Am not sure there was much you can do about it when someone picks a fight with you. I know we felt it many times, it sounds like a conspiracy theory but British management were terrible, they orchestrated strikes to cover up their incompetency, I think the National Union reps are in a different class today when it comes to quick thinking defending their position, unions would have been slaughtered in the past for what happened last year, the National reps today were superb, mind you they were given the opportunity to defend themselves as well, we call the media for everything today but they were worse in many ways back then, not because the government had got at them, more about them being clueless right wingers who believed every word management told them. Bob Grieves off Granada reports used to do my head in, Shaking his head in disgust every time he read out news of a strike, he never had a clue on what was happening during those years. management orchestrating a strike never crossed his mind. they always picked a time when sales had slumped, lay offs showed they couldn't sell product or unable to produce product. sack a few workers and they have a strike for a few weeks, place all the blame on the strikers, happened all the time during that period. I know this sounds far fetched to some, it did to some even back then but like the miners we knew when trouble was coming when the car parks on Liverpool air port became full of unsold cars. we even talked about it days/weeks before it happened.
Yea she chose her moment carefully.it was a long time in the planning so they knew exactly what they were doing.
She was riding high in the opinion polls off the back of the falklands battle.won a landslide in the 83 election of the back of it and waited till the spring of 84 ,made sure coal stocks were high as Everest so there’d be no blackouts and the summer months ahead so another perfect storm.
Scargill,for all his faults ,knew it was a a fight to the death and called out her lies of 20 pits to close saying it was going to be all of them but was dismissed as scaremongering by the media so already they were doing their job .
It was a strike that was planned and engineered for years ,not just by management but a British government wilfully destroying one of its major and vital industries.
As you said many firms and industries caused strikes to happen in those days but of course the media portrayed the un ions and strikers as idle ,lazy,shirkers just out for trouble .journalists without a clue not bothered about giving both sides to the story fuelled these lies .hence it’s become known as fact that the 70s were all about union dinosaurs with too much power holding the country to ransome ,never the inept bosses who in many cases were the cause of the troubles.
The union leaders today are great ,they know how to play the media ,how to conduct themselves and don’t fall into the traps that are set for them,mick lynch being a fine example to the point you hardly see him on tv now as the tv people know they can’t beat him ,he just makes fools of them while getting his point across.so they just don’t show him.the public are on his side something we didn’t have .
The country needs a whole new radical way of dealing with management and workers .we need the German or Japanese model of everyone around the table pulling and working together for the common cause to make the said industry/company work.the Germans and Japanese had to start from scratch after the war with their countries destroyed and very quickly by working together became hugely successful.and everyone was winner .
This is what I’m getting at when I say there should be a completely new ideology to replace the failed one of Thatcherisms trickle down policy ,it’s failed so this time it’s industry leaders and management who need to adapt and learn a newway for everyone’s benefit.