The post you are reporting:
I will contribute to this thread but I will only post personal facts and I will not repeat myself.
Forget Scargill. Kent Miners took no orders him.
Nearly a year prior to the strike, Kent Miners and every other area, including Nottingham, held an Area Ballot, every area returned a near 100% vote to take industrial action should the coal board try to close any economic pit.
Many miners were transferred to Cortonwood and over 1 million was spent on refurbishing the washery on pit top and the men were told their jobs were safe.
This made it very easy for her to start the strike, she new that announcing the closure of Cortonwood would trigger Kent and many other areas to strike in support of Cortonwood Miners. Scargill did not want us to go on strike at that time and asked us to return to work, we refused to return to work and to wait for a National Ballot. We had already held our ballot and having our last National Ballot overturned by Lord Denning, we were not prepared to give them the satisfaction of overturning another. PaulB There was no bizarre reason for Nottingham not going on strike, a couple of years before the strike our national bonus agreements were thrown out and a new one was thrust upon us, a very simple one, the more coal you send out of your pit the more money you got, fixed sum per ton. Sounds fair eh. No, coal seams in Kent averaged 3ft, average in Nottingham 14 ft, ergo, Nottingham Miners would hit the Jackpot, 4 times more bonus than Kent and other areas. Kent rejected this new scheme and a National Ballot was held and the decision was to reject it, Lord Denning overturned the ballot and allowed the Coal board to implement it and Notts miners were quid's in, along with the promise, just before the strike, that if they didn't support the strike, their pits would be safe. It came as no surprise that they would not strike.
I'm sure I will get usual rhetoric about scargill, but if mistakes were made, we made them and yes we were outflanked, for years we went about our work, many oblivious to the implementation of the Ridley Report, and Thatcher's establishment of a special inner cabinet of senior ministers who met twice weekly to direct strategy, the battleground upon which the government should take on and defeat the unions, had to be carefully selected and prepared.
Even Mcgregor admitted she ordered the strike before he died, many people from police to politicians are beginning to face up to what really happened, with more to folow i'm sure of that.
Question for BarryW, you being the money man, why were nearly all police in the country given a £1000 bonus 6months before the strike?
