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One final point. You insist that Scargill’s aim was to betray country’s workers by putting them into the hands of Russian communists.

But consider this: of the two of them, which was fighting to preserve jobs for British workers? And which was seeking to undermine those jobs and the UK’s mining industry by buying subsidised coal from…communists!?

It seems pretty clear from that to me who was betraying the workers in this country.

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The fact that you resort to petty insults to both myself and Simon, with absolutely no facts to support your views, make it absolutely clear that you have no argument.

My post is supported by facts; I made it absolutely clear that I had/have little time for Scargill, but that the miners were fighting for their jobs – nothing else. On that basis, you dismiss me as a left-wing anti-establishment extremist. Such wild exaggeration! If by anti-establishment you mean that I object to 95% of the country’s wealth being owned by just 5% of the population, then I plead guilty – I see that sort of imbalance as being bad for our democracy.

If you regard my concern that much of our so-called free press is owned by one foreign national, with control of newspapers, TV news channels etc. who seeks to use these to influence the political direction of our democracy as ‘anti-establishment’, then count me in – that’s not the sort of ‘establishment’ I want to be part of.

Scargill was a fool, but Thatcher was just vindictive. In the end, she harmed the workers of this country far more than he did.

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“I read a newspaper headline many months ago that stated “Thatcher to get state funeral”. My celebration was short lived when I realised this was just a proposal not an announcement of her demise.”

If you had any credibility with me that utterly disappeared when I read this, it also puts anything else you have to say on a similar idiotic plane. If you have read some of Scargill’s rants and diatribes, you would have known where he was coming from, you plainly haven’t, merely following your side-kick Peter in his opposition to anything that allows his anti “establishment” envy, jealousy and bile to come to the fore.
The best bit of sheer stupidity is your comment, “but the union problem was mainly an inconvenience”. Were you alive then, you couldn’t possibly have been unless you were in a pram, everyone else with a degree of maturity and sense in those days realised what the problem was. Google the era of Callaghan and Heath then you will see what sort of society we were living in. And just for good measure look up Scargill’s “Socialist” political party he now runs. I repeat, had Scargill had his way during the miners strike, he would have taken over the Government by force. You are talking through your hat and speak from no knowledge or experience of the times at all.
And when you say that you had family policing the strikes etc etc, I give that the same credence as I now give “coal face” (excuse the pun) on another stream. And just in case you wish to accuse me of patronising etc again, I was also in a position to know what the underlying motives of the miners strike were albeit I do not intend to enlarge on that.
If you wish to poke sarcasm, insult or wit though, for 6 weeks, I was bedded down in a local hall in Yorkshire, responsible for deploying/ managing huge numbers of people during the strike, you figure out whether they were Police or miners. And on this stream also, I do not intend to enter into anymore stupidity. To me you are now just another blogger without the intelligence I formerly gave you credit for.

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Scargill and his ilk were fools of that there is little doubt. He led the miners on a wholly misguided and possibly illegal strike. The timing of the strike too was idiotic. But the union problem was mainly an inconvenience and aside from Mr Scargill’s inflated ego your suggestion that there was a risk of us becoming an Eastern European communist style state…utter tosh as well you know.

The unions needed to be controlled – that I readily accept – but Mrs Thatcher and her government were hell bent on breaking the unions and in so doing destroyed some communities. They also instigated many of the problems still troubling our society. She used the police as a tools of government and whole communities were treated as collateral damage to achieve her aims. I had family policing the strikes and have friends who were part of the mining communities. I have no personal axe to grind on this issue but think Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is almost entirely negative.

I read a newspaper headline many months ago that stated “Thatcher to get state funeral”. My celebration was short lived when I realised this was just a proposal not an announcement of her demise.

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I think the fact that you are unwilling to challenge specifically the points I made with facts (where is your challenge the 1980s unemployment figures for example?), speaks volumes about the lack of quality in your argument.

As for exaggeration, can I refer you to your own comments? E.g. ‘she took the bull by the horns and literally saved this country from violent worker unrest and ultimate revolution’ and ‘we would have ended up like the states of Eastern Europe.’ Sheer paranoid supposition – both of them, whereas my comments are all based upon what actually happened.

I wouldn’t suggest that Thatcher is in any way directly responsible for the losses at B’ham City Council, but those job losses are as a result of the financial crisis, and it was she who put in place the fundamental economic changes which led to us being so badly hit by this global recession.

If you do even a cursory search of the internet you will find many articles, from across the political spectrum that link Thatcher to the rise in the ‘underclass’. The extent to which she was responsible is a matter for debate, but the debate is clearly out there.

Oh, and incidentally, the term ‘Reaganomics’ is attributed to Paul Harvey, a U.S. radio commentator, who was a friend to both J. Edgar Hoover, and Senator Joe McCarthy. Hardly a communistic term then?

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But that being said, he was right when he said that Thatcher was out to destroy the industry – despite her denials.

Stuart’s memory of Thatcher seems to have missed quite a few key points about her time in power. Firstly, the unemployment figures: at the height of the so-called Winter of Discontent, in 1979 unemployment stood at 1.1 million. By January 1982, after approximately two and a half years of Tory rule, the figure had risen to 3,070,621 – 12.5% of the population, with up to 20% of the population being unemployed in certain areas such as Northern Ireland. The rate peaked at somewhere approaching 3.5 million in 1983-4. These are simple facts and are a matter of record – not really disputable. But you might also recall, Suart, that all of this unemployment was described as ‘A price worth paying’ by Thatcher’s Chancellor, Norman Lamont.

In terms of our manufacturing industry, with the advent of globalisation and ‘Reaganomics’, both of which Thatcher embraced wholeheartedly, governments in Europe were presented with a stark choice – to invest in high skills and compete for the better paid manufacturing work, or to aim for low skills, and for lower paid work. In other words, a choice between the race to the top, or the race to the bottom. Once made, such a choice was always going to be nigh-on impossible to reverse. Sadly, Thatcher chose the race to the bottom, choosing instead to base our future on the more risky financial services ‘industry’ (an oxymoron if there ever was one!). I think we all know where that ended…

I believe Thatcher despised the working class of this country. She was actually also fairly dismissive of the lower middle classes from whence she came – she actually saw herself more as Royalty – do you not remember her saying ‘We are a Grandmother’? – she was almost like Hyacinth Bucket in her small-minded snobbery.

Of course, she wasn’t above bribing the workers when it suited her. She sold them their council houses at a knock down price, but deprived future generations of the option of decent publicly-owned housing. She sold our public utilities, on the basis of her ‘share-owning’ democracy, so that some could make a quick hundred quid or two. Are they still owned by the people in this wonderful share-owning Utopia? Or are they now owned by foreign-based multinationals? And what was the money raised spent on? Was it education? Was it hospitals? No. It was spent on unemployment (the price worth paying remember) and on 43% tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the land.

As for Scargill’s ridiculous dalliance with Gadaffi and the Libyans, or the supposed excess power of the unions, I believe these were more than countered by the corrosive, democracy-undermining power of the Tory press, and Thatcher’s association with mass-murderer Pinochet, who was described by Thatcher as ‘A good friend to Britain’.

Her legacy is today’s burgeoning underclass, and the greed of city bankers that has harmed us all. Scargill may not have done much good for the miners, or ultimately for British workers, but in the end he did them far less harm than Thatcher.

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It would take more time than I am even bothered to spend to tell you that you are just “not with it”. You obviously haven’t heard of the issues concerning “bank regulation” in Thatchers day and what Blair and Brown did to it when they took over, they started the Financial Services Authority, perhaps you didn’t know it but Blair and Brown told them to only exercise “light” regulation over banks as it would ruin the economy if it was to hard on them. This crisis is a direct result of that. Then perhaps you were not aware of all the billions of “borrowed” money that this pair put into the public services so that when the crunch came, they had nothing in the kitty to bail us out with. And again, you may not also be aware that all the money ploughed by this pair into our public services now has to be clawed back to pay off our debts over the next 30 – 40 years.
And oh! yes, you clearly haven’t heard that Brown and Blair between them have privatised more than Thatcher ever privatised, sold our jobs abroad and even as recent as the 1pm News on BBC today, they now intend to privatise our national Air/Sea Rescue Service with private firms tendering for an organisation of strategic national importance.
Do you know what was in Maggies manifesto, it was quite a lengthy document, why not read it before coming out with this sort of thing.

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god bless her i say

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