What have we learned?

It's worrying that after 25 years, Arthur Scargill still apparently really believes that he got it right - you remember the old cartoon of a troop of soldiers marching through town, and a woman declaring "Oh look, they're all out of step except our Jimmy!". Of course, Scargill's strategy was, and continues to be, to muddy the waters by confusing the two issues leading to the strike. On the one hand, you had the question of pit closures, which was clearly going to impinge greatly on miners and their families, and was thus a justifiable reason for protest. But this simply disguised the real reason for the dispute - the political ambition of the unions to dictate policy to the Government. It was this that made Government determined that they must not be allowed to win. The poor miners and their families were simply jam in the sandwich.