Similar fears that increased imports of energy would affect the trade figures were true but coincided with a period when large trade deficits were unexpectedly tolerated by the City. The loss of jobs went on and on. An industry that had once employed a million and which at the start of the strike had 220,000 on its books today only employs 7,000. The number of pits has ben cut from 170 to eight today and the (private) company that runs the industry, UK Coal, posted losses of £51.6m this week, its fourth year of deficits. There are no winners, it seems.
What happened to the miners? National unemployment was 13% at the time of the strike and the national claimant count (the nearest equivalent) is only 2.6% today. According to a fascinating report by Sheffield Hallam University this week, a surprisingly high 60% of the job losses in coal in England and Wales since the early 1980s have been replaced by new ones. Claimant unemployment in mining areas is down to only 3.8% in South Wales, 4.4% in Durham, 4.9% in Northumberland and only 3.3% in Mr Scargill's Yorkshire. However, the report says that though only 67,000 are claiming benefits in the former coalfields 336,000 adult males are on incapacity benefit, mainly because of the effects of unemployment. Most are now nearing retirement and unlikely to take jobs under Gordon Brown's schemes because - unlike areas where migrants are filling vacancies - there simply isn't the demand for labour. They are the real casualties of the strike. If there is a moral, it is that an unnecessarily confrontational strike sealed the long-term decline in mining whose effects will be with us for some time to come.
