Boris Johnson's joke about the Miners' Strike and climate change is no laughing matter – Kenny MacAskill MP

Neither climate change nor the Miners’ Strike are laughing matters, yet Boris Johnson, with his usual buffoonery, crassly sought to make light of them.

Arthur Scargill, seen at an event marking the 25th anniversary of the 1984-85 Miners Strike, fell into a trap laid by the then Conservative government (Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

His comments were also not only hugely disrespectful but historically inaccurate. Margaret Thatcher’s attack upon the mining communities was nothing to do with global warming but everything to do with smashing the trade union movement.

The price’s still being paid by communities the length of the UK. Where once there had been work and spirit, came redundancy and despair. Alcohol and drugs poured in, and the harm’s evident to this day.

Even without Thatcher’s cull there would be no pits operating today. King Coal’s day – as in 1900 when it was reckoned that one in five Scots had some connection to the industry – are long gone.

But when it was going but it should have done so in an orderly fashion, allowing an opportunity for communities, as well as individuals, to transition into new lines of work.

Instead she saw an opportunity to smash the vanguard of organised labour, laying down markers for future industrial relations.

For let’s not forget the Ridley plan – this didn’t come about by accident but by design.

It was named after Sir Nicholas Ridley who was tasked with devising a strategy to deal with a future miners’ strike after Ted Heath’s Tory government got several bloody noses in the early 1970s.

The plan laid down a template that included maximising coal stocks beforehand and utilising the police and authorities to enforce victory.

It was almost followed to order and sadly Arthur Scargill fell into the trap. Things might have been different had Mick McGahey led the National Union of Mineworkers. But Joe Gormley’s desire to stymie the Scots Communist from succeeding him, simply handed control to Scargill.

Perhaps, more than the failure to hold a strike ballot, was the unwillingness to settle when Sir Iain McGregor and the Coal Board were willing to do so. Some closures would have been required but instead Scargill gambled on all or nothing. Not only did he lose but so did those communities.

But the harm done isn’t funny and it certainly wasn’t done for climate change.

Kenny MacAskill is the Alba Party MP for East Lothian

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