Wigan Album

I remember a bloke collecting tinned food to help the strikers near Wigan market hall and a march up Standishgate with Crooke & Kirkless? band, people stopped in their tracks to clap and cheer. We are still suffering the effects of the pit closures now.

Looking back in retrospect, Scargill was the worst NUM president in history. Joe Gormley, in his book "Battered Cherub" reckons that Scargill couldn't negotiate anything. Thatcher had him to rights from the beginning. As soon as the NUM got their last rise in 1983, she started to stockpile coal at all the collieries. We had 5000 tons on the deck at Parkside, Our union COSA wasn't on strike so we had to run the gauntlet at the bottom of the road every day. One man came back to work having spent all his savings of £4000, but Scargill finished up with a £2000,000 bungalow.Syd Vincent, another NUM official legged it to Tenerife for a holiday, right in the middle of the dispute. The strike was a cock up from beginning to end.

The Miners Strike was not a cock up,perhaps if COSA and NACODS had joined the NUM in the strike we would have defeated Thatcher the arch enemy of the working class and we would still have a coal industry