Durham Giant wrote:I think that you will find that most of the early closures under Atlee Wilson and Heath were due to the fact that the pits were no longer capable of producing coal or were not safe. Everyone accepts that coal,seams get mined out and are effectively EMPTY of coal. What you will also find is that when those pits closed miners tended to move to other areas . So you had lots of Durham miners go to Northumberland or down to Notts.

The. Closures under Thatcher in the main were of pits That still had Coal . Often it was coal that could still be mined but not at a price that was as cheap as polish coal or even Australian So they were deemed uneconomic. I am still waiting for wotsupcas to provide evidence that it cosy £400 to produce £1 of coal as that is. It something I ever heard during the strike. Many economic arguements were put forward which clearly said that the making of miners be unemployed far outweighed the losses on any coal mined. It was a pure free market economic arguement to close them down allied to the attempts to destroy the Trade Unions and allow for a much more free market approach to running the economy.

wotsupcas wrote:It was hardly Thatchers mess as she left office in 1990. Majors mess maybe but tbf the economy was in pretty good shape in 1997 when the electorate were taken in by snake oil salesman Blair

PopTart wrote:It's probably already been covered but I put more of the blame on Scargill than I do on Thatcher.
Whether she was what you wanted or not, she was elected and was defending her policies.
Scargill was not elected by the country and even went against those that did vote for him.
His strategy was flawed from the beginning and just handed the win to Thatcher because of his personal ego in many cases.
The miners that suffered, suffered badly and much of it could have been avoided. (I realise that's easy to say with hindsight)

The Devil's Advocate wrote:Thank you for your potted history of the dispute, where did you get the information from, Thatcher's autobiography?

I could dissect this post & give an alternative version, but what would be the point, you're too intransigent & I'm too tired to care.