UKC

The series is well worth viewing, at times profoundly disturbing and heartbreaking.

It's excellent. Really enjoyed it.

So much so that me and my dad arranged a get together last Sunday to visit Orgreave. He gave me a run down of events (he was a striking miner at the time and was at Orgreave on the day) and took me to various places that were seen in the documentary footage (although most of the area where the event happened has changed significantly). 

We also drove to Treeton Colliery where he worked for 10 years (now a housing estate). 

A brilliant afternoon and one which I'll cherish for a long time.  

Profoundly disturbing in quite a few respects. Govt, police and not least the media.

I was also there on 'that' day - the Battle of Orgreave. It was probably the craziest day of my life.

I wasn't a miner but I was an apprentice electrician at the same tech college as many young miners and they suggest that we all go as it would be 'a reyt laff'... (spoiler alert) it wasn't. 

In one of those odd things that life throws up, some time ago I had a connection to someone related to the then chairman of the CEGB.  Apparently he was told explicitly by Maggie that his job was, for as long as the strike lasted, to make sure the lights stayed on.

He did.  I think he subsequently got a peerage.

T.

Well that would be a look back to those years in the 70's the lights didn't stay on, and the 'winter of discontent' didn't reflect well on the Labour government and it's fights with the unions

I haven't watched last night's yet, but saw the first one. I really liked they way they just present the narrative with different voices. Powerful stuff.

I remember driving north between Clay Cross and Chesterfield and in that 2-3 miles it was nose to tail police vans hundreds of them.

My Step dad was at Shirebrook pit for 30 years, never crossed the picket line but didn't want to go back as it changed in that year.

While not being a fan of South Yorkshire Police (their record of malpractice gets longer over time), politically aligned with Thatcher (but accepting of political differences since science says it's down to brain structure differences), or the media casting aspersions (Hillsborough and the Sun newspaper), or the police charging on horseback into groups of miners etc, I still find myself thinking that Scargill's ego was an unhelpful aspect, from him not having a national ballot and one or two other aspects, which I think did much to undermine any moral authority he had, as well as legal authority, which both played into Thatcher's and the media's hands. I get the sense he was the wrong kind of personality for that role at that time, and in those circumstances.

If one is going to go against the government and it's policies, if that is available, it's got to be underpinned legally in a way which I understand was open to him at the time, and didn't use.

Edit: I fully support the moral principle of the right to strike, and to hold one's employers and governments to account, of course.

Edit 2: You couldn't find less of a fan of SYP than me given the recent Sheffield street tree debacle. I think it's a 'force of doofusses' at the higher levels.

Indeed.  I've lost touch with that person since so can't check this, but I do remember that it smacked of planning ahead of time; a fight chosen on Thatcher's terms and for which she was ready rather than just a reaction to a strike called by Scargill.

That's what my thoughts about this are now, a trap was baited and the NUM walked into a fight they would always lose.  

T.

The miners and police were Scargill's and Thatcher's pawns respectively. 

Scargill never suffered, he already had a second home before strike, even bought his NUM flat using Thatchers right to buy. Thatchers got re-elected. Police over time paid off their mortgages, when interest rates were crippling everyone else. Miners little more than sweet FA from any side of the fence.

I'm not sure if one can need leaders to suffer or be in the same circumstances as those they're leading to get the sense that they're genuine, his ex-wife, somebody one might expect to be negative, has spoken of him believing a 100% in what he was doing at the time. I just think he could have been wiser, helpfully less driven by his ego.

Edit: We all have ego, but self awareness is helpful, and important in a leader.

Was he 100% committed to hating capitalists, tories, the government or in preserving the mines for arguably another decades use. The same union leaders were stopping innovation, modernisation and investment across multiple sectors, steel, shipbuilding etc.. the uk was being left behind because of an obsession on maintaining manpower intensive work places. I'd argue his commit was total, but for different motives. 

It's an interesting time in history, because a relative has spoken about Thatcher being advised by economists that her policies were being damaging to the country and it's interests, and that she remained resolute and continued on, which leaves me thinking that 'the right path' would have been somewhere in between. Said relative, a liberal greeny type, speaks about the 3 day weeks and strikes being called at any opportunity not being a beneficial thing either, preceding Thatcher, avoiding a black and white perspective could seem to be helpful. 

I have watched the first two episodes but it really needs a much more in depth analysis.

I worked on the surface at a Yorkshire pit for two year in the early seventies. In that time I was on strike for four weeks, which resulted in a general election,  a change of government, and a pay rise. That was the power of a ballot that strictly followed the NUM procedures at the time.

In that period I was also offered  a job at the area headquarters but it was obvious that that it would involve the closure of many pits, so I refused it and changed careers. It seemed to me, and a lot of others in the industry, that most of the smaller pits were only being kept open whilst the new Super Pits were being developed. I also knew someone years later who, when his pit shut in the early 70's changed careers rather than moving to another pit as he could no future for the coal industry. 

In my limited involvement Arthur Scargill was a Yorkshire NUM official and was thought to be doing a good job for the Yorkshire Miners. What happened later I'll leave up to others.

John Gresty

Well that would be a look back to those years in the 70's the lights didn't stay on, and the 'winter of discontent' didn't reflect well on the Labour government and it's fights with the unions

I know MInitrue have written it otherwise but the lights going out were   a couple of early 1970s  winters and The Winter of Discontent was 1979.  

Powercuts were during a Conservative Government. (Although loony left by today's values)

Yes, Winter of discontent.  was the winter of 78-79.  Thatcher won the election in May 79, the same day I think the winter was described as such.

And yes, it is amazing how far politics have drifted to the R since then.

As I recall the 3 day week and rotational power cuts were presided over by Ted Heath, very little to do with Labour other than the usual mess they inherited when ousting a Tory government. 

I think you may have selective memory. Yes Heath was PM at that time and I remember the three day week, power cuts, sat round with candle light, rubbish piled high in the streets, millions of workdays lost to strike action, but all the problems were as a result of union agitating and intransigence and determination to bring the Heath government down, which they did. Next, when Labours Callaghan followed on the union action and as a result, inflation at close to 25% effectively bankrupted the UK. We became in effect the European equivalent of a penniless banana republic, requiring an IMF bailout and economic control from the IMF. When Thatcher was elected in 1979, we went from the poor man of Europe to the G7.
Just another fact, Wilson’s Labour government closed 253 pits, Thatcher closed 115. Why no outrage there?

This is a huge over-simplification. The miners saw an opportunity to get better wages when OPEC caused a massive increase in oil prices and a consequent turn back to coal as the major energy source  Effectively they acted rationally as players in a market economy and put their prices up in response to demand.  

I was in the NUM and we were already far and away the best paid manuals workers in Derbyshire, but the union reps. were as always agitating for strikes and spurious industrial injury claims, as well as spending many paid days off “on union business”. The strike was solely Scargill,s desire to bring down the government and not all miners bought it. We used to sit in the “snap” cabins underground and to the tune of The Red Flag sing “the working class can kiss my ass I’ve got a union job as last. I’m out of work and on the dole you can stick the red flag up yer ‘ole” However my circumstances have changed somewhat since those far of days, because I thought I could see the end of the mining industry and as advised by Norman Tebbitt I metaphorically got on my bike and with hard work carved out a much better life.

But many people in mining communities never recovered.  When the mining industry collapsed/died/was destroyed, there were very few other jobs for people to jump into.  Same with the steel industry.  The overall affect on those communities is still felt today.

I was at school and broke my fib and tib when it all started. I thought that my cast, which was due to stay on for nine months, would be on for longer than the strike.

How wrong everybody was.

When do you think we joined the G7?

Or even, which countries established the G7?

I'd be interested to know over what timescales those closures took place, and how many jobs were lost as a result of each set of closures - or were the Labour pit closures closing smaller mines and moving miners to larger ones (for example)?

Second point is that Thatcher (and subsequent Tories) had no plans for improving the economies of those areas formerly reliant on coal mining - just some wishful thinking that "the market" would sort it all out for them, as long as the government was kept out of the way.

Good point.

Just watched the second one last night. Sat there with my blood boiling every time Thatcher came on the screen. What I'd forgotten (or not appreciated as a teenager) was how much the news reporting toed the party line. I'm a great fan of the BBC, but I was shocked at how they simply gave a partisan point of view. The defence lawyers were real heroes - using the police's own video as evidence against them. How no-one got charged for perjury (and, the same happened after Hillsborough) is a disgrace.

Are you now saying that it was a good idea to keep the coal mines open in this area of CO 2 clamodowns ? Round here where Parkside  etc was the area have been regenerated etc. 

You can add in shipbuilding, they were all interlinked industries, which had in effect peaked in the uk decades before the strike. Mines had had all the best and easiest coal removed. Other countries with lower overheads were easily out competing on steel and shipbuilding. They were barely viable. Striking just accelerated their demise, as any wage rise just made them even less competitive.

I have no issue with shutting down something unviable, but the complete neglect of the workers and regions after isn't forgivable. If anything it was eu money that regenerated them, and bizarrely it's many in these areas who are most pro brexit! 

What everyone forgets is the crap management structures and strategic decision making by British management in the 60s and 70s  which was a prime cause of economic failure. I was an auditor in the late 70s and saw at first hand the crass management dominated by the old boy brigade. Joining the eec as it then was forced major management restructuring in order to be competitive internationally. Joining the EeC under Heath was the pivot point when the uk economy started turning upwards. Thatcher perceived the unions to be the issue, they were a symptom of badly run companies.

No. I'm saying the government should have had a plan to mitigate the economic problems caused when the principal employer in town shuts down.

Of course over 40 years businesses come and go, but more should have been done at the start to encourage diversification from mining 

It does look like we had a large increase in imported coal, especially from the early 80's onward. So it's not like we couldn't have used more domestic coal instead.

I'm not sure how this affects CO2 exactly but all other things being equal, importing would add to CO2.

I think you're looking at the 1980s with the sensibilities of the 2020s; which is understandable, but wrong.

Carbon dioxide emissions weren't a concern, price was.  It was cheaper for Fiddlers Ferry power station to buy and import coal from Columbia than to get it from Sutton Manor colliery five or six miles away.  Immediate monetary cost was the driver; not CO2, not value, not community, not people's lives and families.  Just cost.

What 2020s sensibilities do show is that shift in buying coal from the international rather than domestic market was the early indication that globalisation was beginning to gather pace and ultimately that would kill domestic deep mining.  The inexcusable manner in which places and people were so casually tossed to the side of the road is what makes resentment linger.

T.

Because the police weren’t used as a violent tool of the state against its own citizens?

If they had (or been reviewed), perhaps Hillsborough would have played out differently.

The UK wasn't in an economic condition in the late 70's to mid 80's to do that, and inflation , which was a lot higher than it is now and with the potential to go to 25% again meant a lot of government borrowing wasn't going to happen,  It's also not exactly obvious what would replace mining, shipbuilding etc., and remember IT and a lot of other 'knowledge economy' jobs were yet to come into existance.

To Andy Hardy  >

That start would/should have been a lot , lot earlier than 1980 , but that's the power of hindsight. And again. what to?

I grew up in Clowne. Most of the local villages had a pit (Whitwell, Barlborough, Creswell, Shuttlewood, Shirebrook, Bolsover etc). They were very hard places growing up (70s-90s) and they are still very run down and forgotten, with the exception of Barlborough, which was somehow always slightly more affluent.

Always amazes me looking back that our despised cross country route went over the closed Clowne  and Barlborough Colliery sites and I used to play around there. Probably very dangerous. 

What to? Is the question that governments are supposed to have the answer for. Maybe they could have tapered down production instead of hurling whole communities off a cliff? Invested early in building wind turbines / tidal / solar generation? Rolled out full fibre broadband to the ex-pit villages first? Invested more in early years education? 

Beyond selling stuff (utilities etc) and deregulating financial markets there was no overarching plan for the UK at all.

I always think that one of the tragedies of the 70s and 80s was the way in which oil revenues were squandered on tax cuts and unemployment benefits, instead of being used to generate a meaningful sovereign wealth fund. The contrasts with Norway are striking. 

Wind turbines, solar and broadband fibre in the 1980's? When was the first time you used the internet?

Yes, the wealth of the UK was squandered, but that had started a long, long time before.  The UK never transitioned to anything like Germanys manufacturing middelstand, and the last opportunity to do anything progressive for growth was ignored by David Cameron thro' to the current day when interest rates have been low

How on earth do you work that out?

Three years after we joined the EEC the country went bankrupt and we had to bailed out by the IMF. Three years on again we had the winter of discontent, probably the lowest point of Britain's post war decline and in-between was hardly a bed of roses.

It wasn't until a decade later that the UK economy began to finally turn the corner.

I don't know how anyone could sensibly say 1973 was the point at which the UK economy started turning upwards.

In 1986 LSE went digital, it was pretty obvious the tech age was coming, but that's life being London centric again. Automation / robots were creeping into car factories etc.. but yes, hindsight to some degree. And foresight, i had relatives who all exited into new areas in the 70s, they could all see what was coming, you didn't need to be a genius. Costs were rising, orders shrinking etc..

Interesting history there involving an Iraqi migrant who set the ball rolling with their oilfields and funds. Either way it wouldn't happen in Scotland, different mentality towards the future and saving for rainy days.

I think you're a bit confused, I was only responding to somebody else's point about CO2. See the post I responded to. I don't think CO2 was the issue.

I suggest you actually do some actual research. MY statement is backed by GDP/capita per year relative to neighbours. Prior to joining the EEC our relative post war growth was inferior to our neighbours until we joined the EEC where upon it increased .

eg

Perhaps differently selective from yours. In fairness the period merits a few major books to cover context properly but you have omitted mention of Yom Kippur and its effect on OPEC which was the main reason for the inflationary surge. Also (as someone else has mentioned) the gormless industrial management standards of the day (how much have they improved? Another good thread there) which was allowing our industrial base to rust away for the sake of dividends for shareholders.

As for economic growth the whole of the West has experienced that, nothing distinctive about U.K. growth.

Theres a pattern now visible throughout the post-WW2 years of Tory governments neglecting things (or more recently, breaking things) and Labour governments left to clear up the mess, only to be blamed by the resurgent tories once the voting population has forgotten what the did. The master stroke of gaslighting was the Cameron-Clegg move of accusing the Brown government of reckless spending after the 2007 banking crisis when hitherto unimaginable sums of public money had to be created in order that the world would continue to have banking. Unbelievably Labour has never pushed back on that one.

Can I suggest you learn to read graphs?

What that shows is that UK gdp/capita fell behind France and Germany in the late 60s and didn't catch up until the late 80s. The period of sustained rapid growth which resulted in us catching up began in the early to mid 80s, a decade after we joined the EEC.

Nobody who lived through the 70s could sensibly say that 1973 was point that our economy started turning upwards, it was a period of great economic turbulence, indeed it was the point at which inflation really took off and spent most of the next decade in double digits, peaking at around 25% with all the damage that caused.

Whether or not and if so, to what extent, joining the EEC played a role in our economic recovery is a debate for another thread. But if it did play a role it was a long time coming, like a decade. To say 1973 was the turning point is to stretch the definition of 'point' beyond all credibilty.

There's always been an argument that Nissan would never have come had 70s style unionisation continued. (Opened 1986)

I well remember fibre optic data comms being discussed in lectures when the miners strike was on. Not long after that (still the 80s) Friends of mine were able to work from home for DEC, by remotely logging into their networks so while the internet didn't exist, the enabling technologies did.

PV panels and wind turbines pre-date the miners strike.

Wider point is that if government had some vision for the future, it could have created an economy which generated the jobs and prosperity that closing the mines took away

Although New Labour didn't solve the housing problem, after the sell off of social housing under the Tories. In fact average house prices increased massively under Blair. Isn't that a contributor to the cost of living problems we have now?

And couldn't they have regulated the banks better before 2008?

Not to mention the mess left in Iraq.

Let’s agree to disagree, fwiw I’ve got a degree in law & economics graduating in 1977 so I studied very closely the stats at that time. I suggest that you look at the change in the slopes of the relative graphs which might help you understand what I’m saying! Plus the really important change was the exposure of British industry to greater competition which resulted eventually in better efficient strategic management eventually rescuing greater productivity. As I said earlier the real British disease in the 60s and 70s was crap management with a symptom being terrible industrial relations. The terrible ir was not the cause of terrible productivity but a symptom.. just repeating that cos it’s really important. Therefor my argument is that the pivot point was the exposure to greater competition NOT when the results of that started to manifest themselves. However, having said that, the graph does show the relative rate of decline of per capita v France and Germany slowing for the uk after joining the eec before starting to catch up. I won’t mention relative rates at the top of the graph!!

It would take 10 years or so before you noticed any real change. Things do not suddenly improve overnight. 

Pretty much agree with that, Blair & Brown actually stuck too closely to Thatcherite economic dogma until the banks threatened to expire. But regulation of banks (although they’d been let off the leash by Thatcher) by the 90’s was a world wide problem and needed an international approach. Arguably could have been given more priority but probably wouldn’t have happened quickly enough to prevent the crisis.

History will be kind to Brown and Darling. They were the right people to deal with the crisis

Didn't Thatcher say her greatest achievement was Blair.

Successive governments endorsed by Rupert Murdoch can't be a good thing.

I don't know much about that. In the context of globalisation, the world bank and the IMF, how much freedom do we have to regulate the banks? It always seemed more than coincidental that the same regulation, or lack of, existed in different countries.

Arguably the internet did exist in the 1980s - I had my first email address in 1983 when I started a PhD & was a regular user of JANET, a network of computers across UK academic institutions with links to equivalent networks in the USA & elsewhere. Obviously a very small number of users compared to today and no Worldwide Web before the early 1990s but the internet is more than the WWW

I'm well aware of that but not everything takes 10 years.

I wonder how many of the people who would argue that joining the EEC was a pivot point in the improvement of our economy even though everything got worse for six or seven years and didn't begin to actually improve for a decade would be willing to say we must wait 10 years before we can judge the effect of leaving the EU? 

I think we both know the answer to that question is approximately none!

To be clear, I'm not saying that joining the EEC was the cause of us becoming the sick man of Europe or needing an IMF bailout or the winter of discontent and I'm not arguing that we'll be basking in the sunlit uplands by 2030.

I think the evidence is that either joining or leaving the EEC/EU actually makes very little difference to the economy. Its the policies that governments pursue and the global events beyond their control that really shape it.

The idea that joining the EEC was a pivot point in reversing our post war decline is simply not born out by the evidence.

It was high inflation and industrial unrest that wrecked us in the 70s and it was bringing those back under control in the early 80s that improved things, not joining the EEC.

If there was a pivot point it was Thursday 3rd May 1979.

Rubbish .. completely contrary to all the evidence.  Trouble is religious fanatics fly in the face of facts and logic 😀

Can you not see the difference between a country joining the EU, whereupon the only immediate difference was opportunity to be explored and taken advantage of, all of which takes time to grow and develop; and a country leaving the EU, whereupon a huge number of companies find themselves suddenly less competitive in markets they've come to rely on?

The asymmetry of that surely must be blatantly obvious.

A free trade deal with your nearest 26 neighbouring countries isn't relevant? It's even more relevant now, as we've spent 40 years building trade of goods based on being in the eu and just stopped it. We couldn't even get a trade deal with Canada on the same terms as we had previously when in the eu and had to abandon them. 

If you suddenly sign an agreement to trade widgets with country X, manufacturers need to start marketing, generating sales, exports begin and so on. Perhaps a widget factory in X is planned and built, a depo or hub etc.. these things cost millions and develop over years. The same will slowly happen now in reverse, as international contracts expire, companies will have to consider remain in uk, or the eu. The same with factory or office leases, stay in uk with third country status, or move to be in the eu trade bloc. It's a slow spiral down. 

Try telling that to all the businesses that have moved to Europe post Brexit...

I think we've got go the crux of the disagreement.

Despite any evidence that joining the EEC caused any revival in our economic fortunes, quite the contrary, things tanked for most of the next decade, and despite any evidence that we have faired any worse than other similar economies since 2020, I have dared to deviate from the path of righteousnes. I am an apostate and must be struck down and cast asunder into the wilderness for my sins.

I had momentarily forgotten why arguing about politics on UKC is completely pointless. I shall retire from the fray once more and leave you to your devotion.

Taking Nissan, Nissan opened in 86, but was years in the planning, negotiating and building. They wouldn't have even considered starting that process in the late 70s if the uk wasn't in the EEC giving them European access, now like others they are being bribed with huge grants to stay. 

Honda uk, 1985 - 2021, dates aren't likely coincidence either. 

So we compete on who is worse? I would far prefer it if it was better… wouldn’t you ?

 This was interesting...

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/12/how-north-sea-oil-shaped-britains-economy

The populations of Norway and Scotland are similar. The difference is that Scotland had to share its oil revenues across the UK. If Scotland had been independent, it might look very different today.