I am sorry for your friend, and he was not alone in what he did in the aftermath of the strike.OneBardGooner wrote:Put it this way....she ensured that the poor stayed poor and that the rich got richer.....and she divided the country at all levels....one of the first things she did was give the plod and the army pay rises so they would do her bidding......no matter what....I knew of two brothers during the Miners strike...one was a plod his younger brother a squadie....they both ended up (dressed) as plod on several picket lines kicking the holy shyte out of the miners......Thatcher had regular army squadies in plod uniforms all over the country FACT.QuartzGooner wrote:OneBard
You say Thatcher squashed the aspirations of the poor, but
I thought one of the main controversies about Thatcher was that she encouraged aspiration, to what some would see as the detriment of traditional working class solidarity and community?
Anyway, Police warning about clashed in London tommorow, a TUC march in Tottenham (sounds like a fun Saturday morning) plus demonstrations in Trafalgar Square and supposed threats by Millwall to have a go at anti-Thatcher demonstrators.
Media scare mongering or will it kick off?
She was a dishonest evil bitch and I really was disappointed the day the IRA missed her in the hotel in Brighton..... That may sound awful...and maybe it is...but I only witnessed the evil and bad stuff that came out of her and her cabinets policies and draconian rule. another friend of mine was a miner (24 yrs of age) a Good , decent Hard Working Family Man....during the strike he lost his home, his wife & children and ended up hanging himself two doors away from where I lived.....
But as others have said, those industries were declining as other countries rushed past us.
I do think more pits should have been kept open longer for sure, until they became unviable.
But a lot of blame must go onto Scargill.
He was offered a deal before the strike - compensation for job losses, plus a retraining program.
He rejected it.
His Stalinist ways sold his union members down the river.
Thatcher knew just how close Scargill was to the Kremlin, once he had decided to strike there was no way the Establishment were going to allow themselves to lose.
Even though Thatcher decided to shake up the Establishment too, she did not try to entirely replace it.
This was at a time of the Cold War, and Reagan was firmly behind Thatcher in taking on the strikers.
No surprise at all that troops were used in police uniforms, I have read that elsewhere too.
No theory about it mate...it's called the DSS.
