Quote: dr_feelgood "rlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25549596rl
rlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23518589rl
What a surprise, though the Tories denied it they did intend to close more than twenty pits.
Even though I supported the miners cause at the time I always thought that Scargill handled the situation poorly and that a leader with a bit more political and diplomatic skill like Joe Gormley would have done a better job.
Saying that, the lengths TBW would have gone to to smah the miners and union movement had no bounds.'"
All of the miners that I knew when I lived in the north-east in the early eighties knew that they didn't have a job to go back to very early on in the strike, all of the sea pits in the north east were closed BECAUSE of the strike not in spite of it.
I heard a very interesting comment from a retired power station worker yesterday talking about the miners strike and the little known fact that the political solution to closing the pits was to import coal from south america and eastern europe which was inferior to the point of being almost not coal at all when compared to the supply of British coal - he quoted the levels of ash left behind after burning in the power stations, not much at all for the British coal, huge amounts left by the cheaper suppliers, the main reason being that British coal was deep mined and the imported stuff was mainly surface mined, open cast, and the deeper the coal the better the quality - something I didn't know.
None of which mattered to the political masters who just paid the bills and thought that the problem was solved.