London underground was brought to a halt today by Bob Crow and the RMT union. The dispute is over government plans to cut 950 jobs and remove ticket offices. They say only 2% of the public use the offices and closing them would save £40m. London Mayor Boris Johnson condemned the action and called for new laws to outlaw striking. While many have great indifference outside of London, the government and large portions of the media were also less than supportive of Crows action. The RMT however claims that Johnson refused to negotiate and would not meet to discuss the plans, despite him claiming during his election campaign that he was against closures of ticket offices. 

This year marks the 30^th anniversary of the miner’s strike. Thatcher’s government claimed at the time that it planned to close 20 pits. NUM leader Arthur Scargill, claimed the Tories and National Coal Board chairman Ian MacGregor had a secret hit list to close 75 mines.

American industrialist, Sir Ian Kinloch MacGregor, was hired by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to run the coal board after originally bringing him in to cut 177,00 Steel worker’s jobs to 71,000 in less than four years. It cost the Tory Government £1.8m to free MacGregor from his Lazard’s contract. In March ’83 MacGregor was installed as Chair of the NCB to the opposition of Scargill, who was less than happy with the Americans business methods and the reputation he had gained closing the steel works.

Thatcher’s plan had little to do with economical ideology and a lot to do with political ideology. She deliberately set about dismantling the coal industry because she wanted to crush the trade unions.

In March of 1984 Scargill brought his members out on a long and bitter strike. MacGregor wrote to every miner denying Scargill’s claims that 75 pits faced closure.

Not only did the actions of the Thatcher government and the strike action of Scargill affect the industry, it wreaked absolute havoc on communities up and down the country, many of which still have not recovered.  In the early ‘80s jobs were already scarce (not helped the steel work closures),  and many villages were full of school leavers who’s only intention was to work down the mines like their fathers, and their fathers’ fathers’ before them. Some villages relied almost exclusively on the local pit for any form of employment and without the pits most other local businesses would not have survived.  So when these communities were fighting for their survival, some families could not cope with hard ship any longer and crossed the picket lines and returned to work. They were called scabs by the pickets and feuds broke out which linger and fester to this day. Such were the emotions of the times that on Lady Thatcher’s death last year, many villages threw parties.  During the dispute there were scenes of serious brutality from Police drafted in to marshal the sites.

On the 18^th of June ’84, the NUM arranged a mass picket at a coking plant in South Yorkshire; the NUM had 5,000 members from across the UK travel to Orgreave in an attempt to temporarily force the closure of the pit.

 Many claim that the notorious Battle of Orgreave was an ambush. The pickets were guided to a field where they were surrounded by Police.  The 5000 miners were outnumbered by 8000 police officers deployed from 10 counties. They included over 50 mounted officers and 50 dogs. Those beaten and arrested that day included journalists, members of the public, teenagers and miners who had turned up to exercise their right to peaceful demonstration. In 2001 a biography by a former  M15 director general, admitted that the organisation had tapped the phones of union leaders, which possibly led to the carnage that day.

 The excessive violence and brutality metered out by the Police that day resulted in South Yorkshire Police being forced to pay out half a million pound in compensation in 1991.

The miners finally returned to work, exhausted by extreme poverty,   after almost a year without wages, on the 3^rd of March 1985, having lost the battle, although around 87% of miners in Yorkshire remained on strike to the end.  Pit closures followed to the point where today there are only a handful of mines in operation.

National archive records recently released prove that Scargill was in fact right in his claims that the Government intended to close 75 pits at a cost of 75000 jobs in a plot to dismantle the trade union movement.

following the release of the papers, Tory leader David Cameron has refused to apologise to the families of miners, insisting it is Scargill and the Labour party that should apologise.

His cold and callous attitude proves that Tory ideology has not changed and that the party is still in favour of privatising the nation to benefit their millionaire donors while wrecking the lives of the workers and the trade unions.