Numbers of jobs in the coal mining industry

The BBC and the Left frequently portray Thatcher as the destroyer of the coal industry.

Just how true is that?:

In 1900 there were 3,384 coal mines.

In 1975 there were only 241 coal mines…..3,143 coal mines having been closed by then.

In 1979 there were only 219.

In 1995 there were 65 coal mines.

So was Thatcher really responsible for the ‘ruination’ of a once great industry?

Only if history begins in 1979.

Number of working colleries in the UK
1900 – 3384
1920 – 2851
1930 – 2328
1944 – 1634
1947 – 958
1950 – 901
1955 – 850
1960 – 698
1965 – 483
1970 – 292
1975 – 241
1979 – 219
1980 – 213
1981 – 200
1982 – 191
1983 – 170
1984 – 169
1985 – 133
1986 – 110
1987 –   94
1988 –   86
1989 –   73
1990 –  65
1995 –  65
2000 – 28
2004 – 19

Labour’s Harold Wilson closed around 290 mines, Thatcher 160.

The National Union of Miner’s own website says:
Throughout the 1960s, with a Labour Government in office from 1964, the pit closure programme accelerated; it decimated the industry. During this period, nearly 300 more pits were closed, and the total workforce slumped from over 750,000 in the late 1950s down to 320,000 by 1968. In many parts of Britain, miners now became known as industrial gypsies as pit closures forced them to move from coalfield to coalfield in search of secure jobs.

They were victims of madhouse economics.

Arthur Scargill, the NUM leader, is now being portrayed as a hero…and yet the voting record shows him to be anything but…going against the wishes of his members and leading them to destruction….never mind his refusal to hold a national ballot on taking strike action…because he’d lost two previous ones:

Pretty clear…..69.2% against strike action in these area ballots.

Scargill and the NUM were being funded by the Soviet Union…..Scargill of course used, exploited, the miners as ‘shock troops’ in his political battle to try and impose a hard Left Union rule over the country regardless of the hardships they faced as he betrayed them.

The BBC here try to make light of that and quietly pooh pooh the connection to the Soviets….
Long-shot wait for miners’ cash
At one stage during the miners’ strike the government hoped it might catch red-handed someone from the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) trying to smuggle a suitcase full of banknotes into Britain.  Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong wrote: “If a representative of the NUM could be detected entering this country with a suitcase full of banknotes, it might be possible for him to be stopped and searched at customs.”
“Those concerned” (by which he presumably meant Special Branch and MI5) were “exercising vigilance” and on the look-out for anyone from the union going abroad “for the purpose of collecting consignments of notes”.
This was, he admitted, something of a long shot, “but is the best we can do”.

…but such funding was confidently reported by the leftwing Morning Star as the Telegraph points out in its more serious report:

However, it was the considerable donations to the NUM from sources in the USSR that most alarmed Number 10.
Minsters were alerted by MI5 to the Soviet financial lifeline for the miners in early November 1984.
Later that month a secret Government document noted a report in The Morning Star, the British socialist newspaper, that the union had received more than $1.1 million from “our Soviet comrades”.
Sir Geoffrey Howe, the foreign secretary, viewed this as “a matter of some concern” and demanded that the Soviet Embassy in London give a “clear account” of Moscow’s role in the transfer of aid from Soviet miners to the NUM.
A Foreign Office aide wrote to Charles Powell, the prime minister’s foreign affairs adviser: “Our belief, which we are checking with our embassy in Moscow, is that it would be most unlikely that the Soviet miners’ union could have been given access to convertible roubles without express Soviet official permission… The Soviet Government has, to some extent, been involved.”

And the Guardian, after a 5 year freedom of information battle, already had the damning  information in 2010:

Thatcher’s diplomatic offensive worked: no donation reached the British miners during their year-long strike. Gorbachev had embarked on his effort to reform the sclerotic Soviet state and concluded that the wiser option was to continue cultivating the British prime minister for the sake of relations between the two countries. Sacrificing the interests of the British miners was the price to be paid for not upsetting the so-called Iron Lady.

So why does the BBC try to treat it all as a bit of a joke?  Are they trying to distance the NUM and Scargill from his Marxist brothers and paint him as a victim of rightwing smears?

The conclusion must be, then, that Mr Scargill has organised a strike which has no basis in the democratic procedures of his union, which is probably opposed by a majority of its membership, which is employing mass picketing of a kind that is now illegal, and which involves violence and intimidation on a scale quite alien to British traditions, in an attempt to force a democratically-elected government to abandon some of its policies. Mr Scargill may – ludicrously – be condemned as a collaborationist by leading members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, such as Frank Richards and Mike Freeman, but their vague rhetoric about uniting the working class and ‘taking control’ does not carry the menace that Mr Scargill does.?

Here are some inconvenient points the BBC should be including in any report about the miner’s strike:

1.  There was no national ballot for a strike…it was illegal.

2.  The miners were offered very generous redundancy terms….better, far better, than anything else on offer in the public sector….as well as a pay rise of over 5% for those still employed.

3.  There was huge investment going on in the coal industry at the same time as inefficient pits were closing….claims that the  intention was to destroy the industry were patently untrue.

4.  As mentioned above, the close links to the Soviet Union which was attempting to fund and stir up industrial conflict in the UK.

5.  Whilst the BBC gives voice to the heroic battles and struggles of the miners it fails to point out the massive disruption that a successful strike would have imposed on the country…decimating industry, shutting power stations and turning out the lights in domestic homes.

The BBC up to their usual tricks….trying their hardest to malign Thatcher….and have dragged in ex-BBC journo, Nick Jones, to help out…..Jones being very pro the miners who went out on strike and anti-Tory….but of course the BBC doesn’t mention his ‘leanings.’

The BBC has published this farcical ‘report’ based on material released by the National Archives on the Miner’s Strike and Nick Jones’ interpretation of it and past events:

Cabinet papers reveal ‘secret coal pits closure plan’

The BBC reporter, Nick Higham,  gets Jones to give him what every good BBC journo wants…the ‘dirt’ on Thatcher:

“If this document had ever emerged during the strike it would have been devastating for the credibility of Margaret Thatcher” because Mrs Thatcher and Mr MacGregor always maintained there were plans for the closure of only 20 pits, said Mr Jones.

Needless to say the truth about what was ‘revealed’ by Jones and the BBC is somewhat different to their interpretation….but as I say that’s for another post.

What is odd is that the reporter didn’t ask Jones about the extraordinary ‘bombshell’ claim made about the BBC helping the government to crush the strike…Jones mentions them in his own blog...but goes on to say he doesn’t think any such thing happened…however it is interesting to note whose side he is on now…the same side he was on during the strike it seems……

Fresh claims have been made about government manipulation of the BBC’scoverage of the 1984-5 miners’ strike.  It is now alleged that specific instructions were issued from the “highest level of government” to ensure that the BBC’s camera crews focused on the miners’ violence and not on “the police smashing heads”.  The allegation has been made by the former Daily Mirror industrial editor Geoffrey Goodman, chairman of the editorial board of British Journalism Review, who insisted he has an “impeccable source”.

Frankly I don’t believe it: I don’t think there were any such instructions.  But I do accept that a mistake were made, that the editing of the pictures was probably at fault.   I have frequently been under great pressure in a edit suites, often on location, and as the pictures are pasted in – the film was actually cut in those days – it is very easy to get confused, to put pictures in the wrong order.
But the much more likely explanation about what happened at Orgreave – and this is perhaps what’s led to Geoffrey Goodman’s assertion – is that the BBC’s crews were predominantly positioned behind the police lines.  The BBC’s crews weren’t welcome among the pickets; they did get a hostile reaction in the mining villages; sometimes they had to hang back, behind the police, for their own protection.  So yes if one looked at it overall, the footage was perhaps biased in favour of the police and against the miners.

Shafted: The Media, the Miners’ Strike and the Aftermath (published by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom), the Yorkshire Evening Post reporter Peter Lazenby says the BBC has admitted that it changed the sequence of events.  In reviewing Shafted for the British Journalism Review, Geoffrey Goodman, the former industrial editor of the Daily Mirror, goes much further.  He says he was told by an “impeccable source” that there were “specific instructions from the highest level of government to the BBC to ensure that television camera crews filming the conflict between the miners and the police focused their shots on miners’ violence, but not on the police smashing heads”. So Goodman is quite categorical: he claims there was blatant state interference in the BBC’s coverage.  Personally I had not heard of that claim before being made by Geoffrey Goodman.   I wasn’t at Orgreave that day, nor was I there during the violence of the preceding weeks.  At that time I wasn’t even a television reporter.  My job was with BBC Radio.  I was a labour and industrial correspondent and it was my job to keep pace with the wider industrial repercussions of the strike and the ins and outs of the tortuous on-off negotiations between the NUM and the NCB.  So I can’t offer an eyewitness account of what happened at Orgreave during the struggles between the police and the pickets.  But I can give an insider’s view of events as they were perceived from within the BBC.
To begin with, what I think is more important is that I should reflect on those areas where I might personally have been at fault. The military analogy with which I opened my remarks is pertinent to what I want to say.  The miners’ strike was seen — at least through the eyes of the news media — as a fight to the finish between Arthur Scargill and Margaret Thatcher.  The forces of the state were mobilised against the shock troops of organised labour.  Reporters rarely indulge in public soul searching but it was the most momentous assignment during my fifty years as a journalist. I freely admit that it has been the story which has troubled me most of all when I look back, when I remember the way the miners’ struggle was reported and the subsequent minimal editorial scrutiny of the subsequent ruination by the Conservatives of a once great industry.    

Perhaps that explains the BBC’s pathological hatred of Thatcher……they are making up for their alleged treachery by denouncing and demonising Thatcher every chance they get.

It is interesting how Jones thinks the miners were wrongly portrayed as the aggressors….and yet he admits the media had to have police protection.

Here you go and as requested – a new PJ Harvey approved Open Thread for you to detail the bias!

In the space of a few minutes on the Today programme this morning, we had two egregious instances of BBC climate change hype. First, it was claimed that 2013 was the official warmest year ever in Australia. As it happens, I was in Australia last year for a few weeks, it wasn’t that warm but the BBC managed to add that such extreme heat “fitted into the global pattern”. Really? Then two minutes later, we were treated to all the flood warnings that have accompanied the approach of a low pressure system. Again, the term “extreme” weather was causally deployed. This is not accidental, it is the BBC trying its best to inculcate the notion that global warming is still with us. They are apostles for AGW despite the facts, truly remarkable. The only “extreme” I see is their bias.

None, really. Yesterday, on Today, John Pilger was allowed to come on and claim that “more than a million” people have been killed in Iraq since 2003. Now talking fiction is the order of the day from Comrade John but the BBC must have felt slightly embarrassed about this so this morning, around 6.50am, they wheeled on the latest UN special representative to Iraq. He was quizzed to provide a number but refused. He did point out that 2013 was one of the VERY worst years in Iraq and that 7000 had died. There was mention of 120,000 deaths in total from another source but incredibly the BBC seemed to suggesting that whether it was 120,000 or in Pilger-talk, 1,000,000 this was more of a detail.

HOWEVER, the interview didn’t end there! Oh no. The UN representative was a BULGARIAN and he was asked to comment on the anxieties in Britain concerning the likely deluge of his fellow citizens coming here to the UK. He said this was “right wing media” playing to the galleries and that Bulgarians would be here to make essential contribution to the economy.

Pilger let off the hook, Mass immigration from european peasantry sanitised. Five minutes on the BBC.

Jeremy Bowen retweeted this comment on the 26th of December:

#Hezbollah is pressing hard to be granted similar powers in security & foreign policy matters that Syria exercised in Lebanon for 15 yrs.

— Mohamad B Chatah (@mohamad_chatah) December 27, 2013

Mohammad Chatah was then assassinated the next day.

Bowen’s only comment was this:

Mohamad Chatah was always informative and frank when I spoke to him. Stood up for his beliefs but was the kind of man divided Lebanon needs

— Jeremy Bowen (@BowenBBC) December 27, 2013

Bowen doesn’t even mention his death…..nor then speculate about a link between Chatah essentially denouncing Hezbollah and his being assassinated?  Chatah is a Sunni, Hezbollah Shia…Iranian mercenaries in essence.

Not as if others in the BBC don’t report the possibility:

Saad Hariri indirectly accused Syria and Hezbollah of being behind the killing.

“Those who assassinated Mohamad Chatah are the ones who assassinated Rafik Hariri; they are the ones who want to assassinate Lebanon,” he said.

Guess the BBC’s Middle East Editor is too busy being cynical about Christmas:

Christmas is over. Time for the next commercial festival. Happy New Year. pic.twitter.com/ncIRNUy07f

— Jeremy Bowen (@BowenBBC) January 2, 2014

And gets told off by Fox News:

@BowenBBC Christmas still has three days to run. Its only commercial if you chose to ignore central purpose.

— Mark Fox (@MarkFoxNews) January 2, 2014

Ha ha…or is that Ho Ho Ho?….must have gone down well with the rather priggish Bowen!

I think it was obvious that the BBC giving Miliband a prime time slot on Desert Island Discs was intended to improve his desultory image with the Public….they now seem to have admitted this was the case…..

Desert Island

This was also the year that Ed Miliband appeared on Desert Island Discs and Deborah Mattinson believes that, in general, the Labour leader’s image among the public is improving, albeit from a relatively low base.

Funny old world…there’s hardly a day when Maggie Thatcher isn’t blamed for everything that is wrong in the world…and indeed the BBC are pushing this tale hard on R4 and the web:

Miners’ strike: ‘Police fitted me up’

Curious that the BBC completely ignore this:

Margaret Thatcher judged to be best post-war prime minister by politicians of all parties

• Iron Lady valued for decisiveness, over traits such as honesty
• Tony Blair came third in poll of 158 MPs by University of London
  
• Of 13 post-war PMs, excluding David  Cameron, Gordon Brown came last

Gordon Brown last….fancy that.

BBC rejects subscription fee calls

The BBC has rejected calls to introduce a voluntary subscription fee for its services.

Responding to a government inquiry into the future of the BBC, it argued the £145.50 licence fee was the “most effective way” to fund the corporation.

It warned a subscription model – where users only pay for the services they want – would exclude many who could not afford it.

It added the licence fee was funding a public service everyone could use.

in its written submission to the committee, the BBC said introducing alternative funding methods would have “significant drawbacks”.

“Subscription would turn the BBC into a commercial operator with an incentive to provide services that maximise revenues and/or profits,” it said.

“The evidence suggests a subscription model would be likely to reduce the payment base, increasing costs for consumers who remain and excluding many in society who could not afford to pay.”

The corporation also dismissed the suggestion of funding by advertising, saying the quality of its programming would suffer.

“If the objective of the BBC were to maximise advertising revenues, the BBC would shape its programming to maximise the benefits to advertisers rather than to audiences,” it said.

It added the current absence of advertising was a “key characteristic [audiences] value about the BBC”.

All very well…except the BBC is a commercial operator…one with a massive advantage over every other…it has a guaranteed income come what may.

The BBC competes hard against other broadcasters and other media operators such as in the magazine market….and providing programme content for sale….it has only just announced it will provide content online for a charge…so no qualms about charging people for what they have already paid for then.

BBC reportedly set to compete with Netflix and iTunes in charging viewers to watch favourite programmes online

It also has more than enough advertising….its own programmes….sometimes masquerading as ‘news’…..the BBC reports something on its news bulletin…and then announces ‘by the way you can see the BBC investigation of this on Panorama or Newsnight’.

David Preiser must be choking on his hash browns as he reads this from the BBC:

A big #YearOnTwitter for @BBCBreaking

Across our television, radio and digital services we’ve delivered to huge audiences at regional, national and international level. Social media is an increasingly important part of our news output. In terms of breaking news that means @BBCBreaking and its eight million followers.

So what’s the best way to capture these moments if you’re broadcasting to an audience of millions of followers on Twitter?

@BBCBreaking was neither the first to announce the news of Nelson Mandela’s death, nor had anything different to say than our competitors. So why did our tweet generate 78,000 retweets, several thousand more than any other news organisation?

No one can claim to know for sure, but we think the simple brevity of the tweet together with the photograph, could well have made it more shareable.

It’s safe to say that @BBCBreaking has had a very good year. Follower numbers have increased from 4.5 million to more than 8 million in the space of 12 months. It has consistently led Newswhip’s “top publisher” chart on Twitter (ranked by tweets and retweets), and has recently been showcased by Twitter as one of the news accounts of 2013.

There are many theories on what makes news travel farthest on social media. Accuracy and timeliness is clearly important but arguably, in a world where many notable figures have been killed off prematurely on social media, and where breaking news situations can be beset by spurious or false claims, nothing is more important than trust.

Judging by many of the BBC Tweets logged by David and others on this site ‘trust’ is possibly the last thing you might associate with many BBC journo’s Tweets.