Why did the Labour government close so many coal mines?

[mossdog 10]

Heath was humiliated and lost office due to the Winter of Discontent. A Tory Government went out.

 

Thatcher back satbbed Heath for the leadership and took on the Unions. First, she had coal stock piled; a year's supply. Then turned to the Miners.

 

In defeating this industry, by way of then closing 140 pits and leaving only 14 she signalled her intention to reign in the power of ALL unions.

 

Remember, the difference with Wilson and Callaghan, is that they re-structured the industry, tough as it was. They down sized and streamlined.

 

Thatcher decimated it. Jobs were cut as she continued her policies of privatisation which lead directly to furtehr job losses across all industries. The Steel industry went; utilities were privatised and banking de-regulated. All of which realised massive job losses.

 

The cruel economic policies of Thatcher delivered no support or safety net within a civilised society. That is where she differs from any other PM. Her extreme single minded belief, one without regard of others views, isolated her and resulted in the Poll Tax.

 

She was simply out of touch.

 

She used the Miners in the same way as she used the Falklands. That was to merely achieve a political agenda. The former to smash all unions, she'd had Wapping already when she welcomed MURDOCH to Britain, and the latter was to sacrifice British soldiers in order to win an elction.

 

She hated the working classes.

 

She made a very few, primarily the private sector and City Bankers, extremely rich. Whilst at the same time she increased the numbers of those living in Poverty. That being the first reversal in over a 100 years of economic progress for the poor.

 

She made her own family [ Mark ] extremely rich through his personal involvement in arms sales. She also abused her power in misusing assets in having the RAF search for him when lost in the desert during a car rally!

 

She made whole estates suffer from a starvation of funding after she'd sold off council houses in order to win votes in non-tory areas.

 

It is her overall cruel, vindictive and extreme policies, the worst of which was the Poll Tax, that singles her out from all other politicians that do have to take the tough decisions.

 

Remember, they call it 'Thatcherism.' Not Torism. And the Tories abandoned her as she did the communities of Britain. She became toxic to the Tory party itself long after she became toxic to the working families of Britain.

 

She was shunned by the Tories as she was shunned by the people.

 

She remained isolated once ejected from office.

 

Cameron has a fine balancing act of making the right noises whilst not aligning himself with her.

 

Whereas ordinary people can express their true feelings openly. Hence, the outpouring of vilification for this egotistical monster that sacrificed much of Britain in favour of so few.

 

The greed we see every where today was initiated by Thatcher' Loadsamoney City Bankers and the attitude that selfish is good society is bad.

 

Oh, nearly forgot ................. ''no such thing as scoiety''.

 

Really Margaret?

 

Ding Dong.

Seems like the therapy is not working.

[Uptowngirl 10]

Heath was humiliated and lost office due to the Winter of Discontent. A Tory Government went out.

 

.

 

I didn't bother to read your drivel past the first line. Clearly if you can't get basic facts right your post is irrelevant. You should perhaps check who was in fact PM during the Winter of Discontent.

 

Just to help you out..

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent

 

The Winter of Discontent refers to the winter of 1978–79 in the United Kingdom, during which there were widespread strikes by public sector trade unions demanding larger pay rises, following the ongoing pay caps of the Labour Party government led by James Callaghan against Trades Union Congress opposition to control inflation, during the coldest winter for 16 years. The phrase "Winter of Discontent" is from the opening line of William Shakespeare's Richard III.

[harvey19 541]

I didn't bother to read your drivel past the first line. Clearly if you can't get basic facts right your post is irrelevant. You should perhaps check who was in fact PM during the Winter of Discontent.

 

Just to help you out..

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent

 

The Winter of Discontent refers to the winter of 1978–79 in the United Kingdom, during which there were widespread strikes by public sector trade unions demanding larger pay rises, following the ongoing pay caps of the Labour Party government led by James Callaghan against Trades Union Congress opposition to control inflation, during the coldest winter for 16 years. The phrase "Winter of Discontent" is from the opening line of William Shakespeare's Richard III.

 

It also forgot to mention how the picketing miners broke through the police at Saltley(I think) and why the government were so determined not to allow mob rule to win again.

[alchresearch 214]

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.

 

Nice of you to conveniently ignore the matter of the sulphur content in UK coal and the pressures from the EU in reducing pollution and acid rain from burning such coal.

 

The British Coal board would not entertain putting filters or scrubbers on power stations because it "wasn't economical".

[Eater Sundae 12]

we might have regular fuel supplies but held to ransom by the foreign companies of what we pay for them . you say it was cheaper how come our bills havent gone down

 

We might be held to ransome if we were dependant on one fuel from one supplier, but we are not. I've never claimed it is now cheaper and do not know how the costs would be if we still had a large coal industry. We now import much of our coal and pay international market rates. Seeing as there is still coal in the ground, and nothing stopping it being mined if someone thinks they can make a profit doing it, then it stands to reason that the imported coal is currently cheaper. This might not always be the case, in which case mining can restart.

 

In the pre Thatcher era, I do not know how much our coal cost, and it didn't necessarily matter. The key problem was that we didn't have a coal supply we could rely on, and the people stopping that coal supply were doing it as part of their overall intention of overthrowing the Government.

[wednesday1 10]

Nice of you to conveniently ignore the matter of the sulphur content in UK coal and the pressures from the EU in reducing pollution and acid rain from burning such coal.

 

The British Coal board would not entertain putting filters or scrubbers on power stations because it "wasn't economical".

 

 

Didn't know British Coal had ever run any power stations, I sure you'll let me know the ones they did.

[Mecky 10]

Dash for gas?

[Jeffrey Shaw 90]

Nice of you to conveniently ignore the matter of the sulphur content in UK coal and the pressures from the EU in reducing pollution and acid rain from burning such coal.

 

The British Coal board would not entertain putting filters or scrubbers on power stations because it "wasn't economical".

 

Didn't know British Coal had ever run any power stations, I sure you'll let me know the ones they did.

There never was any such thing as The British Coal board anyway.

There was the National Coal Board; then British Coal; and now the Coal Authority.

[Dingus 10]

Dash for gas?

 

Yup..

 

The dash for gas happened for very good reason. The power stations had been forced to buy overpriced British mined coal, even though they could import it at a far lower cost. Productivity in the UK mines was low and it priced coal out of the market. UK coal was also highly poluting when burned and as gas was available cheaper than UK coal power stations were built to use gas at the expense of coal. The railways had made a similar decision a couple of decades earlier and converted to oil rather than burn coal.

 

My central heating along with the majority of others burns gas. Why would anyone choose to use coal if they had the choice?

[*Belle* 10]

You do know she was the daughter of a greengrocer don't you..

 

Greengrocer might be underplaying it a bit. He owned several shops and was a director of a building society and a director of the Trustee Savings Bank.

[I1L2T3 10]

Greengrocer might be underplaying it a bit. He owned several shops and was a director of a building society and a director of the Trustee Savings Bank.

 

Indeed. It's like saying Gideon Osborne's dad was a painter and decorator.

 

The humble grocer thing is all part of the myth.

Edited April 15, 2013 by I1L2T3

[llamatron 10]

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?.

 

I was wondering over the weekend how much of the loud protests were due to it being a woman interfering in a male industry?