It's interesting that planning applications are appearing to build coal-fired power stations again, now that oil is ridiculously expensive. Closing all those mines may have been 'economically efficient' at the time, but it was short-termism and vinidictiveness on a grand scale, and our reliance now on evil Middle Eastern dicatorships and a Russian proto-dictator for a large part of our energy supplies is now illustrating that short-termism clearly. On a personal note, South Wales has still not remotely recovered from the closure of those mines 20 years ago, and many of the valleys have enormous levels of unemployment and gigantic problems with, particularly, heroine addiction. If Thatcher had showed the same free-market devotion to the removal of subsidies to the farmers as she did to the mines, I might have had sympathy with her position.

Having said that, Scargill's firebrand unionsm had no sympathy with the majority of the public at the time, post winter-of-disconent an' all that, and notions of PR and a 'media presence' were just getting into full swing - which he didn't have a clue about - and he played right into Thatcher's hands.