14-03-2013, 06:39 PM
43
Re: Arthur Scargill - the miners' hero.
Originally Posted by ben-varrey
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Wasn't there something on tv not too long ago about this - that it could be started up again as there is still plenty of coal underground? I do think it will be more to do with the cost of labour - Britain can't compete with cheap labour abroad and that makes it unprofitable for businesses.Being a suspicious old so and so, I suspect that a lot has gone on over the past 15 years or so to bring down the cost of labour in Britain and I also think it's still going on (refusal to invest in infrastructure to kick-start the economy).
15-03-2013, 01:46 PM
44
Re: Arthur Scargill - the miners' hero.
Originally Posted by plantman
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The miners were, in fact, rolling in money. By using their industrial muscle under the weak and ineffectual Labour government led by Jim Callaghan, they had attained wage levels that were unsustainable in the market place for coal and we were fast approaching a situation where no-one could afford to burn the stuff. If the power industry had continued to buy this wildly overpriced resource then we would not have been able to afford to put the lights on. The miners were arrogant, greedy and lazy, and cared not one jot for anyone but themselves. I believe that it is naive for anyone to think they could have been negotiated with to temper their wild demands. That was never on their agenda, only the complete capitulation by the conservative government to their selfish narrow self interests would have sufficed. I feel no pity for them, and I actually resent the huge hand outs they received when they threw themselves on the scrapheap through their ridiculous intransigence.
The only real victims that I feel for in this debacle were members of the breakaway UDM union, who refused to join in with the other lemmings but were brought down by the strikers anyway.
The Solicitor handling my sons car collision charges £250.00 per hour, politicians earn £80k p.a plus expenses, I don't begin to pretend to know what a miner earned in relative (1970s) time terms, but I would guess the equivalent of £20k p.a in todays terms, for this and most importantly, they risked their lives on a daily basis, and longer term the risk to health issues, via an accident, or breathing in tons of coal dust was imperative, politics aside I have the greatest respect for these fellows.
15-03-2013, 02:25 PM
46
Re: Arthur Scargill - the miners' hero.
Originally Posted by plantman
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The miners were, in fact, rolling in money. By using their industrial muscle under the weak and ineffectual Labour government led by Jim Callaghan, they had attained wage levels that were unsustainable in the market place for coal and we were fast approaching a situation where no-one could afford to burn the stuff. If the power industry had continued to buy this wildly overpriced resource then we would not have been able to afford to put the lights on. The miners were arrogant, greedy and lazy, and cared not one jot for anyone but themselves. I believe that it is naive for anyone to think they could have been negotiated with to temper their wild demands. That was never on their agenda, only the complete capitulation by the conservative government to their selfish narrow self interests would have sufficed. I feel no pity for them, and I actually resent the huge hand outs they received when they threw themselves on the scrapheap through their ridiculous intransigence.
The only real victims that I feel for in this debacle were members of the breakaway UDM union, who refused to join in with the other lemmings but were brought down by the strikers anyway.
15-03-2013, 03:47 PM
47
Re: Arthur Scargill - the miners' hero.
Originally Posted by Alan Cooke
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It's not very often I'm at odds with you Barry but your response just shows how ill-informed you are this time. It was in 1967 that I left the industry after working in the mines for 16 years, 6 years of that as a shotfirer. There was never a time in that 16 years that I didn't work until I was almost exhausted. I was working in very dusty conditions and I knew people who were seriously injured and one chap I knew lost his life as the result of an accident. My wages had been good but towards the end of my time in the pits I saw my wages deteriorate in relation to manual workers not in the industry. In fact I went from £1200/annum as a miner to £1200/annum as a student training to be a teacher. Shortly after I left the industry the miners VOTED for a strike under the leadership of Joe Gormley, a good, moderate union leader. The mistake under Arthur was to be bulldozed into striking WITHOUT a ballot. The whole debacle was confrontational and Maggie had no choice but to defeat them.
You left the mines of course when there was much more work than there was money. I worked at Thoresby Colliery in 1966 - 1967 as an apprentice fitter, but left when I was offered a fiver a week to do something else, virtually doubling what my apprentice wages were at the pit! My father worked in the mines in the fifties clearing a stint on the coal face with pick and shovel, so I know how tough conditions were back then.
But things had changed by the early eighties and the miner's situation was completely different. The strike in the seventies had improved the miner's pay and conditions immensely, (which wasn't before time incidentally), but it had the less desirable effect of giving the miner's the impression that they were indispensible, and ironically it was their success in the seventies strike that led to their downfall in the eighties by once again trying to blackmail the country. As you no doubt know, by the eighties the miners were being paid huge sums by manual workers standards, perhaps as much as twice the nation average, and you also know that their arrogance had to be experienced to be believed. Personally I used to tire of hearing my miner neighbours bragging about how much they were earning, how little they did for it, and how they were going to bring down the conservative government with another national strike.
These people portrayed themselves as working class heroes, but I never saw much national pride from them, only arrogance and narrow self interest. I still maintain they were the architects of their own destruction, and I dread to think where we would be now had Margaret Thatcher not been up to the task.
Just as an aside, the long closed mines are in fact starting once again to produce energy. The old workings are now being tapped of their methane, which is piped to the surface and is being used to generate electricity for the grid...
16-03-2013, 03:18 PM
48
Re: Arthur Scargill - the miners' hero.
Originally Posted by plantman
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Just as an aside, the long closed mines are in fact starting once again to produce energy. The old workings are now being tapped of their methane, which is piped to the surface and is being used to generate electricity for the grid...
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