What happened to Thatcher's Miners?

[DnAuK 10]

I've just heard on the news that the steelworks are under threat and facing redundancies very soon.

 

It made me wonder what happened to all those miners when Thatcher closed the mines. Did they move from their communities to get work elsewhere, did they just languish on sick benefit, which the job centre encouraged them to do, or did they set up enterprising businesses?

 

My old driving instructor was an ex-miner. Part of his lay-off package included retraining. He did so and ended up being quite happy. Or so he told me.

[apelike 10]

I can remember as a nipper comparing wages. Dad was a bricky pulling around £20/week. The miners and car workers (both of those always seemed to be on strike) were like you say earning twice that, so hardly "average". I guess it was mathematically average taking the "filthy rich" into account.

 

Its like these days when one looks at national average earnings. No one I know is earning anything like that, but it provides a statistic to be able to argue a point.

 

 

Oddly enough when I left the pit in 1979 before the main strikes I actually re-trained to become a bricky, and then went on to work in a 2 + 1 gang hodding bricks. Dont suffer from coal dust problems but now have spine compression problems and osteoarthritis.

[Alan Ladd 10]

Harold Wilson closed more pits than Thatcher.

Pits were closed because they had two to three years production sat on coal heaps and no one wanted to buy it.

More Trade unionists voted for Thatcher than ever voted for Callaghan, Foot or the welsh windbag.

 

Thatcher was our greatest ever peacetime PM. She turned this country from an economic basket case to the envy of the world.