The Politics Thread

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SpursDisciple said:
And yet he was proved right on almost every claim he made about the Miners strike. He saw through the witch as well as anyone.
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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.
 
deedub93 said:
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.
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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.
 
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NowsufferinginSpain said:
Seems to me that he hung the miners out to dry, but made sure he was nice and comfortable himself.,...
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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.
 
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PleaseNotPoll said:
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.
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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.
 
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SpursDisciple said:
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.
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Scargill turned it into a personal power struggle. Maggie took up the challenge. The miners got ****ed in the middle!..
 
deedub93 said:
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.
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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.
 
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PleaseNotPoll said:
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.
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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)
 
deedub93 said:
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)
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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.
 
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SpursDisciple said:
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.
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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.
 
vimhawk said:
I didn't realise that. I hadn't heard anything on the news reporting today that mentioned "new evidence", I only heard reports that there had not been any "wrongful conviction" etc as the reason for not having an inquiry (because those wrongly arrested weren't charged presumably!)
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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>
 
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PleaseNotPoll said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
deedub93 said:
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.
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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.
 
deedub93 said:
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.
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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.
 
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
 
PleaseNotPoll said:
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.
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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.
 
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deedub93 said:
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)
Click to expand...
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!
 
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