Quote Originally Posted by Gofer Blue View Post
My grandfather was a miner in Mountain Ash and he was caught up in the General Strike of May 1926 and the subsequent Miners' Strike that continued until the autumn of that year. My Dad was a 13 year old teenager at that time and the events of those days were deeply embedded in his memory. He was the youngest of four brothers, the two eldest worked down the mines but they and his parents were determined that he and his next oldest brother were not going to follow them. There was “real” poverty in the Valleys in 1926 compared to the 1984 strike with little or no financial help. He told me stories of how the local Methodist minister raised support from friends in London and in this way obtained shoes for kids who had none and clothes to replace the rags they were dressed in. Indeed it affected his political outlook for the rest of his life, no doubt enhanced by the death of his father in a mine accident just 7 years later in 1933.

He was a staunch Socialist and supported the nationalisation of the mines but he was always wary of Scargill from the start. He and I could see that the latter was simply looking for an opportunity to bring down the government, quite a different scenario to 1926 where miners were striking for fair wages and working conditions. Unfortunately Scargill's timing was disastrous for various reasons and Thatcher won the day; so not only did he not succeed in preventing mine closures but he also, unwittingly maybe, caused the demise of the trade union movement as a whole so that it became a shadow of what it was originally was/intended to be.
Mining started to decline from the first world war though to the second , then as rail moved to diesel further recline occurred interestingly Labour under Harold Wilson closed more mines than Thatcher and the unions then decided to take the fight to the government and Thatcher decided to win that fight and break the Scargill politically motivated strikes ( he was a nasty, Decline in demand for coal. Even as late as the 1960s, British railways were run coal power. But, steam power soon vanished in place of diesel and electric. Households used to burn coal for central heating. But, after the Clean Air Act of the 1950s, this rapidly declined as people switched to more modern forms of central heating.Political Issues. The coal industry had the most powerful unions in the country. Unions were highly organised, often by leaders with strong political (left wing) allegiances. Miners strikes, such as 1924, early 1970s and 1984 Miners strike had the capacity to bring the country to a standstill as Thatcher)

Coal was well in decline from WW2

Then rail was moving to diesel Wilson Labours new that as they closed many more mines than Thatcher .

Scargill was as bad as Thatcher both driven politically , the country was forever being held to ransom as a last grasp of union power, as tyey knew rail travel would stop and folks homes were deprived of heating , in a way the coal unions accelerated thier own demise .