Thereby putting those good men on the dole and their sons after them. I am sure all those Welsh miners would thank you for that thought.

Ummm, the unemployable were in jobs! That makes a lot of sense. A lot of bloody hardworking men thrown on the scrap heap so we could then import coal and steel from abroad. These same men would then be put on unemployment benefit so instead of their taxes going in to the coffers of the Government the said Government would be paying them unemployment pay, plus whole villages became ghost towns as the shops that provided them with goods could not then stay open themselves. We have now become a service industry and hardly make anything ourselves importing everything from China, and the Phillipenes etc. What else did she do she sold off our electricity, gas and water so that the only people who benefit from their profits are the share holders. When I think of it she did the same for the railways. Oh yes Maggie did a grand job breaking the Unions.

Well no-one has said she got everything right but she certainly sorted out the festering pustule that was Britain in the '70s. Another thing she got right was killing off Old Labour. The fact that this gave rise to Bliar's New Labour was an unfortunate consequence.

And when you really think about it, did she really even do that? IMO, the NUM did more to defeat themselves, with the idiotic leadership and tactics adopted by Scargill (I hate that man nearly as much as I hate Thatcher) and the willingness of the UDM to break the strike because they thought it would save their own jobs. Well, they found out in short order how much any assurances they might have been given on that score were worth.

As far as the rest of the unions are concerned, I seem to remember that only a couple of months ago the tanker drivers only had to hint that they MIGHT go on strike to spark a bout of panic buying that led to such ridiculous situations as people trying to fill jam jars in the boot of their car with petrol. I've read the Colonel Blimp types on this forum complaining only this summer about the rail unions holding the country to ransom by threatening to strike during the Olympics. Likewise about the public sector unions such as the Border Force staff striking. They don't sound exactly moribund to me, although numbers have certainly declined since the 1980s.

Basicallly it was a combination of Maggies determination and public opinion that finally did the trick.

Unfortunately public opinion was very much divided when Heath made his last stand in the 70s.

Even that was bit late in the day, because the rot had already set well in back in the 60s, when such as the car workers were repeatedly downing tools at the drop of a hat, not having enough sense to see that they were shooting themselves in the foot and playing a major part in handing over their industry on a plate to the Japanese.

In those times I wasn't working in any of the industrial heartlands or big cities, nor did I use rail transport or have to visit hospital, but I can't remember experiencing any of the other things like no loo rolls, sugar, coffee, tea, petrol etc. I just read out part of your post to my wife and asked if she could remember these things, just in case I'd lost my memory. Like me, she says she can't remember any of those things. Not saying it didn't happen where you were, but not where we were living.

So if you had a business frying eggs, and you employed 50 people to fry one egg a day but only had 10 eggs left with no more eggs being laid, would you carry on paying everyone on the grounds that you wanted to employ their sons to fry eggs that you will never have?

Memory does play tricks, but all I remember is the unending misery of years and years of railway and power strikes. Hours standing on freezing platforms not knowing when or if a train might turn up, or if it did, whether it would actually go to its destination or stop half way. Begging floor space from friends when the last train did not materialise.. Sleeping at the station a few times, freezing all the time. Until they closed the stations.
Buying a gas hob for the first house I bought (although it already had an electric stove) so that we would be able to cook something if the electricity were off, and could use the electricity if the gas were off. And everybody I know still does that to this very day - just in case.
We had to buy and install a standby generator to put on the office roof (not easy to afford with so many companies on the brink of collapse) so that we could keep the ancient switchboard running and some form of power to keep the lights and heating on with all of us sleeping on floors.

I think the intention was to bring the cities to their knees.

I remember during one of the strikes the office boy (18 years old and a real East Ender) not turning up till lunchtime on a Monday.
Given how close we were to going out of business (we were an import export company with blockaded goods rotting in the docks), he was about to be sacked when we found out he had taken his dad's car or van across on the ferry, loaded up with loo rolls or sugar, and sold them around his neighbourhood at a considerable profit. Later wound up running the trading division of one of the larger merchants.

Main thing I remember (we had just moved into our first house) was being constantly cold at night because the power was off, and going out regularly in the evening after work to the local country pub where we could at least sit in the warm by a log fire

Yes - it seems people think that the mining industry (and others) should have been some sort of charity. For balance I would say that more should have been done to provide alternative employment in the worst hit areas.

£millions was pumped in but misspent by union bosses and their friends, some was spent for the good of the community but far more was wasted or ended up in the usual Spanish practice - back pockets and brown envelopes.

even the miners dying of coal related diseases were shafted by their unions and the firm of solicitors they had to use, losing up to 40% of their payouts, some never lived long enough to receive it because unions and solicitors dragged things out.

for how long do you keep sending men down into the depths to scrabble for coal that isnt worth bringing to the surface, that costs more and more every inch they go underground, not just financially but in the cost to the people themselves. If there was so much "good coal" down there surely someone with modern technology would have had it out by now.

and how much did Scargill take from the Russian miners union to feather his own nest, money that was paid over to support the UK's miners.??

`

The same is happening in Spain, they are having to dig deeper and deeper to produce even more expensive poor coal. Some coal is double the price of coal on the open market, only the open cast mines are profitable. Huge subsidies have kept coal mining afloat, and the recently cut in subsidies had the miners marching to Madrid and running battles with the police. I predict it won't be too long before it goes the way of the UK coal industry, there comes a point where you can't keep pumping subsidies in what is a dying industry.
http://www.libremercado.com/2012-07-...lo-1276463068/

More done by whom though? If you have one bucket of cash to hand out money adding another name on the bucket doesn't increase the amount you can hand out.

At the end of the day the miners were much better out of it.
The ones I know from my own area are honest enough to admit it.

Some took a few years to get back into work again, but with the sort of redundancy payments they received they could afford to, that's if they hadn't stupidly blown it on a bar in Spain, which quite a few of them did.

I once visited an NUM annual conferance as a guest. They used to throw members contributions around like confetti.

As much booze as they could drink, as many women as they wanted and a special all-in treat for a party of visiting Russian Miners Union reps.

A far cry from the Siberian Salt mines.

my paternal family were miners, my father's 5 elder brothers told him he wasnt to work down the pit where they and father were, when he protested they told him he had to find something else to do, if he took one step on the site they would physically throw him out.

yes, there were horror stories, grandfather and his relatives were all down the mines as well, but generally all lived to well past their 60's and one or two into their 80's. I am not saying they had a medically fit lifestyle but they were around to play with children and grandchildren.

`