Original post by DaveSmith99
No. There is a huge, huge difference between a managed decline and a mass cull. None of the strikes before the 1984 ones were about closures, they were all about pay and conditions. Lots of the pits closed were smaller and very uneconomical, others had dried up. Lots of the miners were offered favorable redundancy terms and the jobs market was better, others moved to the larger mines that were increasing production to accommodate them. This is not what thatcher did, thatcher stockpiled coal and made arrangements to limit the impact of a strike, and she introduced right to buy because people with mortgages to pay are less likely to strike. She then started to cull of mines far, far, far faster than ever before with no concern for the impact on the miners or their communities. We know through cabinet documents that thatcher was planning to close 4 times as many mines as she was publicly admitting to, and what she was publicly admitting to was 20,000 jobs gone, I find the claim that they were guaranteeing no compulsory redundancies a little far fetched.