"Matt" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 08 Mar 2006 12:54:06 GMT, "dennis@home"
wrote:

Scargill destroyed the coal industry!

He turned it into a political weapon by trying to bring the government
down.
The only response possible was to diversify the power generation and hence
the death of the mines.
That is the job of government to protect the population from idiots.

You do talk some utter bull****.

The "response" was already decided before any dispute arose, that was
the *whole* point of the dispute.

That really is bull****.
Do you even remember the speech where Scargill called upon the TUC to bring
down the elected government as he was failing to do so?

When the first dispute took place there were major power problems and the
miners won (they may even have deserved it, it was hard work).
As a result the government did what anyone would have done and made a
stockpile of *coal* so that they couldn't cause the same disruption again.

Scargill responded with bullyboy tactics in the second strike (for yet more
pay) as he was getting nowhere due to the government plans (that should have
been there in the first dispute).
This is when miners went around picketing power stations and anywhere else
they could cause disruption.
It was also here that he changed the dispute from a pay dispute into a
political dispute to bring an end to the elected government.
He thought he would get more support from this but as history shows he was
mistaken.

It was after this second battle that the policy on power generation was
changed and more gas and oil plant was built.
The government couldn't trust the miners anymore while Scargill was there
and he wasn't going anywhere.
Its a shame he wasn't man enough to go for the good of the miners but thats
power hungry men for you.

I would have done the same as the government except I think I would have
built more AGRs rather than oil.
I suppose the timescales in building AGRs was a bit long while Scargill was
a threat so the quicker option of oil/gas looked attractive.
There you are, Scargill ruined our energy policy as well as destroying
mining.