Question re the miners strike....

I don't know everything about the whys and wherefores of it all, I wasn't a miner, but I did live through it all.
Everybody seems to blame the tory government at the time for the way it handled the lead up to, and the actual handling of, the strike.
Also, we know that Arthur Scargill wasn't without fault in the way he made things happen.
But the thing that has always puzzled me is, if Labour had been in power at the time, and afterwards, would the pit closures still have happened?
We hear about overproduction of coal at the time, the power stations having enormous stocks.
Would Labour have had to follow similar paths to the Tories or because they were more in the back pockets of the unions would they have let the situation drift on and on to avoid confrontation? Maybe modernisation was required in some form, but to what extent.
All those pits and communities closed, but could it have been different under Labour?

 

Badger - Scargill didnt make any things happen , he was elected as leader but did not have a vote on any decision making process , just a myth from right wing crap like the mail
Closures/overproduction ? overproduction was a result of two years of excessive overtime being worked to create an overstock situation
Labour , probably would have spent more on the industry , at the time they had put the plan for coal in place which the tories destroyed

 

as mrx says,scargill did not make the strike happen,the announcement of the proposed closure of cortonwood along with about three other pits caused the walkout.
modernisation was already well under way and millions had been spent getting pits ready for the following decades as per plan for coal.
scargill said there was a proposed hitlist,the government vilified him for this and we now know that scargill was right.
the pit closure programme was used to smash the unions,not just the num but them all.it paved the way for the privatasion of everything that was once state owned.
the reason the tories can get away with what they want now is because there is no union power to fight them with,all a direct result of the miners strike.

 

British coal needed pruning, but it did not require cutting all the branches off.
The miners were in the middle of two people who could and would not compromise.
After saying that Thatcher had an agenda, which was to smash all Unions, and if she smashed the miners she was well on her way.
She then destroyed Wapping st, the Steel men, the shipbuilders and dockers.
She then Americanised us into small units on industrial estates, totally divided and no power in strength.
So after the working class had built up a voice via unity we are now back to square one.
People work all hours or not at all.
Employers do what they want, and you are told you are lucky to have a job

 

only thing thing I'd pull you up on there homer is that not ALL employers do what they want,its just a sweeping generalisation that mate,a bit like we get sweeping generalisations of religions,race,football supporters etc.
I'm a ex miner and now a employer and wouldn't dream of treating my staff in that way and theres many more like me.

 

Des, my reply was longer and I run out of time on my edit. I have asked admin to put all the reply on the site
I know that small employers can be good, I had my own business as well.

 

Labour closed more mines than the Conservatives so I expect we would have exactly the same number of mines open as we have now but they would have been closed at a slower rate.

 

The Tories never forgave the miners for the 1973 work to rule policy and eventual introduction of the three day week. Heath, in his wisdom, called the '74 general election during the three day week in the hopes of smashing the union. It failed. The Tories lost their majority and the enmity between trade unions and the Tories reached a peak that never receded. It wasn't long after that that the second general election saw labour gain a majority- a very slim one.