Readers' letters

Mick Mulcahy shouts “victimisation” at Orgreave (WEP, November 5). Others see that time as somewhat different. We are talking about a time when unions seemed intent on ruling the country.

Leaders such as the infamous Red Robbo in the motor industry and, of course, Arthur Scargill in mining, led their members like sheep to slaughter.

The union memberships of that time seemed to be too greedy and too stupid to realise that their frequent strikes, restrictive practices, closed shop attitudes and demarcation disputes were bound to destroy the very industries that provided them with incomes that most people could only envy. How the sheep bleated when it all went wrong!

No government could stand by and watch while the country was held to ransom and, in Margaret Thatcher, the miners had taken on someone who was never going to run away from a fight.

I remind Mr Mulcahy that those brave miners who did understand the situation and decided to work were vilified and attacked by the strikers.

The strikers’ flying pickets were met by Thatcher’s flying riot squads. The miners lost and have been moaning ever since. In the long-term, the Orgreave confrontations were a major contribution to the demise of union power and this in turn avoided the possibility of our country being effectively ruled by a handful of power-hungry union leaders with their army of sheep.

David Neal

Address supplied

brexit

Mrs T made nation poorer

Geoffrey Boycott explains that he voted to leave the European Union to save his country from the rules of Germany and France. He should understand that following the sale of our state utilities by his hero Margaret Thatcher, much of the UK is already owned by German, French, Spanish and other European businesses which joyfully jumped in to take over our gas, electricity and transport services, making huge profits from the industries that Thatcher sold off at bargain prices. These Europeans will still have a stranglehold on the UK even after Brexit. We must be grateful to Nissan for saving thousands of jobs in this country by promising new investment, but at what cost? The Government has not revealed details of the deal which keeps the Japanese car makers in Sunderland, but when the facts are known, other foreign business will demand the same sympathetic consideration from Theresa May. Harold Macmillan advised that the ‘family silver’ should not be sold off.

Mrs Thatcher gave it away.

Tom Howley

via email

politics

No surprise about Trump

Looks like the people both here and in the USA are fed up with the left-wing ‘luvvies’ and celebrities if Brexit, and now the election of President-elect Trump, is anything to go by.

Here in the UK we had the ‘people’s party’, the Labour Party, in office for 13 years, who continued allowing the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer and, in the USA, the Democrats had eight years under Obama and again nothing changed.

The rich got richer and the poor got poorer.

Why anyone is surprised regarding Brexit and Trump is beyond me.

Believe it or not, the time always comes when people say “enough is enough”, whatever the ‘establishment’ pundits and so-called celebrities tell us.

Terry Palmer

via email