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Thatcher has died


NormanH
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Anyone got any info for me or leads to where I can read about the decline of coal mining in France and also of the other industries like textiles and lace in the North of France?

All i have to go on is just how big the mines were in the 80's and how they are no more without any Maggies or Arthurs, at least none that I have heard of. Given how big France still is on protectionism there must be some key info to compare with peoples nostalgic remeniscing of what might have been in the UK, maybe they were just happy to close them and to get some common market subsidies in return and screw the miners as they were mainly Poles anyway [6]

What I find so disturbing about some of the reactions I am seeing to the baronesses parting is what to someone of my generation is a complete lack of respect and hatred from people that seem to be too young to have even experienced life under a conservative government.

I was completely against the conservative government of the day, I was a trade unionist (no choice my drawing office was a closed shop) working beside union leaders and labour councillors, many years later I voted Tony Blair in for the first time and was very pleased to do so.

I can tell you now that I still have far more respect for Mrs Thatcher than I ever did for Tony Blair, she did exactly what she said she would and he didnt, I still would not disrespect him or take pleasure from his demise though, I often think that those who appear incapable of respecting others are lacking themselves in self respect but maybe I am getting old like Johnny Rotten.

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I remember the strikes of the Seventies; it seemed as if the Unions didn't give a toss about anyone but themselves.

This comment on Mark Steel's article in the Independent sums up my experience rather well:

"Are you aware of what happened in the 1970s? As part of their dispute with the Government the mining unions restricted coal supply. We had a three day week because there wasn't enough electricity, and we suffered regular rolling blackouts. We couldn't import coal because the dockers would have gone on strike in secondary action. The unions were quite happy to selfishly drain money away from the rest of society to live their pipe dream of a class struggle dialectic that would lead to the great workers' revolt and the new world to come. Meanwhile, the UK's standard of living dropped, we had 24.2% inflation and were bailed out by the IMF to prevent us going bankrupt. My mother wept every week when she came home from the shops and saw how little her meagre money could now buy. Part of the deal with the IMF that saved the country from anarchy was to reduce public spending. Wilson couldn't do it. Callaghan couldn't do it. When he tried, the Public Service Workers refused to collect rubbish and the streets piled high with it. Meanwhile, other strikes meant no graves were dug and the bodies of loved ones were left unburied. I mean, talk about lack of compassion!?! The misery inflicted on Britain in the pursuit of a reality detached from the rest of the world was horrendous. Yet there's no vilification for the vileness of the Unions and the way they destroyed the fabric of UK life in the 70s. That's the background to Thatcher's policies that Mark is quite happy to gloss over in the vilification of the individual, Margaret Thatcher. As a socialist, I thought he would follow the Marx / Engels concept of dialectic - that history is a process of competing forces and is bigger than the individual. But no. With Thatcher it's quite the opposite. With Thatcher, everything rests on her shoulders. She probably invented AIDS and global warming, too. After 30 years of disastrous union belligerence, restrictive practice, closed shop, secondary picketing and open ballots that coerced dissenting voices into line, what else was going to happen as part of the reaction against the awfulness of the times? Being attacked as a scab and burned out of your home for wanting to go to work - that was the reality of some of the extremes of the 70s. Neither left nor right comes out of this with any honours whatsoever. That is the number one lesson of the 70s and 80s, if any is to be drawn at all. Tell the whole story. That's all I ask of newspaper columnists. Tell it all. Good and proper."
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Excellent article, justjohn. I've read on another forum where someone thinks that Mrs. Thatcher was responsible for the Hillsborough disaster! It's a shame there isn't more balanced reporting in the press - what she inherited, and had to put to rights, was a nightmare ... but she had the guts to stand up and fight to make the country better. Shame some of our current politicians don't have the balls that she had !
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If you research you will find that Wilson and Co wanted to take on the miners, it's in Hansard somewhere and there are some papers on the subject I seem to remember but they failed. Heath also had a go and failed and it bought his government down which is what Scargill was trying to do with Thatcher. Problem was she was 'not for turning' and took him on head to head and he lost. He was more interested in getting Thatcher out than he was in those he was supposed to be representing. Basically it was 'personal' between him and Thatcher in his mind.
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There was also the firemen's strike of 1977 / 78. Over Christmas and New year.

Some of my men ( RAF ) were deployed with the Green Goddess fire wagons. No Christmas leave for them and regularly being vilified by the strikers.

One of them 'cracked' and responded to the taunts / insults. He was put on a charge by the Army junior Officer in charge. I took the charge, dismissed it and then gave the Army Officer a severe 'bo****ing' for initiating the charge in the first place - I enjoyed that part !
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This brings back memories..... I had electric  everything including  underfloor heating in  those days as some clown thought it the way to go in  building new houses then .  With two small children and the power cuts for hours  we had a hard time  with long power cuts   I recall we thought people who lived close to hospitals  on the same electricity feed  were very lucky as they never seemed to get cut off ....

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This maybe a bit of topic:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/imf-crisis.htm#Harold%20Wilson's%201974%20government

But gives a fascinating insite into what was going on in '75='76 with the state of the UK. Particularly, the demands of the unions for 20+% increases in pay. The IMF bailout, IMO, was a precursor to the '79 election and all that happened after. Thatcher (the Conservatives) were trying to enforce the IMF edict (as Wilson wasn't strong enough to do so). Some of the Tory policies of the '80's were plain wrong (Poll tax!!), but to put the blame 100% at Thatchers feet is not right, and certainly with the closure of the pits, which seems to be most anti-thatcherites point of view, was not all down to her or her government. The closures were accelerated I admit, but they had all been slated for closure during the Wilson (labour) government years.

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I have been doing some research into the closure of the bassin miniere in the Nord pas de Calais to try and get an idea of what the mining industry in the UK would be like if it were not for Mrs Thatcher as many lay the blame at her door, from what I have learned the end was inevitable but had it not been for the NUM, Mrs T. and the strike I surmise that the UK may have followed Frances lead.

What surprised me was to learn that this country of syndicalistes and protectionism knew the industry was doomed at its peak in 1960 and started planning to close it definitively and replace it with other industry, there was but one strike of 35 days in the early days.

This site gives the most concise history that I have read, the whole history is fascinating but the story of the decline and subsequent regeneration starts from 1960.

http://didier.lecoustre.free.fr/Mines.html#recession1960

If the French text is too long or too hard for you the following extract from the end I think sums it up well.

Au plus fort de leur exploitation, après la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, les Charbonnages de France ont employé près de 360 000 mineurs et produit jusqu'à 60 000 millions de tonnes de houille. Le déclin est amorcé dès les années 60, le gouvernement socialiste de Pierre Mauroy tente un dernier plan de relance en 1981 qui se traduit par des milliers d'embauches. L'expérience est interrompue dès 1984, au vu des déficits croissants que doit subventionner l'Etat. Beaucoup trop coûteux à prospecter, la mort du charbon français est inéluctable. Le prix de revient du minerai national est, depuis 1960, supérieur au prix de vente, alors que les grands exportateurs comme l'Australie, l'Afrique du Sud et la Chine bénéficient de gisements plus accessibles (mines à ciel ouvert) et d'une main d'oeuvre bon marché.

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Another key part.

Le déficit à la tonne extraite ne fait que s'accroître. Il atteint 207 F/tonne en 1981. Le 25 avril 1983, à Lille, François Mitterrand, Président de la République, met un terme aux vains espoirs quant à l'avenir de l'extraction dans le Nord-Pas-de-Calais. L'Etat ne pourra, dit-il, à la fois couvrir le déficit de l'extraction charbonnière dès lors qu'elle sera prolongée artificiellement et, dans le même temps, participer à la renaissance industrielle du Bassin minier. Un choix s'impose donc ajoute-t-il.

Good job it wasnt François Hollande faced with that problem.

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[quote user="Russethouse"]

In theory, what is so wrong with poll tax ?

Here we have four adults and we use our local services appropriatley yet pay the same as the young couple across the road who are getting half the benefit .......

[/quote]An interesting question. At one level it seems fair that all should pay the same for the same services but  at another level it means that some people are paying a much greater proportion of their income than others for the same services. As Adam Smith, an economist much admired by MT and her economic advisors, said that to be effective taxes should be cheap to collect, difficult to avoid  and be seen to be fair.

Probably the fairest way to pay for local services would be a local income tax which because of PAYE meets most of AS criteria but in the UK we have a system based on the value of our property or at least the value some time ago. This as opposed to the Poll Tax does have some relationship to peoples wealth and thus their ability to pay.

Of course the motivation for the poll tax in the 1980s was the desire to make all voters conscious of the high spending of certain left wing councils in particular and thus vote them out of office.

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[quote user="Russethouse"]

This as opposed to the Poll Tax does have some relationship to peoples wealth and thus their ability to pay.

I'm not sure this still holds true, many people are asset rich but cash poor....

[/quote]That's why I am in favour of a local income tax. Any property tax tends to put an unfair burden on those who are asset rich and cash poor. The poll tax was very good for those who had expensive properties.
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[quote user="HoneySuckleDreams"]

This maybe a bit of topic:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/imf-crisis.htm#Harold%20Wilson's%201974%20government

But gives a fascinating insite into what was going on in '75='76 with the state of the UK. Particularly, the demands of the unions for 20+% increases in pay. The IMF bailout, IMO, was a precursor to the '79 election and all that happened after. Thatcher (the Conservatives) were trying to enforce the IMF edict (as Wilson wasn't strong enough to do so). Some of the Tory policies of the '80's were plain wrong (Poll tax!!), but to put the blame 100% at Thatchers feet is not right, and certainly with the closure of the pits, which seems to be most anti-thatcherites point of view, was not all down to her or her government. The closures were accelerated I admit, but they had all been slated for closure during the Wilson (labour) government years.

[/quote] During the two terms of Wilsons Govt there were more coal mines closed than were closed in the three terms of Thatchers Govt. Wilson is a hero of the Labour Party.......................Why ????
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[quote user="powerdesal"][quote user="HoneySuckleDreams"]

This maybe a bit of topic:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/imf-crisis.htm#Harold%20Wilson's%201974%20government

But gives a fascinating insite into what was going on in '75='76 with the state of the UK. Particularly, the demands of the unions for 20+% increases in pay. The IMF bailout, IMO, was a precursor to the '79 election and all that happened after. Thatcher (the Conservatives) were trying to enforce the IMF edict (as Wilson wasn't strong enough to do so). Some of the Tory policies of the '80's were plain wrong (Poll tax!!), but to put the blame 100% at Thatchers feet is not right, and certainly with the closure of the pits, which seems to be most anti-thatcherites point of view, was not all down to her or her government. The closures were accelerated I admit, but they had all been slated for closure during the Wilson (labour) government years.

[/quote] During the two terms of Wilsons Govt there were more coal mines closed than were closed in the three terms of Thatchers Govt. Wilson is a hero of the Labour Party.......................Why ????[/quote]

It's probably about HOW it was done.

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During the two terms of Wilsons Govt there were more coal mines closed than were closed in the three terms of Thatchers Govt. Wilson is a hero of the Labour Party.......................Why ????

 It surely would have been politically considerably harder for Scargill to try and bring a Labour government down as IIRC the Unions had more say in who was elected  leader then and additionally it was probable that many union members had voted Labour...kind of shooting yourself in the foot.

Did Thatcher initially want to speed the closure up, or was that a result of the strike action itself? 

Thatcher, unlike Heath stood up to the unions, which at the time was very difficult and had dreadful consequences, but in the longer term it may have been a good thing. Unions had to learn they could not go on holding the country to ransome, they still have a place in todays society but it's a different place IMHO....

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"Unions had to learn they could not go on holding the country to ransome"

Some of them did not try to. South Derbyshire miners did not go on strike; they still lost their jobs though, all 3,500 of them.

From their perspective it looked as though the decision to close British pits had been taken long before the strike started.

Hoddy

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From what has been written here the decision was taken long before Mrs T came to power.

I suspect that the British public were at the end of their collective tether, we'd had strikes of dustmen, strikes of cemetery staff,  the 3 day week and some of Scargills strikes had no mandate.....

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It did always seem to me that the miners were successful in bringing down the Heath Government not just because Heath tried calling their bluff with the 3 day week which spectacularly failed, but because they went on strike in autumn/winter when people actually needed a lot more light and heat. Hence the "winter" of discontent. I think the difference with the miners' strike under Thatcher was that they came out on strike in March. As there was much less demand or need for coal over the summer months, more time to prepare contingency measures before winter, and a strike which had, by the time winter did set in, run out of funds, steam and a certain amount of support, it was much less straightforward for the miners (or their leaders) to hold the government to ransom.

That was my impression at the time, anyway. I remember wondering whose bright idea it was to cal a strike in spring and drag it on through summer, when it was the least likely time to inconvenience anyone except the strikers themselves. But I was a lot younger then.

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The main reasons the strike failed were a) wrong time of year to call a coal strike, b) The government had made sure there were good stocks of coal at the power stations, c) the police were better prepared to stop the aggressive picketing which had been instrumental in the fall of the Heath government.
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[quote user="Rabbie"]The main reasons the strike failed were a) wrong time of year to call a coal strike, b) The government had made sure there were good stocks of coal at the power stations, c) the police were better prepared to stop the aggressive picketing which had been instrumental in the fall of the Heath government.[/quote]

I couldn't have put it better myself, Rabbie[Www]

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