If he was a miner and he was one that went on strike to bring an elected Gov down, then that would have been 1984 and no striker got a State hand out they had to live on strike pay, Mind you the NUM with their vast millions did not give out strike pay after the first couple of months.


I think that Thatcher was a Saint and we could well do with leaders like her from both sides of the political forum.


No commie loveing scum like that filth Scargil

Was never a miner, just a hard working bloke.

A lot of the changes Thatcher put into place are still having repurcussions for people now, like the mass sale of council housing and nationalisation. I didn't blame this governments failings on Thatcher...I just said the things she started are still having repurcussions now.
As for communities still suffering, they are. I'm not discussing areas 200 miles north of Londodn, I'm talking about places far further than that. People who move to this country tend to go to cities...the pits weren't in the cities...the areas ARE still suffering, people don't move to the areas as there is no work/mass poverty...people stay in the area because they have family and ties there and they are perfectly entitled to do that.

me too.

So tell me what she did for the country that has had long lasting benefits...particularly for the poorer sections of the community north of Watford.

This little piece I found might just answer your question there A:

Quote:

The Labour Party came to power pledged to deal firmly with prices, but to abandon statutory wage controls. It took early action on rents and food prices by means of controls and subsidies. By July 1974 the pay board was abolished and the policies of compulsory wage restraint ended.

During the February 1974 general election, an agreement between the TUC and the Labour Party had been announced known as the SOCIAL CONTRACT. The hope was that, in return for the repeal of the 1972 Industrial Relations Act, the TUC would be able to persuade its members to cooperate in a programme of voluntary wage restraint. In this way it was hoped to avoid the strains caused by formal incomes policies which appeared to trade unions to leave them without any particular role to play. Under a voluntaty system they could still do their job of bargaining about wage rates.

By early 1975 it was feared the Social Contract was failing.
If the government continued to reject a stutory incomes policy, it was argued, the only alternative would be highly restrictive budgetary policies - monetarism etc

Before anyone starts blaming "Thatcher" and "Thatcherism" for so much of the hung over current misery, let us remind ourselves that it was actually Dennis Healey and Jim Callaghan who first went cap in hand groveling to the International Monetary Fund and introduced full on monetarist policies into the UK. The Tories subsequently built on what the other lot had started.
By the end of the seventies the constant set piece industrial showdowns, culminating in the "winter of discontent", between employers and organized sectors of labour in both private and state sectors, who still had entrenched collective bargaining power, were becoming increasingly stuck and deadlocked. For the majority who were not directly involved in these collective struggles in industry, the experience was increasingly one of stagnation, service interruption in the community, and the perception of a growing "chaos".

The Grunwick's dispute, which began as a small local dispute around a photo processing laboratory in north west London was then seized on by wider organized bosses' forces and the state and turned into a laboratory exercise for designing and testing the archetypal lock out entrapment model for breaking other strikes.

Come the end of the seventies, millions of working class people were sufficiently bored and pi**ed off with the stagnation and atmosphere of chaos to join large numbers of the middle classes in voting for Thatcher. She promised a radical way out of the deadlock, and appealed to workers' aspirations for individual rather than collective advancement.

Part of our mistake at that time was that we still did not fully understand what the real agenda of the ruling elite had become. Many of us still thought that they just wanted us to be more patriotic, more loyal to industry, more hardworking, and to work for lower pay without tea-break in order to boost britain's industrial efficiency, productivity, and competitiveness, so they could sell more manufactured goods to the world.

Unquote!

So I WAS right, it was the 70's when we had all that horrendous unemployment, chaos, everything, and SHE came and tried to put it right!

It would eb interesting to knwo your source for that H.

Here ya go - I wouldn't have been capable of making all that up that's for sure!!!

http://libcom.org/library/good-bad-old-days

Not forgetting too, that I worked during the 70's and I know how hard it was until Maggie came to power!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/d...00/2530763.stm
Forgot about the poll tax and all the riots....riots all over the place in the 80's...and the poll tax riots. I had friends injured after peaceful demos at anti poll tax demonstrations...Thatcher's police state...how could I have forgotten.
WE should all remember the poll tax and the riots.

OMG H that brought it all back. Thatcher and Reagan...OMG...the cold war.....
Honestly...a state funeral...I think not.

Did you read the whole of the article H??????
It went on to say...