Also at the time that the leader of the NUM, the striking union, was a self-avowed Stalinist.[1]
It's hard to overstate the extreme militancy of trade union leadership in the UK during the late 1970s. While Thatcher gets the blame for the disintegration of the labor movement, just as big an issue was that the union leadership no longer represented the opinions of its rank-and-file members.
The 1984 miners strike largely failed, because most of the local unions decided not to join. Scargill never put the strike to a membership wide ballot, because he knew it probably wouldn't have passed. Union leadership became more focused on pushing communist ideology than it was on representing its members.
this is part of history and one of the many reasons unions have failed in the UK. and they're still failing having lower number of members every single year.
Probably because of the same sentiment towards rewriting history that's going around now. Rather then learn and move forward lots of people seem to prefer going back in time and judging history through today's lens.
It's hard to overstate the extreme militancy of trade union leadership in the UK during the late 1970s. While Thatcher gets the blame for the disintegration of the labor movement, just as big an issue was that the union leadership no longer represented the opinions of its rank-and-file members.
The 1984 miners strike largely failed, because most of the local unions decided not to join. Scargill never put the strike to a membership wide ballot, because he knew it probably wouldn't have passed. Union leadership became more focused on pushing communist ideology than it was on representing its members.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Scargill#Socialist_Labo...