1984 Miner's Strike

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The 1984 Miner’s Strike The 1984 Miner’s Strike was major industrial action that affected all of UK industry, with significant impact on the coal industry. The strike, a failure for the miners and the National Union of Mineworkers, gave Margret Thatcher’s government the ability to consolidate its stance of fiscal conservatism. The strike is often seen as a struggle between the leftist unions, representing the workers, the common people, and the rightest, aloof Thatcher government. The defeat of the strike significantly weakened the increasingly powerful British Trade Union movement. The strikes origins can be seen to stem from tensions between the government and the unions, particular the NUM. The Ridley Plan, drawn up by rightist Conservative MP Nicolas Ridley, detailed suggestions how the government should go about defeating another miner’s strike on the scale of the 1972 Coal Miner’s Strike which seriously damaged the Conservative’s image, destroying their overall majority in parliament in the General Election of February 1974, in which the Labour party came out with a minority government, until the October election of the same year, which really did cement the Labour government by handing them a majority of three seats. It was out of this that the Ridley Plan was born, seeking to ‘cut off the money supply to the strikers and make the union finance them' and to having failsafe plans in place to avoid the three day week introduced on January 1st and ran until March 7th, which showed and emphasised the power of the worker. A strike nearly occurred in 1981, when the government had a similar plan as it had had in 1974 to close 23 pits, but the threat of a strike was then enough to force the government to back down. It was widely believed that a confrontation had been averted only for the short term, and the Yorkshire miners passed a resolution that a strike
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