Don't blame Margaret Thatcher for closing the mines

CHANGING TIMES: It looks as though we are now in the silly season again in respect to the miners' strike.

I grew up in the mining and pottery community and find it difficult to understand the perverse logic used when people talk about the miners and what Margaret Thatcher did to those communities.

When are those people going to realise that what has happened would have happened without any assistance from Margaret Thatcher? She did not close the mines, she simply assisted in a process that had already begun.

It is called change and we are subjected to it every day of our lives, although we generally do not want it to happen.

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Change has to be managed, however, for it to be successful and perhaps this is where Margaret Thatcher could have done better.

Our current Government knows all about this. Unfortunately it not very good at managing change.

Probably this is because it is changing too many things at once, and they are all colliding with one another.

Communities can be described as groups of like-minded individuals, and mining could be considered one of the vehicles by which they exist. So why not change vehicles? After all, this is an ongoing process in which we are all involved.

I am sure that the more progressive people among the old mining communities have already done so. They have probably made a greater impact in their new chosen community than those already there, by virtue of the work ethic instilled in them from a very an early age.

I was bought-up in a mining and pottery community and my father suffered from one of the industrial diseases prevalent in those industries. One of my wife's relations died in the Minnie Pit Explosion. At 14 years of age he was the youngest person to have lost their life there.

What mother would want her husband or child to go and dig coal in such an unnatural environment? What wife would want them to be exposed to the disease, injury and possible death of such an environment?

I rest my case, progress made this possible. What does it matter that Margaret Thatcher spurred it along a little? It's time we all moved on.

GEOFF BIDDULPH

Crewe