1. Log in now to remove adverts - no adverts at all to registered members!

The Politics Thread

Discussion in 'Tottenham Hotspur' started by Wandering Yid, Feb 9, 2016.

  1. deedub93

    deedub93 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 5, 2011
    Messages:
    12,700
    Likes Received:
    8,707
    That is a very one sided view SD. If Scargill hadn't been there and the miners hadn't gone on strike there would still be a mining industry. Albeit reduced in size and lower wages, but still there. Wages need to be related to the market economy not inflated because underground mining is a nasty job. Uneconomic pits world wide close because they do not pay their way.

    Ridiculous wage demands coupled with holding the country and the nations' economy to ransom meant that the miners were no longer useful, in fact they became a liability. Self prophesising was Scargill, paranoid to the extreme, believed the worst would happen and in fact made it happen. Thatcher just put the nails in the coffin.
     
    #1841
  2. NSIS

    NSIS Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jun 1, 2011
    Messages:
    36,067
    Likes Received:
    14,555
    Seems to me that he hung the miners out to dry, but made sure he was nice and comfortable himself.,...
     
    #1842
  3. PleaseNotPoll

    PleaseNotPoll Well-Known Member
    Forum Moderator

    Joined:
    May 31, 2011
    Messages:
    96,265
    Likes Received:
    55,752
    If it hadn't have been the miners, then she would've used another unionised industry to make her point.
    It wasn't anything about them in particular, she just wanted to push her ideology and it worked very well.
     
    #1843
    remembercolinlee likes this.
  4. SpursDisciple

    SpursDisciple Booking: Mod abuse - overturned on appeal
    Forum Moderator

    Joined:
    Jan 25, 2011
    Messages:
    30,119
    Likes Received:
    16,885
    My view was that Thatcher wanted to destroy any Union power and went after the mines because of what happened in the early 70's. She didn't care how many jobs were lost and she was bent on destruction. Her era left industry devastated in this country and we were left with only Service Industries. Scargill was vain and misguided to an extent, but he was demonised in the press (like most left-wing people) and never got a fair hearing. Of the 2 I know who created the most damage to this country. Mines that were still economic were shut down when there was still lots of life left in them.
     
    #1844
    remembercolinlee likes this.
  5. deedub93

    deedub93 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 5, 2011
    Messages:
    12,700
    Likes Received:
    8,707
    I don't agree in the slightest. The miners brought down the Heath Government in 74 and Thatcher was very much aware of that. Once Scargill had ousted Joe Gormley, the writing was on the wall. Scargills' unreasonable demands, i.e. no mine will shut, even if it has run out of coal, coupled with his refusal to negotiate were the opening shots of the battle. Thatcher for her part didn't shy away, she never did. Scargill tried to call a strike in Jan 82, Oct 82 and March 83. Each time he lost the vote but refused to listen to the will of the miners. In the mean time, Scargill made sure he had a good salary, a more than generous pension and lived in a flat in which the NUM paid £34k per annum. A hypocritical ****. A few years later he actually tried to buy a flat under Thatchers' right to buy, but his request was turned down because it wasn't his primary residence. Even after the strike the NUM were paying for his 34k residence. ****ing Hypocrite.

    All miners are equal but some miners are more equal than others.
     
    #1845
    Last edited: Nov 1, 2016
  6. NSIS

    NSIS Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jun 1, 2011
    Messages:
    36,067
    Likes Received:
    14,555
    Scargill turned it into a personal power struggle. Maggie took up the challenge. The miners got ****ed in the middle!..
     
    #1846
  7. PleaseNotPoll

    PleaseNotPoll Well-Known Member
    Forum Moderator

    Joined:
    May 31, 2011
    Messages:
    96,265
    Likes Received:
    55,752
    I don't disagree about Scargill, but Thatcher was quite open about breaking the unions.
    That she used multiple unionised workforces to do it is quite ironic.
    The police and the press appear to have been happy to collude with her, for some reason.
     
    #1847
  8. deedub93

    deedub93 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 5, 2011
    Messages:
    12,700
    Likes Received:
    8,707
    The police have to uphold the law. Thatchers' master-stroke was to out law flying pickets. That brought the police into the game on her side. The press don't like communists, in particular communist hypocrites, world wide they tend to limit press freedom.(see Russia, China and North Korea)
     
    #1848
  9. PleaseNotPoll

    PleaseNotPoll Well-Known Member
    Forum Moderator

    Joined:
    May 31, 2011
    Messages:
    96,265
    Likes Received:
    55,752
    The police baton charged protesters on horseback for no reason. That's not upholding the law.
    It's actually probably the complete opposite and is illegal.
    They also attacked journalists and arrested various innocent people, while intentionally hiding the evidence that they'd done so.
     
    #1849
    paultheplug and remembercolinlee like this.
  10. The RDBD

    The RDBD Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jun 2, 2011
    Messages:
    29,090
    Likes Received:
    13,893
    Not quite.
    She obviously had decided that no union would ever bring down a govt or
    act like they run the country as they did in the 70s.

    So the question became : two Labour general election defeats later, did
    there still exist union morons spoiling for an attempt to repeat/restore the 1970s ??

    The answer was yes.
     
    #1850

  11. Solid Air 2

    Solid Air 2 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 3, 2015
    Messages:
    32,083
    Likes Received:
    28,570
    no wrongful convictions but not for the lack of trying.
    approx 180 miners were charged but the judge threw out the case as he (rightly) came to the conclusion that the police had doctored the evidence.
    a lot of the same senior police figures were involved in that as in the Hillsborough smear campaign <grr>
     
    #1851
  12. deedub93

    deedub93 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 5, 2011
    Messages:
    12,700
    Likes Received:
    8,707
    I dare say the police had been provoked, however, two wrongs don't make a right. Having said that at least our police don't shoot (too many) innocent people, they are generally very restrained. This is far better than many countries in the world. I think there are too many sore losers who have it in for our police and try to make a mountain out of a molehill. They have a very difficult job and I'm sure many would have been pelted with various objects during the miners strike.

    When I was in my teens I was arrested a number of times including one assault on a police officer and the police were always fair to me.
     
    #1852
  13. PleaseNotPoll

    PleaseNotPoll Well-Known Member
    Forum Moderator

    Joined:
    May 31, 2011
    Messages:
    96,265
    Likes Received:
    55,752
    This is the South Yorkshire Police, though. They were there for a fight.
    They've had a few people come out recently and say that's what happened.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37609965

    "I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was just seeing police officers attack people. These were people on the ground and even if they weren't doing anything - just walking away - police officers had their batons and they were just hitting people."

    That's what a policeman who was there thought, so I dread to think how bad it was.
     
    #1853
  14. remembercolinlee

    remembercolinlee Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 1, 2012
    Messages:
    35,725
    Likes Received:
    40,781
    I have been at many demo's over the past 30 yrs and 1980s football matches and I do not recognise your description of the police as being fair unless provoked.
     
    #1854
  15. Solid Air 2

    Solid Air 2 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 3, 2015
    Messages:
    32,083
    Likes Received:
    28,570
    there was a well known incident of a female press photographer getting batoned during a charge of mounted police whilst taking pictures.
    The violence was from both sides and a sizeable element in both groups were "up for it" but the police were very indiscriminate that day
     
    #1855
  16. humanbeingincroydon

    humanbeingincroydon Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    May 28, 2011
    Messages:
    69,727
    Likes Received:
    30,581
    It's also worth remembering that around this time was the Battle of the Beanfield in Wiltshire, where Wiltshire Police were just as truncheon-happy as they were in Orgreave - and it's also worth mentioning that in the initial BBC news coverage of the event they showed a copper casually walk up to someone's camper van and use their truncheon to smash the windscreen with no provocation, but after complaints from on high (and I don't mean the Director General, I mean from Downing Street) the clip was cut from subsequent broadcast and buried in the archives.

    The issue is that these incidents aren't consigned to the past as we're expected to believe, case in point they were baton-happy during the G20 protests in 2009. While the most obvious example is the officer who struck and then shoved down Ian Tomlinson despite Tomlinson not being a protester, with Tomlinson dying of injuries incurred by his fall a few minutes later, there was also a clip shown on the news - just once, mind - of someone walking past an officer, the officer shoving them in the back completely unprovoked, and when the bloke turned around the officer started swinging.

    A few months after this I found myself getting kettled at London Bridge tube station for the crime of...using the London Underground on a day when Leeds visited the New Den, which was as much fun as it sounds.
     
    #1856
  17. PleaseNotPoll

    PleaseNotPoll Well-Known Member
    Forum Moderator

    Joined:
    May 31, 2011
    Messages:
    96,265
    Likes Received:
    55,752
    please log in to view this image


    http://www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire...2/lesley_boulton_orgreave_photo_feature.shtml
     
    #1857
  18. Solid Air 2

    Solid Air 2 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Aug 3, 2015
    Messages:
    32,083
    Likes Received:
    28,570
    #1858
  19. PleaseNotPoll

    PleaseNotPoll Well-Known Member
    Forum Moderator

    Joined:
    May 31, 2011
    Messages:
    96,265
    Likes Received:
    55,752
    One paper featured that picture. One.
    Given how iconic it's become, I think that says something about the press coverage.
     
    #1859
  20. PowerSpurs

    PowerSpurs Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jun 15, 2011
    Messages:
    13,083
    Likes Received:
    5,664
    Interestingly I was in the Soviet Union on holiday that year. I watched the news on TV and there was loads of coverage of Orgreave and other places which clearly showed indiscriminate attacks by the police on picket lines. When we got home we were talking to some friends about the strike and said we were shocked by the violence we saw in the TV coverage. We then discovered that this hadn't been on the TV in the UK at all!
     
    #1860
    PleaseNotPoll likes this.

Share This Page