How sweet is this?

The loyalty of flying pickets, Linc.
Indeed so, Tony.

I look on it as fine the mining industry has gone, but the coal reserves are still there, and as time goes by they become even more viable again.

Nothing against miners, but they did seem the think the UK owed them a living. It was probably one of the defining moments as it broke the unions power bases and gave this Country a chance.

Having been on duty at many of the Mines that were picketted, the Miners were 100% behind Scargill, If they only knew then, what they know now !!
Jim.
Lincoln .7

Yes and that was the first showdown with the miners when Heath ended up going to the country asking “Who governs Britain”? Despite his attempts to coalesce with the Liberals the answer to the question was Labour. Maggie made damn sure coal reserves were the highest for years before her confrontation. The closing down of much of the UK coal industry followed on the heels of several other countries in Europe and the last pit in France closed several years ago whilst here there are still three deep mines and several open cast mines.

I still remember the three day week and sitting in the dark with no heating due to a lack of coal when I was a kid… And it was all down to this turkey.

Possibly the country would have been much better if we had had the foresight to throw Thatcher and Scargill in a locked room and left them to it.

Scargill was right in his declarations of Thatcher’s intentions for coal mining, Thatcher was right in the need to modernise the coal industry, but the methods and tactics of both were deplorable, in reality coal mining was used as a punch ball for two conflicting ideologies rather than any practical purpose.

Absolutely Charlie…Him and Thatcher – both of them really screwed the mining industry !

This story has been running for months. And there was an article somewhere a while back on this self-centered idiot’s fall from notoriety.
Tragic?? He has been the architect of his own destiny from the start and deserves no sympathy from any of us least of all his ex-members.

Yup, sweet isn’t it.. Cannot believe he was getting them to pay 30k for his rent still, it’s not as if the NUM is a big union anymore, that’s a lot of subs.

What an utterly tragic figure Arthur Scargill has become; even more tragic that he seems to have been accused of ‘defrauding’ funds from the very Union that he was formerly the leader of. How ironic!