Unfortunately, the miners were led by the typical egotistical political union man and hypocritical gobshite who led them into chronic defeat. History has now revealed that it was a near run thing, had the miners had a better leader, they could well have brought the Tories down to their knees.

As I say - down to the NUM's rules - not solely down to Arthur Scargill. As I understand it, in the late 1970's, the NCB wanted to introduce an incentive scheme (the power loading agreement)- the union were against and considered it divisive. Mines in Nottingham would have benefitted from the scheme due to the geology of the area with thicker seams. When the scheme was turned down in a national ballot, the Nottingham miners took the issue to the high court and had the ballot result overturned. As a consequence, the NUM had to change its rules in respect to balloting - hence the regional ballots for the strike. As previously stated - love him or loathe him, Scargill was correct about the 'hit list' -  borne out by the wholesale decimation of the mining industry in the UK post 1985.

Last edited by chuck power (2014-03-05 13:25:01)

I was on the police mutual aid that went to Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. At times both sides were out of order, although I'm glad to say that my colleagues and I never misbehaved badly in all my visits (apart from with the local ladies).

We had a lot of fun with the miners in between disturbances, playing cricket and football with them. In the main they were decent working guys who were caught up in something beyond their control. We used to give them our packed lunches to take home to their families.

Looking back on it, I'm not very proud to have been involved in was being done to those communities.