Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments.
Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments.
The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair.
Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that:
“The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.”
The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome:
“Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.”
Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that.
43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry.
As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week:
“Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’
“Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’:
“…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’ (P.343)”
So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy.
But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage.
So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.
56 Responses to “Tory spin on coal masks fact that 80 per cent of coal jobs were lost under Thatcher”
Nick.
Absolutely disgusting website. You claim 43% is lost under wilson then 80% under thatcher – I’ll do the maths:
if 212,000 is lost under wilson and you say this is 43%
assume 0% is lost under callaghan (if you dont do this then even less would be lost under thatcher according to your figures anyway)
a further 80% of the remainder is lost then that means a total of 224,818 was lost under thatcher roughly. ROUGHLY THE SAME.
Secondly thatcher was in power longer and thirdly even this is a serious overestimate as it ignores that more would have been lost under callaghan in the middle.
Nick.
Absolutely disgusting website. You claim 43% is lost under wilson then 80% under thatcher – I’ll do the maths:
if 212,000 is lost under wilson and you say this is 43%
assume 0% is lost under callaghan (if you dont do this then even less would be lost under thatcher according to your figures anyway)
a further 80% of the remainder is lost then that means a total of 224,818 was lost under thatcher roughly. ROUGHLY THE SAME.
Secondly thatcher was in power longer and thirdly even this is a serious overestimate as it ignores that more would have been lost under callaghan in the middle.
jimi
How you can manipulate percentages to misrepresent the facts in this way amazes me, the simple fact is that under labour far more mining jobs were lost because so many pits were closed, when MT came to power so few mines had been left by labour therefore closing just a few would have given a high percentage of the mines still open. Sadly you seem to have used a similar logic to John Prescott who compared 40 years of pit closures under the tories to 19 years of pit closures under labour, but we are not fooled by you
Harry
But New Labour is essentially a continuation of Thatcher, and it is an insult to socialism to compare Blair to Wilson
Jim Connell's Ghost
its a shame your mis-representing yourself then, no? of course if you take both periods of time as separate (as defined in this article) then both era’s start with a 100% of mining jobs. The fact you are ignoring this, or don’t understand it, simply shows your political bias. Also I think if you look at; the deaths at the hands of the police percentage unemployment and percentage net migration from these towns, then you will see the difference between the regimes.
History may be written only by the victor, but this battle is a long way from finished. All our economic/societal problems can be traced back to Thatcher/Regan and since then is the only time since the industrial revolution when wages have not risen proportionally with profits. People cannot be fooled indefinately