Recently I have been reading up on Scargill and a chap called Red Robbo, which affected some of my friends at BL, so I have heard their side of the story too.
I have read it all with an open mind and am left bemused now, Red Robbo apparently caused 523 walkouts at LongBridge at a cost of ÂŁ200 million in lost production, now, even if every walkout was justified no business can take this kind of financial hit, remember this was the 1970's when a million quid was a lot of dosh, so it is hardly surprising that BL went the way they did.
The miners thing was different, and it destroyed whole communities, communities that were built around one industry, which parts of it were, at the time, unsustainable, but everybody went on strike, united, lead by a man who even recently lost a court case because he was still using the NUM as his personal bank, which with all these strikes made the whole industry unsustainable.
So the whole thing closed, and Margret Thacher was blamed.
Before I get a barrage of abuse, I just wonder if the whole thing had been handled much better by both sides whether things would have been different.
At the end of the day, if you are reading this and you run your own business, and employ people, would your business survive if your staff were always on strike, or wanted to work just 3 days or wanted a 330% pay rise?
Just trying to sit on the fence here.