THE Forest of Dean being a former coal mining area, I thought it may be time to remind readers that this month is the 25th anniversary of the Miners' Strike, the conclusion of which effectively brought about the end of the coal mining industry in Great Britain.

The point of my letter is that I would like people to think a little and to (maybe with the great benefit of hindsight) reflect on exactly what we as a nation allowed to happen in this, our once great country.

While I did not then (nor do now) agree with the methods used by Arthur Scargill (no ballot of the miners; no overtime ban beforehand leading up to the strike, calling the men out when coal stocks were at the highest ever recorded levels etc), his basic premonition of what the Tories and Thatcher had in store for the miners and coal mining in general was absolutely correct and can never be argued with by anyone unless they are deliberately wishing to cause offence.

The fact that people who criticised the strike almost always miss is that it was not only the miners who were going to lose.

In a village that the men were earning a wage, the local shops would continue to trade and thrive, new carpets and cookers and clothes would be bought, new cars and TVs and stereo systems ordered, holidays would be booked, house extensions built – all of these things were bought by families that had pit wages coming into the home.

However, once these wages were removed then the same local economies and businesses could not hope to survive for long. The real cost of the local pit closing was always going to be far greater than the 500 or 600 miners sacked as each colliery was closed.

When you factored in the local 'support' industries that would be without work once the colliery closed, sawmills, welding companies, conveyor and pumps, bearings, machinery and haulage motor suppliers and maintainers etc.

Add on the lost wages of all of the men that these companies would have to sack as work dried up and you start to get somewhere near the real cost.

I cannot believe, and never will believe, that when all the costs were added up (just imagine the Social Security bill alone for these towns and villages, plus all the redundancy payments and the invested money in each colliery that was written off) that it could in any way whatsoever have been cheaper to close British coal mines at the expense of buying Polish/Ukranian/German/French coal. It wasn't, pure and simple.

And even if it was would anyone amongst us seriously not rather pay a subsidy each week to keep a British man in work rather than pay anything like the same to keep someone from a foreign country in work?

Be clear about this. This is not racism in any way whatsoever, it is far more simply a responsible act towards your own country, its resources, its economy and its people.

Thatcher's personal vendetta was however already very clearly decided upon whatever we as a nation may have thought or wished (some might say, of course, a vendetta waged in revenge over the humiliation Heath's Conservative administration had been subjected to in 1974 by the NUM?).

For whatever her personal reasoning she very publicly choose to beat the unions by taking on the biggest (and possibly the most aggressive) first – and it was a fight she was intent on winning regardless of the cost to either the miners or the nation as a whole. She simply had to win, if not for her vanity then for nothing other than her own continued political survival. And in all honesty we as a nation should have realised the nature of the person we were dealing with when she fully revealed the extreme measures she was prepared to go to during the Falklands war only a year or so earlier.

And yet, despite all of this colossal damage done, the callousness and complete contempt for humanity with which she used not only the police but also the army (a fact still denied by the Tories to this day) to violently break the strike, her collusion with and then complete betrayal and treachery of the breakaway Nottinghamshire Democratic Miners Union, and finally her smug and vile public gloating over the brave 'battle' won, despite all of this we have in the last few years had to stomach the sight and sound of Tony Blair (a supposedly 'Labour' politician don't forget and also a politician of no mean ability as a lacky, turncoat and self promoter) saying "I admire her not only as a politician but also as a person."

Yet to some of course is that the nation will quite probably be expected to weep and mourn as she is laid to rest with all the pomp and pageantry of a state funeral (which we shall as taxpayers of course be expected to foot the bill for).

Well, all I can say is that I shall be doing no weeping nor mourning, neither I suspect will many former mining towns and villages and communities throughout this land.

They would I believe be far more likely to throw a street party, quite probably with their former colliery silver bands playing some fitting number to accompany the festivities.

All jokes aside, the full cost of Thatcher's destruction of the British coal industry and then later (subsequently unopposed) dismantling of British Steel and the UK's general manufacturing base industries is still being borne to this day and will continue to be very heavily carried for many years to come.

You have only to witness the crime and the generally abysmal social conditions of many of the former mining/industrial areas of this country for proof.

Knowing all of what I have written above to be true, look me in the eye and say it has got nothing to do with Thatcher.

This is the story

From the pits of Tredegar, to the docks of Inverclyde,

The peat fields of Kilkenny, to the shipyards on the Tyne,

The dark mills of Oldham and the deep Cornish tin mines,

The Port Talbot steel mills and the Belfast shipping lines.

This is the story, nothing has changed

From England to Scotland, from Ireland to Wales.

Your backs have been broken, there's dirt on your hands,

Say what you like, this is the life,

Of a working class man.

Do we let it all go...This world we have known. But where would we go from here?

Brothers I'm calling, my voice remains unbowed,

Though our Unions are broken, their dream remains proud.

And its not that we were foolish, it's not that we were scared,

This world that we found and to which we're bound,

Is for all of us to share.

This is the story.

Lyrics copyright R. Smith. – Bob Smith, Coleford.