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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.

Manchester Uni did some research in the 70s/80s wrt scrubbing emissions from coal fired power stations. I think one area of research was the conversion of sulphur dioxide to sulphuric acid that could then be sold on. This was discontinued post strike. It does make you wonder whether if we had continued with proper nationalised coal and power industries and hence continued the research, would we now have been at the stage where the UK would have been the world leader in carbon capture technology.

The ability to continue using coal to fire power stations may have prevented the "dash to gas" and thus lead to us prolonging our North Sea gas supply resulting in cheaper bills.

Interestingly the Tories caved in to the dockers demands during the miners strike as they didn't think they could handle 2 major strikes simultaneously and because they would had have to rely more on imported coal should the miners strike have dragged on longer than they anticpated.

Power Station Fuel (PSF) was typically 15 to 20% ash and was produced via washeries to be at that level deliberately.
The reason was that this was the optimum level for our typical bituminous coal to give the heat output needed but not overstrain the boilers.
Needless to say coal is priced on its calorific value with a reduction in price for its ash content (among other things, like sulphur content).

It is true that the deeper the coal the higher its calorific value, but don't forget deep coal seams can be uplifted over the eons and bring high grade coal near to the surface.

Wasn't that a result of the refusal of management to allow the NUM to continue maintenance work through the strike? Something that had been allowed through all previous strikes.

Alhough I supported the miners at the time, with the benefit of hindsight it was essential for democracy that union power was controlled / crushed. The miners were traditionally the strongest union and looked up to by other unions and that's why the government fought hard and dirty. It was for want of a better expression 'class war' (or more accurately a war for democracy) and as such tactics needed to be brutal.

At the pit that my bro-in-law worked at it was management and volunteers that were supposed to be keeping the pumps running, the workings went several miles out underneath the North Sea and had recently had one million pounds spent on new hydraulic roof supports and new pumping equipment - a significant enough sum for the local newspapers to harp on about the fact for weeks before the strike began,the investment was supposed to give the pit many more years of production and they regularly broke their production targets.

They'd only been out for a month or so when opinions were expressed about the standard of maintenance and it wasn't many more weeks after that that they gave up any hope of returning to work at that pit ever again, the investment was left underground and is still there miles out at sea now. There would be no possibility of opening up those workings again without starting all over, something that no private company would have the balls to do these days.

My wife's family had one son out on strike and his uncle an invalid on an NCB pension after an underground accident, they also had another son who was a dog handler in the Met and who was regularly seconded to other forces to control pickets, so literally brother vs brother and only one of them earning loads of money in overtime.

They never actually met on a picket line and it was probably by design that the copper brother was never moved up to the North East but served around the Midlands.

Something needed to happen to restore the status quo whereby the elected body ran the country. Union power had got out of hand - understandable given the huge amount of government owned industries and the inability of Labour to manage the relationship correctly.

Since we are into 'all our yesterdays' and what uncle Albert did 'during the war'.
I actually crossed picket lines with the permission of the local miners, begrudgingly of course, to maintain and run Grimethorpe power station.
As a member of BACM (British Association of Colliery Management) I was not on strike and our job was to keep facilities maintained as best we could. An impossible task almost, but we tried.
Anyway the Grimethorpe miners let us through to run the power station as soon as it was clear to all that the village got its electricity exclusively from the station.
And within a few days they had disappeared not least to let us through but to let the villagers come and raid the coal stocks. We turned a blind eye.
We kept that station running for the village the entire year of the strike.
It still didn't stop a feeling of guilt however that I was working and they were suffering.

Four years later we were made redundant courtesy of Maggie and her ilk.

But they were not!

Closed shops still exist to this day.
Lobbying and "buying" of politicians is still rife.
Leaders of Unions still have influence on government policy.
Only the people who keep the establishment in power by being the buffer are not legally allowed to strike.

When governments can be brought to their collective knees by unelected, unaccountable people in global businesses then democracy has been shown up

I think Grangemouth demonstrated exactly who holds the whip hand here - outside of the public sector it isn't the unions.

Im just wondering when the greedy b'stard Bob Crowe will get his backside handed to him.

Just out of curiosity.

Why?

Do you live in London?