Canada Dock (Liverpool) Freight Line / Route of Coal Train

[Derbyroy]

Hi RES , yes i accept you were talking about the planning stages of FF power station,and that it was originally built for oil.
I also agree with your views on the pit closures..however over here in Yorkshire they were canny they kept the pumps going in around 40 pits ,,I know this because we are still delivering from the firm i work for ..pit props underground sleepers and rawl bars for screwing overhead protection in place, this stuff is going to pits closed 10 years or more ago..
There is still hope mate
best regards Derby

[Derbyroy]

Hi Paul,
Much as i understand your points, and to a certain extent agree with them,
The only reason the British mining Industry was destroyed was for the same reason the former british railways was destroyed ..namely the government of the day..forget unions..it was all politics..don,t ask me why ? I don,t know but at the time the government needed scapegoats to bail them out so Rail, Steel , Merchant Navy, Car industry ,The coal industry,ship building ...the list is endless....
we were once self sufficient in many things now we have to speak to a foreign call centre to ask about our gas bill...need i say more ?
yours derbyroy

[paul miller]

Absolutely spot on Derbyroy. My politics are not going to be the same as everyone else. I beleve that the major conflicts with governmant and unions have been manufactured to cause the maximum damage. I also believe that there are two sides to every argument, not something I have always believed by the way. I think it something to do with getting older and hopefully wiser.
Paul.

[Trev]

At the risk of betraying my old socialist principles, I've got to say that the miners strike of the '80's was the worst disaster to befall the Trade Union movement since the General Strike. Thatcher set the trap, and Arthur led his troops straight into it.

I don't think that the government deliberately set out to demolish the mining industry though, that was just an unhappy consequence. After the defeat of the NUM, capitalist priorities ran rampant, and the NUM in particular, and the Trade Union movement in general, was ill placed to fight it.

Ted Heath fought a general election in the 1970's on the basis of 'Who runs the country? (in essence, the trade unions or the government). We are only now, in national terms, beginning to pay for the consequences of that conflict.

[John H-T]

Arthur made one fundamental error, he didn't ballot the NUM membership. If he had all the areas would have come out on strike and the outcome would have been very different.

Thatcher's track record in destroying British Industry speaks for itself.

Why the "dash for gas" as a power station fuel, if not to get the miners. It has never made sense to me to use gas as a fuel for power staions.

[paul miller]

I dont trust ANY politician anymore. Perhaps I have been plain barmy to ever trust them. All I know is, we used to manufacture things in this country. Now we sell Swedish furniture and have multi screen cinemas where once we had craftsmen working.
That is the real disaster.
Paul.

[Derbyroy]

this sadly Paul, is the result of our entering the EEC instead of standing by our Commonwealth of countries. we in the near future and our grandchildren will forever regret those actions. The politicians of the day have lined their pockets at the expense of the rest of us ,Baroness Thatcher ??? in earlier times the woman would have been hanged as a traitor...
along with most politicicians since...
Best regards Derby

[Resolution]

Hey, I have to say, I'm so sorry all.....I'd completely forgotten about this post and I've only just found it again. Sorry!

You're all right of course from differing views and recolections of the time.

Coming from a NW coal mining village near "Fiddlers Ferry" I felt it greatly, even though I'd long since left the industry by then. Families were and are still to this day torn apart by family members who went back to work after almost 12 months of striking for their jobs. Yes! their Jobs! ..Not as many a Tory would have you believe..Money.

It was their JOBS they were fighting for and the belief in their industry to provide for the future. IMO They (and Arthur Scargill) have been proved to be right. WE are now at the mercy of the world coal price cartel which has risen along with the oil price...

Arthur said it was folly in 1984................IMO he was right.

One thing for you people of a "right" persuasion....We should have listened to Ted Heath, The Miners I believe could have done business with him for a far better future outcome for our Nation. He at least tried...alass he failed, though not for the want of him trying..