Thatcher has died

I've often wondered what is so difficlt about driving a tube train? Can there be much to do just driving on rails? Do the bus drivers get paid more? Danger money perhaps?

I also understand that a lot more people now use the trains than when they were in public ownership.

A union...as I keep saying...is the coming together of the workers. As the workers are citizens of this country they had the right to make themselves heard. How do you draw attention to what is going wrong? You take action. Ordinary people didn't have the money to run expensive media campaigns even if they could get the media to help them so they go on to the streets. They demonstrate and they withdraw their labour.

My ex was a hospital porter in 1979. He went on strike not only to protest about job cuts but also to bring to public attention what was happening to the nhs. Job cuts meant reduced care and longer waiting lists.

Picket lines were infiltrated by special branch. Picket were filmed and records kept in the same way as they did with terrorists. Again workers classed as antipatriotic revolutionaries/potential terrorists when they were simply trying to make themselves heard.

As for the three day week in the early seventies that was about the miners trying to get a decent wage and conditions. Everyone was taken by surprise by how quickly the power stations ran out of coal and also realised that if they worked together the workers had a huge amount of power. The demonised unions simply organised the workers. The workers had the power. Maggie saw this as a threat and determined to break the unions and hence the power of the workers. She made sure that huge stockpiles of coal were held at the power stations before there was an announcement of massive pit closures. The miners went on strike to try to protect their jobs but they were always going to lose. Maggie had brought in anti union laws and Scargill was a fool who fell into her trap by allowing the strike to take place before the legalities had been completed. This meant that other unions couldn't officially support them so the miners were to all intents and purposes fighting alone. Having destroyed the miners Maggie went on to systematically destroy every major industry in which the workers might be able to control.

I had the unsettling experience of taking a job that had been 'blacked' by the unions. The previous postholder (who had left the post several months earlier) had been in dispute with management and it was in answer to this, that the position had been 'blacked'.

I didn't know anything about this and could not understand why people refused to answer even simple questions, like "where's the photocopying paper kept" and excluded me (a totally innocent party) from the chats at coffee breaks etc in order to 'get back' at management.

It was a horrible experience.

The Falklands war had very little to do with national pride or protecting British citizens. Do you really thing Maggie or anyone else in government cared about a few thousand sheep farmers at the other side of the world? The Falklands War was about and the arguments are still about oil. Oil was discovered in the South Atlantic and even though we didn't have the technology to extract it at the time there was no doubt that such technology would be developed. Therefore it became necessary to hold on to the Falkland Islands in order to lay claim to the oilfields.

If there had been no oil the Falkland islanders would now be citizens of Argentina. But then the Argentinians wouldn't have been interested either so maybe they'd still be British.

Where did anyone get the idea that some Gransnetters are too thick to understand that businesses need to make a profit in a capitalist society? Insulting or what? (Strictly speaking they do in other kinds of society but in a slightly different way.)

I can't say that I recall anything here that I would describe as vitriolic. There's quite a bit of anger and there are certainly posts deploring Margaret Thatcher, her policies and political philosophy. Perhaps I have missed some more forceful posts but mostly I thought the antis were fairly temperate in the language.

Not your fault - management failed to support you there noodles. I also had the unfortunate experience of having some work imposed on me that had led to the breakdown and long term absence of a respected colleague. If it hadn't been for the union, I would have been next. The work was divided into three full-time jobs.

For the record, the Falklands was officially a skirmish; it was never a war.

Unions were not the only organisations that 'blacked ' people. Many people who had been sacked by one company found they could not get a job with any other company.
Most of the improvements in working conditions were achieved through workers acting together. Does anybody really think that employers would have done it out of altruism? And anybody who did not join a union should, perhaps, have refused any gains achieved for them by that union.

No, I got a lot of support from management. Had it not been for their making sure I was alright and continuing the dialogue with the unions, then I would have left.

Eventually through a continuing process of meetings with the union, management was able negotiate a satisfactory outcome and the post was was 'unblacked'.

I was left very disillusioned though. The union didn't give a stuff about me, despite knowing I had 3 children to support and desperately needed the job.

Why would management put you in a job that was still in dispute noodles? Did you takee it knowing that there was this problem and how the workers were responding to it whilst waiting for resolution? Seems unfair to have put you in a position like that - both unions and management had a resposibility not to inflict that on you.

Management didn't know and were shocked and angry that this had happened.

It was unfair - the other employees were afraid to cross their union rep (remember how powerful unions used to be) and talk to me. (This was in the early 1980s.)

It was a nasty situation and the union was quite happy to make my working life as miserable as possible so long as they could think they had won.

I seldom mention this as talking about it seems to bring about an evangelical zeal in pro-unionists. Everyone other than the union is blamed for this sort of situation.

In later years when I was in management, I always encouraged staff to join a union, and met often with organisers and shop stewards to deal with any situation before it escalated, but this experience made me very, very careful in my dealings with any union member.

movedalot It may well be that the country has borne the expense of the funerals of previous prime ministers. I would reiterate, however, my previous query. Other than Sir Winston Churchill, do you recall any of the funerals of Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson, Heath, Callaghan ....? I would suggest that none of these funerals was on the lavish scale as that proposed for Mrs T.

movedalot re driving a tube train. I really don't know how skilled it is. But I'm sure you know that everybody thinks everybody's else's job is a piece of cake.

The value of the job is based around how it much it cannot be done without not the skill involved. There is zero skill needed to drive a tube train. Well maybe being able to see would be helpful (but hardly a skill).

vampire Agree with you - unions consist of ordinary working people, and before they existed workers had virtually no rights and were ruthlessly exploited.

Does that apply to all jobs?

gillbybob On what do you base your supposition that there are zero skills required for driving a train?

noodles management should have known, but I agree with you that you shouldn't have been subjected to such treatment. I was a manager and always encouraged union membership. There are always people ready to exploit their positions, whether management or workers, but on the whole I believe unions have done more or workers than management ever did.

The right to withdraw labour is essential for most workers, and the collective influence of union workers banding together to deal with unfairness is too important to be undermined by myths and falsehoods about their motives. The miners who were on strike had to live off handouts and they and their families were destitute. To drive through those mining villages and see boarded up houses, shops and other buildings was so sad. All they wanted was a livelihood like anyone else.

I think I said a tube train. Eloethan and given that my late husband worked on the Tyne and Wear Metro (much similar) I stand by the zero skills involved.

gillybob Are you saying your late husband was too stupid to do a skilled and responsible job? It's hardly a scientific assessment is it?

No Eloethan I am not saying that at all. I am saying he left school with little or no qualifications, started a job on the railway (as his father and grandfather before him) then when the Metro took over the line he transferred (whilst keeping some of his railway perks although a fat lot of good it did him as died very young). His words to me were and I quote "an idiot could do this job, it is so boring and repetitive you hardly need to think".

Perhaps they deserve good pay just because it is so boring?

What is really exercising me at the moment is the fact that some of my taxes are being used to pay for this wretched woman's funeral. Why is such a fuss being made? - OK she was the first woman British PM, but really that is all, so it hardly constitutes a semi state bash. Whatever else she achieved or not simply means that she was doing her job.
Clearly, austerity and state spending cuts do not touch the wealthy. Those that have shall recieve even more

receive!!!

That maybe the case Greatnan however a more cynical person (like me?) would think it is because of the power they have to bring down the NE workforce should they when they strike and considering they have Mr Bob Crow as their union leader I think the power speaks for itself.