Friday 13 March 2009

What If Scargill Had Won?

This is a blog posing a question rather than one giving an opinion. I want the reasoned, informed, sometimes bizarre comments from the nextleft community to give me a range of answers to my 'what if..? question.

Today is 25 years since the minor's strike and I heard a piece on Radio 4 with Scargill speaking to a socialist group. His passionate voice hasn't changed a bit * and I could imagine myself as a 10 year old in front of our black and white TV. At the time there was a real sense that this would be a turning point, and so it was. The fascinating bit is that Scargill said a Tory cabinet minister of the time has since told him that the minors were so close to winning out at one point.

If Scargill and the striking minors had won, presumably the Thatcher government would have fallen. Would Kinnock have taken their place and suddenly become the hero of the minors and the country? Would the country have been split? And would figures like Blair have ever seen the light of day?

Blog away...

* I must admit part of me yearns for that sort of passion to be heard in politics nowadays, even though it may be mis-placed.

2 comments:

Nigel Barlow said...

It was one of those defining moments that may well have changed the course of history.

I don't think that it would have been certain that the government would have fallen.Thatcher had the party fully behind her at this moment in time and it would be another year before Heseltine was to storm out of the cabinet over Westland.

As for Neil Kinnock,I think that he was destined never to be Prime Minister.I think that Thatcher may well have called an early election rather in the mode of her nemisis Heatth who asked whose side the people were on.

In this case the Tories would have won and the government would have come to an accomodation with the NUM perhaps compromising over pit closures.

Gregg said...

Howe would have replaced Thatcher as PM in 1984. Benn would have replaced Howe in 1991. Brown would have joined the SDP. Blair would have become a Scargillite. David Cameron would be working in advertising.

And we'd have had 25 years of some useless windbag saying that Thatcher could have won it if only she'd called a referendum.