I spent an enjoyable night at the theatre watching the musical, “Billy Elliott”, based on the film of the same name. It is the tale of a boy with ambitions to be a dancer, who lives in a northern English mining town during the time of the year-long miners’ strike of 1984-5 and is full of references to the political controversy of that time. How long ago it must feel to some of us who live in an era of far more peaceful industrial relations.
We have become so used to the relatively low level of strike action in Britain compared with the madness of the 1970s that some people in the audience watching folk cavorting on the stage must have wondered what the issues were about. My fiancee, who is Maltese, certainly did. She was actually appalled at the biased presentation of the then Thatcher-led government in the musical. I pointed out that this sort of bias is pretty standard boilerplate for the sort of leftist folk who tend to dominate the thespian world. It is easy for us, from our vantage point 20 years after the strike, to bask in the sentimental glow of affection for a lost world of pits, working men’s clubs, marching brass bands and the rest.
But at the risk of incurring the wrath of the commenters here, I did feel sympathy for a whole cluster of people who, faced with the iron laws of economics and a government determined to shake up the energy industry, faced losing their jobs and livelihoods. Even for a gung-ho proponent of laissez-faire like yours truly, the massive changes to our industrial landscape are not a story of unalloyed joy. It is a major issue for modern economies: how do we fully engage the energies of people who previously spent the years between 16 and 60 hewing coal out of the ground, riveting ships or working on car assembly lines? I cannot help but wonder that some of the problems of modern society, such as the loutish behaviour of young men, for instance, has something to do with the fact that in years past, young men who were not academic high-fliers nevertheless had a source of pride in doing something productive and in the case of mining, frequently very dangerous.
That all said, it is to my mind a great sign of progress that we no longer expect tens of thousands of men to work miles under the ground to keep our ovens, street lights and heating systems working.
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t the Thatcher government do some decidely un-libertarian things regarding the political rights, etc. of the miners?
Gary, I am not quite sure what the situation is (my memory is fuzzy); the government was accused at the time, I think, of spying on the affairs of then-NUM leader and firebrand Arthur Scargill. To be honest, given his dodgy behaviour, that is not very surprising. He was pretty much an all-out crook with delusions of toppling the then government.
One line of criticism of the Thatcher govt. is that it did not use new civil laws to deal with the miners but relied on heavy-duty policing instead. It is always clever to look at this with hindsight, of course.
If by ‘un-libertarian’ you mean preventing the unions from using violence to enforce their picket lines and overt intimidation against their opponants, then yeah, the Thatcher government were pretty wicked in that respect.
The closure of pits in the North of England certainly did cause terrible harm to whole communities which had known no other way of life for a hundred years or more.
The damage done was far more traumatic and sudden than it would have been if successive governments had not been propping up the industry against all economic logic for years. Finally, the cost became too much and the government of the day pulled the financial plug quite quickly. This story has essential repeated itself with British Leyland / Rover.
If market forces had been allowed full rein then the coal industry in the UK would have experienced a steady decline over decades, rather than a near total collapse within a few years. Communities would have had more time to adapt and, who knows, with earlier exposure to the world market the mines may have been able to make greater strides in efficiency and we could actually have a bigger coal industry than we have now.
Last night I thought of this very thing while watching the last DVD of season two of “The Wire.” The show dealt in part with the declining waterfront industry in Baltimore. It featured dock workers who clung to their way of life, however tedious and stagnant it might seem to others. To them, it was doing “real work,” and, as you said, a source of pride. The last scene was of a twenty-something dockworker staring out at an empty grain elevator destined to become the site of an upscale condominium complex.
Part of me kept thinking, “It’s over. Move away. Get a different type of job.” But I also remember working at a community college, teaching rhetoric to “displaced workers.” I.e., trying to somehow convince a 50-year-old former steel worker that learning the difference between “that” and “which” was going to help restore him to financial security. He, and many of his classmates, didn’t want to be office workers or salesmen. They wanted their jobs back. And who could blame them? The closing of the mills really took the life out of them.
I remember it well though I was out of the country working in Denmark for most of it. I thought myself very bright at the time for coming up with what I thought to be a good solution that no one I ever saw on TV ever came up with. My solution was to allow the miners to buy the pits and run them for themselves. Hell the government could even have gotten away with just giving ownership of the mines for nothing. Then the miners would have had to back their own claims that the pits were really worth keeping up when the government was saying it was closing them because they were uneconomic. In other words a simple market based solution.
Unfortunately it became an “us and them” game with each side becoming more and more deeply entrenched into their positions. The government was right not to continue to support a loss making enterprise but the miners were also right in protesting their job losses at what seemed to be the whim of the state after the fact of the state having nationalised pretty much the whole of the coal industry years before.
I was a great fan of Thatcher and still consider her to have been the only real leader of any substance the Conservatives have had for decades but, it must be said, she was very heavy handed and not particularly bright in handling conflicts that needn’t have arisen at all.
What might have happened if, before the closures were announced, she had called in union representatives to a meeting and revealed the facts about the poor economics of the industry, and then asked the union people for possible solutions? They may well have said that the government should support them by imposing heavy tarriffs on imported coal. The response might have been that this would impose artificial hardships on foreign producers and higher than necessary prices to domestic buyers of coal and therefore wasn’t sound and that another solution might be for the miners to take ownership as shareholders and take over the management of the mines.
I don’t know what would have happened but I am sure it was handled with about as much finesse as you might expect from two opposing football crowds.
Very little of the real-life activity of unions is consistent with libertarian society.
While they may pose as voluntary associations of working folk, they are in fact quasi-monopolies that have never been able to succeed without state support. They generally become havens of organized crime, and nearly always rely on violence and threats as routine, and essential tactics.
I have never encountered a union that wasn’t fundamentally corrupt.
Bernie writes:
“I don’t know what would have happened but I am sure it was handled with about as much finesse as you might expect from two opposing football crowds.”
I’m afraid you have a touchingly naive faith in the reasonableness of the miners’ union at the time.
This was a union that saw itself as the unbreakable fist of the workers’ movement, which had fought and won countless battles against numerous governments.
Margaret Thatcher’s decision to take on Scargill’s thugocracy only looks needlesly confrontational if you believe the miners’ leaders could have been reasoned with. All the evidence, I would suggest, shows they could not.
Had it not been for Margaret Thatcher having had the backbone to stand up to the unions, I hate to think of the mess this country would be in now.
Bliar and Brown, to name just two, are still dining out on some of her achievements.
Traditionally, the young thugs were given sharp sticks. Long Bows, or a Brown bess and sent somwhere to annoy the natives. America sort of screwed that up for you, didn’t we.
“How Green Was My Valley” is one of my favorite old sentimental movies. Of course, it’s romantic, leftist mush in some ways, but the description of what it was like to live in a company town, where everybody worked in the mine, is compelling. It is so different from my own experience, and the eclectic employment traditions in my family, that its strangeness is part of its attraction.
Not everyone desires or accepts the relentless changes that the creative destruction of capitalism requires. As James Taggert says in Atlas, if only things would stop for a while, so everyone could catch their breath.
Safety, security, and tradition are very meaningful parts of most people’s lives. When you’re in your 30’s or 40’s and there’s a family to support, finding out the job you have had, and maybe your father and grandfather had before you, is going away must bring on a fearful frustration right up there on the stress chart with serious illness.
Perhaps if the educational practices of our society didn’t turn so many people off, the idea of continuing education and skills improvement would have a better reception. I have a feeling, though, that this is one source of tension and animosity between the capitalists and the working stiffs that is not going to go away.
Given the British Empire reached its greatest extent in the 1920s, I think there were plenty of places to annoy the natives still…
BTW guys Samizdata is on Wikipedia I noticed. 🙂
It is still disgusting that the BBC and the rest of the British media’s sole concept of “The North” appears to revolve around the notion of the 1984 miners strike, whippets, flat caps, warm beer, unemployment and Ridley Scott’s Hovis advert.
Personally, every time I see one of these attempts at ‘gritty northern realism’ such as “Our Northern Friends” it just makes me recall the “Working Class Playwright” sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
Julian Taylor writes:
“It is still disgusting that the BBC and the rest of the British media’s sole concept of “The North” appears to revolve around the notion of the 1984 miners strike, whippets, flat caps, warm beer, unemployment and Ridley Scott’s Hovis advert.”
Well, indeed. But what’s perhaps even worse is the willingness of so many Northerners to live-up to the chip-on-both-shoulders stereotytpe.
GCooper, you are sadly correct. It is worth remembering, though, that the northern part of the UK has given us some of Britain’s greatest entrepreneurs, scientists, soldiers, adventurers. That part of our culture tends to be ignored in the “eeeh bah gum” sentimental portrayal of life north of the Watford Gap. A pity.
What might have happened if, before the closures were announced, she had called in union representatives to a meeting and revealed the facts about the poor economics of the industry, and then asked the union people for possible solutions? They may well have said that the government should support them by imposing heavy tarriffs on imported coal. The response might have been that this would impose artificial hardships on foreign producers and higher than necessary prices to domestic buyers of coal and therefore wasn’t sound and that another solution might be for the miners to take ownership as shareholders and take over the management of the mines.
It just couldn’t have happened. The miners’ strike was political. It was about who governed Britain, as it had been in 1974. What you have described might have been possible if the NUM leader had been someone willing to discuss the future of the industry and how to manage transition in the best interests of his members. But Arthur Scargill was to all intents and purposes a Communist revolutionary, who was trying to use the miners to bring down the elected government, much as they had in 1974, which ushered in the golden age of the Wilson/Callaghan era of industrial peace and prosperity.
I’m afraid the strike had to be won by the government of the day, and I’m sorry that the losers were the miners who allowed themselves to be led to destruction by a would-be South Yorkshire Castro.
Johnathan writes:
” It is worth remembering, though, that the northern part of the UK has given us some of Britain’s greatest entrepreneurs, scientists, soldiers, adventurers. That part of our culture tends to be ignored in the “eeeh bah gum” sentimental portrayal of life north of the Watford Gap. A pity.”
I couldn’t agree more. What I wrote wasn’t intended to be a slur on the North or its inhabitants. Only some of them.
Which was filmed in Dorset!
Like apostrophes? “Miner’s”? Just the one of them was it?
The working class (I don’t really like the expression but nothing else really fits) knew what danger and drudgery awaited them in hard labour.
Factory took his hearing factory gave him life wrote Bruce Springsteen.
So, not unironically, the working class educational movement in heavy industrial areas was enormous. Back then they knew education was the route out.
Not like to day. If you learn nothing at school you’ve got a life on the dole and all the housing benefit, Sky Sports and £100 trainers you want.
I ain’t going down’t pit says young Billy throughout Kes. I don’t blame him. My mum remembers a cave in when she was a young child in South Wales. All the wives and mothers gathering at the head waiting for news of their loved ones deep below.
It’s only the leftoid middle classes who carried a hard on for mills, mines and factories. Think of all those Commie bank notes with ruddy cheeked peasant girls cradling bushels of wheat, blackened miners, or gigantic cogs on them. While it gave the workers a living and satisfaction, they knew hardship and wanted better for their offspring.
It’s
GCooper, point taken. We are in full agreement.
One of my great grandfathers was a miner in the Notts coalfield before WW1. He worked double-shifts and did it purely for the money and as soon as he had enough, he left to start his own business (a small farm). He also ran a bookie’s business, a shop, boxed for money, etc. It goes without saying that he was a rock-ribbed Tory who kept a picture of the Queen.
You comment: “That all said, it is to my mind a great sign of progress that we no longer expect tens of thousands of men to work miles under the ground to keep our ovens, street lights and heating systems working. ”
Economics did not stop tens of thousands of men working miles under the ground, it merely shifted the location from the UK to China. We still “expect” these men to work hard and dangerously to provide our goods. There was no moral imperative involved.
” the losers were the miners who allowed themselves to be led to destruction by a would-be South Yorkshire Castro”
I don’t think that it matters who led the union. Mother Theresa could have replaced Scargill and the miners would have been just as doomed by economic forces. The end was coming and the miners could either :
1. Work for £1 an hour to make the pits profitable.
2. Wait to be laid off.
3. Fight as best they could before being laid off.
———————
actual transcript from the miner’s strike
———————
Thatch : “we can’t afford to keep subsidising the pits, so fuck off onto the dole, peasants”
Scargers: “bollocks, keep giving us money. It will cost oodles to pay our dole anyway”
Thatch : “we’re skint. fuck off”
Scargers : “Right. All out on strike, lads!”
Thatch : “what’s this down the back of the sofa? Why it’s £squillions to pay for police, army and scab labour to break the strike. Hoorah!”
As possibly the only person reading Samizdata that ever worked down a mine, I can tell you from first hand experience that it was dirty, smelly, cold, hot, dark and generally, pretty unpleasant.
I also remember voting in the election that returned Arther Scargill, I voted for his opponent. Once Scargill had been returned everyone knew it was a matter of when not if there would be a strike.
The pit I worked in seemed to produce more granite than anthracite, but who cared, the tax payer was prepared to pay the same rate for rock as coal.
Also I believe Tony Benn, when he was Labour minister for Energy closed more pits that any Tory government until Thatcher.
Oh! after the strike there were a few pits that were sold off to the employees.
RoyG, your point about economics is quite right but I think it is fair to point out that as our world gets richer and capital accumulation grows, it is therefore easier to have the things we need, like power, without having industries in which millions of people toil all day with their hands in circumstances of great danger. The proportion of people who work in manual labour will eventually fall in China and other developing countries too, so long as governments don’t bugger it up.
That’s progress.
It’s a really tricky problem. I was four at the time of the strikes, and seeing troops on the streets against people who, for the most part, just wanted to keep their jobs and not have to go on the dole, rather makes an impression…
On the one hand, in South Wales, crime and delinquency and drug use has skyrocketed, and I try not to go out at night on my own due to intimidating and bored gangs of youths everywhere. I’d expect it in a big city, but in a small village in the Rhondda, with greenery and woodland and mountains around? It’s just weird.
On the other hand, my granddad spent his life (and death) working down the mines with the expressed intention that his sons should have an education and never have to go down there themselves. Sadly, heavy industry is not a nice place to be, even if it does create jobs. But the pride in non-academic achievements has just gone, along with the polytechnics and vocational qualifications.
I think the poster who said that it was the suddenness of the shutdown who got it right – had it been gradual, with other things coming in to replace it, we wouldn’t be in quite such a mess now.
Let us not forget the shameful contribution of Harold Macmillan, waxing lyrical about how the miners were the sons of the chaps who fought Hitler etc. Naturally, many of the miners of the pre-war years didn’t, it being so important to keep the mines producing, and those who stayed in the mines often helped the war effort by going on strike. It’s hard to think of a group of old-fashioned proletarians less deserving of sentimental regard than the miners.
http://www.conservatives.com/games
To GCooper;
No I didn’t really think my little scene could have gotten a positive response from the likes of Scargil. But the case I made should have been presented to the media. Thatcher did handle it in a heavy handed and combative way even if it was just in response to the same from Scargil. I agree that Scargil’s intent was to bring down the government and he was a clever man who did succeed in winning a lot of sympathy. I don’t think the sympathy would have been as widespread if Thatcher had handled it better. And today she would have been more warmly remembered.
I think it was always Scargil’s intention to get an “us and them” class thing going on. The major mistake of Thatcher might have been to respond to it instead of diffusing it. If it happened again today I would certainly feel like cheering Thatcher but at the same time I would realise that it will be hard to reason with the miner sympathisers made bitter and more entrenched by the manner of their defeat.
Certainly the 1984 miner’s strike was an unpleasant affair, not least for the poor souls manipulated by both the National Coal Board as well as the repellent Arthur Scargill and the NUM. I do however draw a line at someone above suggesting troops were involved – most categorically troops were NOT involved in the miners strike at all, the only remote use was that some Met Police officers (often on quadruple overtime) were billeted in a number of Army barracks.
It has always been held that Margaret Thatcher wanted revenge on the miners for their destruction of the Heath government, through the brownout strikes and the reduction to the 3 day working week. In the same vein it is held that that atrocious scumbag Blair and his cronies pushed through the Hunting With Dogs bill as revenge for the 1984 strike.
“Economics did not stop tens of thousands of men working miles under the ground, it merely shifted the location from the UK to China. We still “expect” these men to work hard and dangerously to provide our goods. There was no moral imperative involved.”
Sure economics did, I don’t believe there is any export of coal from China to the UK, mostly the energy consumed inthe UK now comes from gas and oil if I recall correctly, a cheaper and cleaner fuel source.
Such coal as is imported (usually for steel or older baseload coal powerplants) probably comes from Brazil in the case of the UK, cheaply & efficiently mined from pits, and imported in huge (200-300Kdwt) bulk ships.
China’s own vertiginous energy demand growth (Due partially to incredibly inefficient use of energy) is what keeps their ugly little mines going, that and socialism, and I’d bet it’d be cheaper for them to import from Australia in any case.
Fred writes:
“Sure economics did, I don’t believe there is any export of coal from China to the UK, mostly the energy consumed inthe UK now comes from gas and oil if I recall correctly, a cheaper and cleaner fuel source.”
Wrong on two counts, I’m afraid. The UK imports a great deal of coal and anthracite – a fair bit of it coming from China.
You might find the following link interesting (Link)
I’m unfashionable in believing that this is not necessarily A Good Thing, though I can well understand why many people who had to work underground (and most particularly their womenfolk) might not agree.
Look, I come from a family from pit villages, and the Thatcher government devastated our community. She was an evil bitch who was merely seeking to eradicate any sense of socialism or community feeling that might cause opposition to her.
She was the worst person to ever step foot in Britain and I can’t beleive that all of you are saying that the miners should just deal with it. Why should they bloody deal with it?
It was their lives that were being ruined, not yours!
Look, I come from a family from pit villages, and the Thatcher government devastated our community. She was an evil bitch who was merely seeking to eradicate any sense of socialism or community feeling that might cause opposition to her.
She was the worst person to ever step foot in Britain and I can’t beleive that all of you are saying that the miners should just deal with it. Why should they bloody deal with it?
It was their lives that were being ruined, not yours!
Look, I come from a family from pit villages, and the Thatcher government devastated our community. She was an evil bitch who was merely seeking to eradicate any sense of socialism or community feeling that might cause opposition to her.
She was the worst person to ever step foot in Britain and I can’t beleive that all of you are saying that the miners should just deal with it. Why should they bloody deal with it?
It was their lives that were being ruined, not yours!
Peter, cool it. (Also there is no need to post three times). I made it clear in my original post that the eradication of the mining industry in this country in such a short space of time was a blow to the people on the receiving end. But are you seriously trying to suggest that the British taxpayer should be expected to go on pouring billions into uneconomic industries for decades? Are you arguing for some sort of moral or economic blackmail in which the public is forced to support an uneconomic industry forever?
No one has a divine right to a living, not even a coalminer. Mrs Thatcher understood that, as you patently do not.
The economic arguments cited as the reason “something had to be done” [about the mines] are inconsistent, and do not stand on their own. Agriculture in this country has been subsidized for years, and continues to be, showing that where there is political will, a heavily subsidized section of the economy is “acceptable”. Economics do not exist in a vacuum, and in an advanced society one would have expected human factors (loss of communities, subsequent rising crime (South Wales etc.)) to be taken into consideration much more than they apparently were. Again, it’s about political will. The following link, giving details of agricultural subsides makes interesting reading:
http://www.freedominfo.org/case/cap/
Really? Care to elaborate?
Do you think this is a good thing?
Personally, I don’t …yet I can see that there might just be a case for some economic protection when it comes to something as crucial as our ability to feed ourselves. The human body tends to need food before it needs coal.
Not solely. Economic imperatives manifest themselves sooner or later. And I’m not so sure about this idea of using state subsidy as a kind of social pacifier. The suggestions made by Robert and Bernie strike me as being more likely to work.