Energy: The Weapon of Mass Coercion Pt. II
Last week I wrote about the emerging concept of energy as a weapon in the fight between state and corporation, and how this might pan out in future as the world’s resources continue to dwindle.
12th April 2013 | Peter Rolton: Chairman, Rolton Group
The death of Margaret Thatcher, however, jolted my memory and took me back to the late 70s and early 80s, during which time energy in the United Kingdom had already become the principle weapon in a civil war between the Unions and Government. The threat and power of energy is evidently not as much of an emerging concept as one might think.
It is very difficult to reflect about Margaret Thatcher without taking a view as to whether you were for or against all of what she did and stood for. Unlike the current crop of ‘mustn’t put a foot wrong’ politicians who are forced to operate in a public world of social media and the Internet, Margaret Thatcher did not entertain the idea of, let alone partake in, middle ground politics. In a world of compromise and the need for popular consensus, she was an entirely different species of political animal, polarising views and even adding a new term to the Oxford English Dictionary. ‘Handbagging’ can best be described as the political mugging of an unsuspecting or unprepared opponent by the formidable Iron Lady, primed with her cutting rhetoric ability. Many a world leader has rued the day they took her on, ill-advised or ill-prepared, walking ignorantly towards annihilation. None made the mistake of letting it happen twice.
Yesterday I was asked why Margaret Thatcher didn’t help the miners and why did she want to close the collieries, destroying whole communities?
The question itself contains a certain amount of presumption as to the circumstances of the miners’ strike, which was in effect a rematch of an earlier contest it the 1970s. The former strike had saw coal miners cut off their supplies to a predominantly coal-fired UK power generation system, resulting in a three day week, blackouts and a level of social and commercial disruption which would now be inconceivable.
As a child I remember my parents reading the paper to see which days of the week we would be without power in the evening: no heating, no lighting, no entertainment. Compare this to, for example, current supermarket practice, which stipulates that food is thrown away after 20 minutes in a power cut. If such standards had been enforced in the 1970s, it would have essentially emptied every shop in Britain of their chilled and frozen food several times a week.
The resulting chaos in 1974 brought down the Heath Tory Government and its Labour replacement fared little better; Public Sector Unions exerted their grip and the UK suffered the notorious ‘Winter of Discontent’ in 1978-79, with rubbish piled up in streets and public areas uncollected and bodies stored in factories waiting to be buried by striking gravediggers.
Thus as Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 following a simplistic, almost jingoist campaign, the face of politics was altered. High levels of unemployment led to huge losses in the ratings of her first term, but the timely success of the Falklands War led to Thatcher’s re-election, and she used her new-found popularity to stamp out the action which had overwhelmed her predecessors. Changes to the legal powers of the unions and picketing regulations which had been advanced since 1979 were to hit with full force as the unions and the Government came to blows in 1984 during what was to become an historic strike.
Energy had been the weapon that turned the lights out in the Heath Government, and now the miners were to become an unwitting political football in the battle between the left in the form of the Unions and the right in the form of the Thatcher Government. The two sides wrestled for control of the agenda and ultimately, the country, and many were caught indiscriminately in the crossfire. Whole communities were devastated at the hands of a political agenda which was largely incidental in the running of their lives.
What happened next has been well documented by others, but can be summarised in short as ‘the miners lost and the lights stayed on.’ The Government was prepared this time, and had stocked up on foreign coal, also utilising oil and nuclear power. This ensured that the UK power industry could outlast the miners, whose strikes began to crumble as they ran out of money and strike pay.
If you put aside the politics, the events of the miners’ strikes of 1970s and 1980s were wars of control in policy and direction, crucially using energy as the weapon of choice. Ultimately, the side which controlled the flow of energy was victorious, a point which surely serves as a forecast of things to come on the greater world stage.
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