On This Day: February 18, 1981 : Margaret Thatcher does her first 'uturn' as she gives in to miners

[MenInG]

1981: Thatcher gives in to miners

Mrs Thatcher's Conservative Government has withdrawn plans to close 23 pits in its first major u-turn since coming to power two years ago.

President of the National Union of Mineworkers Joe Gormley is confident the government's intervention will avert the threatened national miners' strikes.

Secretary of State for Energy David Howell made the concessions at two hours' of crisis talks in Whitehall involving union leaders and Department of Trade and Industry officials.

At the negotiations - brought forward several days by the government - Mr Howell acknowledged the miners' main demands about coal imports and subsidies to the National Coal Board.

The government agreed to reduce coal imports from eight million to five-and-a-half million tonnes over the next year and to provide more money for the Coal Board, struggling under the withdrawal of operating subsidies after the 1980 Coal Industry Act.

As a result the Coal Board has dropped the programme of pit closures it announced on 10 February.

'Far from satisfied'

Mr Gormley is due to meet the 25-member executive of the NUM tomorrow morning and says he will advise against an indefinite strike by the nation's 240,000 miners.

"I hope the explanation we shall give to the executive will be enough to convince them there is no need for a ballot. The whole situation is different," he explained.

However vice-president of the NUM and leader of the Scottish pitmen Michael McGahey said: "I am very far from satisfied with the meeting, which only amounts to promises to review the situation.

"On the real issues there are no concrete agreements."

His views are shared by much of the coal industry's left-wing and over half the country's coalfields are already affected by unofficial strikes.

Further talks between union leaders and Mr Howell are planned for a week today when he will give more precise details of the scale of the government's assistance.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/18/newsid_2550000/2550991.stm

 

[Markhor]

Was the calm before the storm - she wasn't powerful enough to take on the miners then.

The crushing of the miners by the Thatcher Govt was one of the darkest periods of British history. Imagine labouring in dirty, suffocating and dangerous conditions for years, being the backbone of British industry and then being called "the enemy within" by your OWN Prime Minister.

 

[Robert]

The union bosses were wreckers. They were indeed the enemy within.

The poor old rank-and-file miners just wanted their jobs.....

 

[Markhor]

The union bosses were wreckers. They were indeed the enemy within.

The poor old rank-and-file miners just wanted their jobs.....

Why are union bosses vilified and labelled "the enemy within" yet City of London executives who helped cause the biggest financial disaster since the Depression receive knighthoods and awarded massive bonuses ? Say what you like about Arthur Scargill but at least he tried to save an industry whereas the City recklessly gambled to feather their own nests and were even bigger wreckers.

Arthur Scargill never offered those "suicide loans" of up to 120% of the value of a house with only self-certification of income. Arthur Scargill never sold a toxic mortgage backed security or traded derivatives.

Yet we chose to destroy one industry for political reasons; and bail out another despite that industry bringing our country to its knees.

And look at the results of Thatcher's union busting. We have lousy productivity and falling real wages whilst union membership has plunged to all time lows. Meanwhile, countries like Germany who didn't smash their unions leave us in the dust in terms of productivity and wages.

 

[Gabbar Singh]

[MENTION=7774]Robert[/MENTION] (and anyone else who'd care to answer) - given that Wilson closed more mines than Thatcher (in half the time) why doesn't he get the same criticism as the latter? Were the closures just handled better and more smoothly by the Wilson government or is the comparison not a fair one?

 

[Markhor]

[MENTION=7774]Robert[/MENTION] (and anyone else who'd care to answer) - given that Wilson closed more mines than Thatcher (in half the time) why doesn't he get the same criticism as the latter? Were the closures just handled better and more smoothly by the Wilson government or is the comparison not a fair one?

Closing more mines doesn't tell the full story !

You have to look at percentage of jobs lost as a proportion of the industry - it was higher under Thatcher than Wilson.

 

[Robert]

Why are union bosses vilified and labelled "the enemy within" yet City of London executives who helped cause the biggest financial disaster since the Depression receive knighthoods and awarded massive bonuses ? Say what you like about Arthur Scargill but at least he tried to save an industry whereas the City recklessly gambled to feather their own nests and were even bigger wreckers.

Arthur Scargill never offered those "suicide loans" of up to 120% of the value of a house with only self-certification of income. Arthur Scargill never sold a toxic mortgage backed security or traded derivatives.

Yet we chose to destroy one industry for political reasons; and bail out another despite that industry bringing our country to its knees.

And look at the results of Thatcher's union busting. We have lousy productivity and falling real wages whilst union membership has plunged to all time lows. Meanwhile, countries like Germany who didn't smash their unions leave us in the dust in terms of productivity and wages.

Didn’t expect whattaboutery from you [MENTION=53290]Markhor[/MENTION].

When Britain helped West Germany reconstruct from 1945 onwards the TUC came over and helped install a system where boards of directors have a union rep as a permanent seat.

Conversely by the 1950s the British unions had been overrun by communists highly adversarial to business. They prevented obsolete industries from being closed at cost to the taxpayer.

We should be like Germany.

 

[Robert]

[MENTION=7774]Robert[/MENTION] (and anyone else who'd care to answer) - given that Wilson closed more mines than Thatcher (in half the time) why doesn't he get the same criticism as the latter? Were the closures just handled better and more smoothly by the Wilson government or is the comparison not a fair one?

Don’t know. Were they exhausted pits?