Carryfast:
It was then up to the union memberships across the country in every sector to honour their responsibilities in answering that call.
That’s ludicrous. Your suggesting that the members of every union within the TUC should down tools and strike to support their brothers in the NUM when those very NUM members don’t want to strike.
Stanley Knife:
Carryfast:
It was then up to the union memberships across the country in every sector to honour their responsibilities in answering that call.That’s ludicrous. Your suggesting that the members of every union within the TUC should down tools and strike to support their brothers in the NUM when those very NUM members don’t want to strike.
I was suggesting that all the miners should have honoured their responsibilities to their union to defend their jobs just like the the rest of the union movement should have honoured its in supporting the NUM with sympathy action.Without that solidarity unions are pointless as the UDM found out in getting thrown on the scrap heap just like all the rest.Not to mention an economy in free fall in terms of economic growth.Because of lack of solidarity among the working class to continue with the advance it had made from the 1930’s to the 1970’s.
I have to say, as mad as Carryfast is, his theory on solidarity is spot on.
Regardless of the specific trade, a union is representation of the working man, as working men we should stand together to stand up for our fellow workers, whether they be auto workers, dockers, miners, teachers etc. It matters not what they do.
Admittedly unions are a joke nowadays, mainly because of my generation and the anti union propaganda we were fed by the media growing up. Good old Maggie we cried, standing up to the left wing nutters, now the pits have closed, the steel works shut down and a car manufacturing industry that was the envy of the world has disappeared forever.
Maybe Maggie wasn’t so great after all. Maybe if we’d all stood up for ourselves instead of bending over and getting shafted so we could buy our council houses on the cheap we wouldn’t be working zero hour contracts and relying on tax credits to pay the mortgage.
Carryfast:
I was suggesting that all the miners should have honoured their responsibilities to their union to defend their jobs . . .
And shouldn’t the union honour their responsibilities to their members? The membership had already been asked three times to support a national strike and rejected it.
newmercman:
Regardless of the specific trade, a union is representation of the working man, as working men we should stand together to stand up for our fellow workers, whether they be auto workers, dockers, miners, teachers etc. It matters not what they do.
Quite right. And when the membership of any union say we want to do xyz that’s what should be respected. Not ignored and sidelined by their own leaders because they voted the wrong way.
newmercman:
I have to say, as mad as Carryfast is, his theory on solidarity is spot on.Regardless of the specific trade, a union is representation of the working man, as working men we should stand together to stand up for our fellow workers, whether they be auto workers, dockers, miners, teachers etc. It matters not what they do.
Admittedly unions are a joke nowadays, mainly because of my generation and the anti union propaganda we were fed by the media growing up. Good old Maggie we cried, standing up to the left wing nutters, now the pits have closed, the steel works shut down and a car manufacturing industry that was the envy of the world has disappeared forever.
Maybe Maggie wasn’t so great after all. Maybe if we’d all stood up for ourselves instead of bending over and getting shafted so we could buy our council houses on the cheap we wouldn’t be working zero hour contracts and relying on tax credits to pay the mortgage.
^ This.
Just to add the people that were often being branded as the militant enemy within were often people of my father’s generation.Who’d stood together as conscripts on the battle field and then brought that ethic home with them and applied it just the same in peacetime in their union activities.Those and often also the generations they’d raised,like myself,with that same sense of responsibility to each other.
On that note the topic is spot in making the point that unity and solidarity is the key foundation that needs to be brought back and put in place first before any thing else.Trying to break the erroneous propaganda,that opportunistically makes the link,between violent confrontational flying picketing v secondary action,being a good start.In that picketing only needs to be a minimal presence just to identify a closed site and which no one should/would want/need to cross in an environment of solidarity and secondary action.Picketing and especially flying picketing,in large numbers,really just being a desperate last resort if/when that solidarity breaks down and at which point the unions have already effectively been defeated by themselves. 
Stanley Knife:
Carryfast:
I was suggesting that all the miners should have honoured their responsibilities to their union to defend their jobs . . .And shouldn’t the union honour their responsibilities to their members? The membership had already been asked three times to support a national strike and rejected it.
Firstly it seems obvious that the conflict of interest,created by the divide and rule tactics of the government,in telling some miners that their jobs were safe,made an objective blanket ballot/decision impossible.Local ballot and decision being the only way in that democratically toxic environment.
At which point the choice for those who thought their jobs were safe and the TUC as a whole,was then either support and back those who wanted take action,regarding what was a clear threat not just to those employed in the mining industry but to the whole of British industry,or ignore them.Those self interest groups chose the latter,rather than honour their responsibilities to backing those in a just dispute and the rest is history.
While if there are any questions in all that it’s obviously the government that had a case to answer.In that all the evidence suggests that the government deliberately lied about the long term job security of one group of miners to divide the union and influence a potential ballot decision for action and the NUM knew it.At which point it was up to the Union movement to see that and as I said honour their responsibilities to their fellow workers not the government.
CF ole fella, I take it you are agreeing with his first sentence as well …■■? 
raymundo:
CF ole fella, I take it you are agreeing with his first sentence as well …■■?
newmercman:
I have to say, as mad as Carryfast is, his theory on solidarity is spot on.Regardless of the specific trade, a union is representation of the working man, as working men we should stand together to stand up for our fellow workers, whether they be auto workers, dockers, miners, teachers etc. It matters not what they do.
Admittedly unions are a joke nowadays, mainly because of my generation and the anti union propaganda we were fed by the media growing up. Good old Maggie we cried, standing up to the left wing nutters, now the pits have closed, the steel works shut down and a car manufacturing industry that was the envy of the world has disappeared forever.
Maybe Maggie wasn’t so great after all. Maybe if we’d all stood up for ourselves instead of bending over and getting shafted so we could buy our council houses on the cheap we wouldn’t be working zero hour contracts and relying on tax credits to pay the mortgage.
Indeed, one only had to be on the road in those days to see it happening with thine own eyes.
You’d drive past a working factory, then a few months later you go past and it’s shut, couple months later flattened, following year either a hypermarket leisure centre shopping centre flats or an office block, and this was going on everywhere.
De-industrialisation started to gain momentum under traitor Heath of the common market scam fame, but accelerated to full speed under Thatcher and it was completed by Lucifer Blair who then opened to the doors to unlimited immigration just to ensure the country could never be what it once was.
I wish some of our younger drivers/voters could have driven past Sheffield on the M1 over the elevated section in years gone by, factories steel plants as far as you could see, real manufacturing jobs.
Service industry economy my arse.
We’re bankrupt and it’s only being kept afloat by ever higher taxation and borrowing in our childrens names, we haven’t a hope in hell of servicing the national debt.
Juddian:
Indeed, one only had to be on the road in those days to see it happening with thine own eyes.You’d drive past a working factory, then a few months later you go past and it’s shut, couple months later flattened, following year either a hypermarket leisure centre shopping centre flats or an office block, and this was going on everywhere.
De-industrialisation started to gain momentum under traitor Heath of the common market scam fame, but accelerated to full speed under Thatcher and it was completed by Lucifer Blair who then opened to the doors to unlimited immigration just to ensure the country could never be what it once was.I wish some of our younger drivers/voters could have driven past Sheffield on the M1 over the elevated section in years gone by, factories steel plants as far as you could see, real manufacturing jobs.
Service industry economy my arse.
We’re bankrupt and it’s only being kept afloat by ever higher taxation and borrowing in our childrens names, we haven’t a hope in hell of servicing the national debt.
Spot on and Heath also sold our fishing fleet down the pan !!
[attachment=1]post-513-1179821044.jpg[/attachment]
Meadowhall is a huge improvement.
If it was still all steel plants, where would all the flip flops be able to buy their erm…flip flops?
Thanks for posting that Knight2, what a difference 
Wouldn’t those pics make a brilliant first post on a suitable thread about what we’ve lost
eagerbeaver:
Meadowhall is a huge improvement.If it was still all steel plants, where would all the flip flops be able to buy their erm…flip flops?
We buy them on the cheap mate from the seafront corner shops on the CDS… 
AndrewG:
eagerbeaver:
Meadowhall is a huge improvement.If it was still all steel plants, where would all the flip flops be able to buy their erm…flip flops?
We buy them on the cheap mate from the seafront corner shops on the CDS…
Thought the slave trade had been abolished mate 
eagerbeaver:
AndrewG:
eagerbeaver:
Meadowhall is a huge improvement.If it was still all steel plants, where would all the flip flops be able to buy their erm…flip flops?
We buy them on the cheap mate from the seafront corner shops on the CDS…
Thought the slave trade had been abolished mate
/
Re Meadow hall, im pretty sure ive been there around 1988/89, was it always this size or has it expanded over the years, that place looks monstrously huge…
Carryfast:
Those self interest groups chose the latter,rather than honour their responsibilities to backing those in a just dispute and the rest is history.
And this dispute was so just that the leaders of the closed shop national union couldn’t even carry their own members into a national strike via a national ballot.
The structure of the NUM was such that it was an amalgam of regional bodies. Therefore at every vote the votes could be added together to provide a national result but each region would conduct its own business. Yorkshire, Kent and Scotland would regularly vote one way and the rest the other. Even in a ballot held in April 84, South Wales, that supposed bastion of militant socialism that our forefathers would be proud of, voted not to strike. Only 10 of the 28 pits voted to come out, but within a week flying pickets had stopped production in them all. This didn’t produce an outpouring of faith in the cause the national leaders espoused but a level of resentment that their region’s vote hadn’t been respected. The whole cause was doomed to disaster before it even began.
Juddian:
Thanks for posting that Knight2, what a differenceWouldn’t those pics make a brilliant first post on a suitable thread about what we’ve lost
No problem. I think Sheffield is a classic example of how things have changed over the years and yes they would.
AndrewG:
eagerbeaver:
AndrewG:
eagerbeaver:
Meadowhall is a huge improvement.If it was still all steel plants, where would all the flip flops be able to buy their erm…flip flops?
We buy them on the cheap mate from the seafront corner shops on the CDS…
Thought the slave trade had been abolished mate
Re Meadow hall, im pretty sure ive been there around 1988/89, was it always this size or has it expanded over the years, that place looks monstrously huge…
It’s always been about that size, though I’ve got to admit it I had to look twice, it does look big.
Juddian:
newmercman:
Maybe Maggie wasn’t so great after all. Maybe if we’d all stood up for ourselves instead of bending over and getting shafted so we could buy our council houses on the cheap we wouldn’t be working zero hour contracts and relying on tax credits to pay the mortgage.Indeed, one only had to be on the road in those days to see it happening with thine own eyes.
I grew up on a council estate in the middle of all this. There were over 20 pits within a 20 minutes drive, not even including Selby coalfield. Kellingley went last year leaving just the Prince of Wales at Pontefract, which is still labeled officially as ‘mothballed’. The houses and businesses built on the pit top may make it a tad difficult to bring back to life.
As soon as the strike was over the pit closure program was enforced, the miners took their redundancy and, in the main, either bought their council house or ■■■■■■ every last penny of it up against the wall. They are either revered as heroes for fighting the good fight, or despised for turning this area into the slum it is.
