Scargill took over from Joe Gormley the script was written and we all gave a half worried chuckle. Joe Gormley was an old fashioned Trade Unionist, the deal was the thing, and he got a good deal from Thatcher just before leaving. Scargill was a revolutionary, he wasn't interested in a deal he wanted to destroy the Thatcher Government just as the Heath Government has been destroyed. And never mind the damage to industry and wages that the 3 day week and the blackouts had caused. In short, who was the enemy of the miners? Scargill was his name.
Thatcher was fighting for a certain demographic of the country and was happy to leave the rest rot away. These mining communities are still suffering all the years later .
So may I ask where is this show of force now against the every Saturday supporters of hamas? Conspicuous by there absence I would think. Sorry I digress I live down under so I didn't know about this strike breaking hence the beginning of my comment. still relative though me thinks considering the UK at the moment, born there my parents brought me and my brother out here to Australia as ten pound poms, I will forever be indebted 2 them for that. Born in Willington quay Newcastle on Tyne hospital according 2 my birth certificate think that makes me Welsh? Always remember my grandfather he was a coal miner here in the South Bulli Colliery - Illawarra Coal near Wollongong NSW pits and after a few he sang in welsh or I think it was.
The UK embraced socialism after WW2. Labour created the NHS and nationalised the Steel & Mining industry because they were not economically viable. The unions in these industries constantly striked for higher wages due to high inflation. Governments generally conceded to the wage demands. by 1976 the game was up.The UK was broke.The IMF gave the biggest loan ever (at that point) $3.9 billion. to the UK. 8 years later the Miners went on strike because they wanted the taxpayer to bail out uneconomic mines. the UK was still broke. Germany used the Marshall plan money to replace heavy industry with light industry making consumer goods. Britain used the marshall money for bailouts thus kicking the can down the road.When the cash ran out Maggie was in power. Port talbot is the final casualty of can kicking.
@@KeithWilliamMacHendry Wilson was confirmed to have been a Soviet agent, like Foot and McGahey. It's why he enabled genocide in Biafra, and betrayed Rhodesia.
All these crocodile tears for the miners make me laugh. The whole industry would now be being aggressively closed down by the same people who are shedding them for 'green' reasons. Mining was a dirty and dangerous job that killed people long before the time - including my great grandfather, some of his brothers and some of their children. My grandfather joined the army to avoid this awful fate.
Indeed. For 200+ years the wealth and power of Britain came from people like this working under everyone's feet. Now that's Saudi wealth and other foreign nationalized entities, and foreign private interests that also wanted money for nothing. It was inevitable and things probably should have been handled differently by everyone, but at the end of the day, people need to work, and ideally not as serfs working for nothing. Do you understand economics?
