I can't believe I'm reading some of this Leo - and you accuse me of being radical. The ability to withdraw labour, as a last resort which is sometimes the only tool possible for workers to protect themselves is a human right, without which we would be moving slowly back to slavery. It may be inconvenient at times for the consumer or traveller but we have to understand that workers need to have a means at their disposal to avoid being at the complete mercy of their employers, and to give more balance between worker and employer power. Without the right to strike workers would be completely at the mercy of the market, and 'profitability'. Do you want to go back to the 19th Century ?
The problem was that they destroyed whole communities and cultures SH. not just industries, and it was Thatcher's intention to do just that.
Come and debate that with the people of Barnsley, Rotherham, Pontefract, Castleford etc etc. You would get nowhere fast. Whole communities were decimated.. And not recovered to this day. Wont take you long to find out where the cheapest housing is etc etc.
I don't think it's realistic here to be talking of unemployment statistics. Many areas of the north were dramatically depopulated during the 80s - Liverpool alone lost around 200,000 in population, and it was not unique in this. Immigration managed to restabilize some areas - but these were people who, for one reason or another, have never appeared on unemployment statistics. The other point is that real jobs were destroyed whereas what replaced them were hire and fire, zero contract, precarious jobs in the service sector. Germany also deindustrialized many mining areas - the Ruhr is full of these old mining towns, Gelsenkirchen, Essen etc. I also live in an old mining area (Zinc and Cadmium) but these were phased out gradually in a planned manner over a large number of years, accompanied by the necessary reinvestment in those areas.
Blackmail is an emotive issue. If I| hurt you or your family to further my economic ends I would not expect you to be cool and calm. That is what stirkes do.
What is the point of a list of unions.
Nonsense. There is no justification nowadays to hurt innocent people when arbitration is an alternative with the outcome mandatory if the two sides fail to compromise. Strikes are the extreme; negotiation and arbitration are just being reasonable. Tell the millions who have suffered for the last few years on Southern Rail that stirkes are justified.
You live in an area where people are Labour supporters who failed to see the enemy was Scargill and the Unions. If they had their way we would still have horses and carts. If the Unions had cared about the workers not politics they would have agreed a sensible way of exploiting the diminishing coal resources. No - they tried to bring down a government and thankfully failed.
It was not.
It is just left wing political ideology based on times long gone versus adaptation to the modern world. Some people would have us live in huts with no modern transport or high tech industry - good for them but not for most of us.
Drifted into emotive and abusive tone again.
You may like to think we have 'moved on' from the 19th Century, but was Thatcher not an admirer of what she called 'Victorian Values' - was Neo Liberalism nothing other than an ideological repetition of the Laissez Faire of those times ? An ideology which failed miserably then, as now. Is the distribution of wealth in modern Britain not more unequal now than at any time since the Middle Ages ? You talk of compulsory arbitration - by whom ? By a body set up by the government which is, in turn, sponsored by the employers - do you expect them to be always neutral ? And when this fails then the only recourse is withholding of labour. You may be bitter because of personal experiences - but that is no reason to apply a ruling to all cases, as you are doing.
Sometimes it is giving as good as you get. People talking about Victorian age and despots in foreign lands are not emotive?
