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Why did the Labour government close so many coal mines?

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Uneconomic mines were closed in the 60s, 70s, 80s. Nothing wrong with that no matter whether it was Thatcher or whoever.

 

All parties mismanaged the industry over the years. None had good relationships with the unions.

 

One interesting perspective is how many jobs were lost. Callaghan ditched about 10,000 jobs. Thatcher about 190,000. Wilson took the hatchet out too with 200,000 jobs going.

 

The difference is that Wilson reduced the industry by about 40%. Thatcher's approach threatened to reduce it almost to nothing, in the eyes of the unions that is. Maybe it's not Thatcher's fault that little was left of the industry but the unions perceived that they were fighting for survival.

 

---------- Post added 13-04-2013 at 19:28 ----------

 

Hi Dingus,

 

I loved reading your discussion thread, and would be very interested to know, "having checked out the stats it appears that far more pits were closed when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister that when Thatcher was in no10", where you found these.

 

I am using Maggie Thatcher as an example for my dissertation on Women in Leadership Roles, and as she seems to hold some contention currently, it would be good to have some referenced facts to back up what I have to say.

 

Look forward to hearing from you.

 

You might find this useful

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/historical-coal-data-coal-production-availability-and-consumption-1853-to-2011

 

Loads of interesting data in it

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I know some folk around here like to carp on about Thatcher wrecking the mining industry, but having checked out the stats it appears that far more pits were closed when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister that when Thatcher was in no10. The rate of pit closures when Callaghan was PM was also higher.

 

So why the bias. Whilst the last Labour Government was in power more than half the mines in the UK closed and yet no one round here raises an eye brow about it.

 

Why?.

 

There is nothing wrong with closing down the filthy industry that took the lives and health of thousands of men over decades. The issue I have with the Tory decimation of heavy industry is that they did it on a grand scale with absolutely no regard to the consequences for the communities who relied on those industries for their very existence. Mines and steel works closed with nothing to replace them. Money, jobs and hope sucked out of towns and villages across Wales and northern England

 

The Tories vindictive hatred of unions and their members overshadowed everything and we will see the consequences for generations to come.

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The thing that gets me, is that alot of these people jumping on the Thatcher band wagon, having parties etc, probably werent even directly affected in a negative way with anything that she did.

 

Me, I have too much going on in my life to care too much..

 

And I understand the irony of my posting on this thread :hihi:

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Closing them was the only option. Repeated industrial action by unions, and workers on strike who ostracized the ones who actually wanted to work (scabs etc) meant that coal supply was always going to be unpractical and unreliable in the Uk.

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The thing that gets me, is that alot of these people jumping on the Thatcher band wagon, having parties etc, probably werent even directly affected in a negative way with anything that she did.

 

Me, I have too much going on in my life to care too much..

 

And I understand the irony of my posting on this thread :hihi:

 

I was impacted by it.

 

I was a teenager when she got in. My dad had been a miner in the declining Flintshire coalfield before I was born. He retrained into an economic sector that saw big changes under Thatcher. In both cases times were tough for my dad. I remember the 80s as being unremittingly grim as my dad struggled to adjust. He did in the end but it was tough. I have to be honest - my family was really poor. I know what it's like to live in poverty and I know what it was like to leave school when Thatcher was in power. I did OK. I know a few people who didn't.

 

I'm not jumping on any bandwagon. I've always detested what Thatcher stood for. And what she did.

 

---------- Post added 13-04-2013 at 20:07 ----------

 

Closing them was the only option. Repeated industrial action by unions, and workers on strike who ostracized the ones who actually wanted to work (scabs etc) meant that coal supply was always going to be unpractical and unreliable in the Uk.

 

Closing some of them was the only option because they were uneconomic.

 

There may also been a case for a managed decline of the industry. There wasn't any sound economic case was the way the Tories managed it.

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I was impacted by it.

 

I was a teenager when she got in. My dad had been a miner in the declining Flintshire coalfield before I was born. He retrained into an economic sector that saw big changes under Thatcher. In both cases times were tough for my dad. I remember the 80s as being unremittingly grim as my dad struggled to adjust. He did in the end but it was tough. I have to be honest - my family was really poor. I know what it's like to live in poverty and I know what it was like to leave school when Thatcher was in power. I did OK. I know a few people who didn't.

 

I'm not jumping on any bandwagon. I've always detested what Thatcher stood for. And what she did.

 

And I never said that you were. Clearly you were impacted by it, but many who have jumped on the band wagon werent.

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And I never said that you were. Clearly you were impacted by it, but many who have jumped on the band wagon werent.

 

I would say they are impacted. All of us are.

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Coal fired the Industrial Revolution. It made the trains run, made ships capable of crossing the Atlantic in a week, warmed your houses, but you couldn't run a car or a motor cycle, or fly a plane on it, so eventually it had to give way to other more portable fuels like oil and petrol. Today some ships run on nuclear power. Here in America, many homes are heated by natural gas, which is cheap and plentiful though it can be dangerous to use if not handled carefully. There will always be a need for coal use in certain places but never again what it was.

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By the end of the second world war, lots of coal mines were exhausted. These tended to be small pits, that had been mined for up to a hundred years or so. Such pits were liberally scattered across Scotland and the North-East, especially County Durham.

 

The war weary soldiers and sailors found difficulty in returning to their homes to find work down the pits. My Dad, the fourth son in a generation to follow his father down the village pit in County Durtham, migrated to the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire coalfields in order to find work. He was not alone. Thousands of Geordies and Scots did likewise. These men were skilled labourers who hewed coal underground - sometimes in appalling conditions, with water and methane gas seepages high amongst the threats they faced to their very lives.

 

The coalfields of Yorkshire and the East Midlands, Kent and elsewhere were particularly productive, and although some smaller pits in these areas did close (including the two my Dad worked in in Nottinghamshire) - there was still productive pits where a good living could be made. Pits that could last for a further one or two generations; where once again a son could follow his father 'down pit'.

 

The closure of pits under the Thatcher govrnment wasn't though as a result of pits becoming exhausted, or because of any natural decline in coal working or for want of skilled labourers. It was political showdown between the Tory government and the coal unions, especially the NUM led by Arthur Scargill.

 

The Thatcher government was determined to get revenge for the fall of the Conservative Heath goverment following the 3 day week - itself a direct response to a coal strike. The Thatcher government was determined to break the strength of the unions; to weaken their bargaining position.

 

Margaret Thatcher began by bringing in a strong-arm man, Ian McGregor, as chairman of the then National Coal Board. "Sir Ian was given by Margaret Thatcher the job of scaling down the coal industry in the belief that pit closures would provoke a strike for which the government was ready." [Obituary, The Independent, 13 April 2013].

 

I do not know the figures over the number of pit closures under various governments, but what I do know is that the closure of the pits under Thatcher was not for economical reasons, but solely for political reasons.

 

The legacy from that period is that pefectly workable piuts were closed; whole communities are still in continuing or stagnant economic decline; thousands of men were put out of work, some never to work again; and good paying jobs in the pit for young men were replaced by the lure of heroin and other drugs.

 

The additional legacy that we were bequethed by Thatcher is that - as nearby Maltby pit has recently closed - our country currently imports 40% of its coal from other countries.

Edited by redrobbo

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The main legacy is that we now have regular fuel supplies. We couldn't claim that in the decade or so before Thatcher came to power.

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The main legacy is that we now have regular fuel supplies. We couldn't claim that in the decade or so before Thatcher came to power.

 

We nearly ran out of gas the other week. And within 10 years we'll be struggling to keep the lights on.

 

Privatised utilities have delivered us what before long will be a crisis.

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We nearly ran out of gas the other week. And within 10 years we'll be struggling to keep the lights on.

 

Privatised utilities have delivered us what before long will be a crisis.

 

What you are warning about might happen.

 

What we can look at with more confidence is what actually did happen time and again over several years. Compare the last (nearly) 30 years with the 10 (or so) years before. That is much more definite and real/measurable than what might happen.

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