THERE are five really shocking aspects of the Miners’ Strike.

Good people, honest hardworking trade unionists were taken out on strike in the month of March 1984.

Tactically, it was a terrible blunder.

My grandfather’s cousin, Sam Watson, was leader of the Durham pitmen until 1963. He would never have taken his members out on strike in March. Their leaders doomed the pitmen from the start.

Secondly, the Thatcher government had prepared enormous stockpiles of coal in Dutch ports to keep our power stations running. The pitmen were effectively ambushed.

The union leaders should have known that already or made it their business to find out. Now we need to exploit our remaining coal reserves. Either that, or we build a new generation of nuclear power stations.

The cost of getting coal out of the ground now the pits are closed is truly staggering.

We have paid a fortune since the strike importing our energy from abroad. Finally, we have paid out a king’s ransom in unemployment benefit to those made jobless by the pit closures. Our industry was sabotaged by the Government.

Nigel Boddy, Darlington.