‘Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who closed so many coal mines across the country, we had a big early start and we’re now moving rapidly away from coal altogether'
has sparked fury for ‘crass’ remarks claiming that Margaret Thatcher kick-started green energy in Britain by closing the country’s coal mines.He made the comments towards the end of a two-day trip to Scotland, in which he declined an official meeting with first minister Nicola Sturgeon to discuss the country’s Covid-19 recovery.
Mr Johnson also provocatively said another referendum on Scottish independence was ‘about as far from the top of my agenda as it is possible to be’.Speaking to reporters, he hailed existing action to move to greener forms of power, saying when he was a child 70% to 80% of all electricity had been coal-generated.As prime minister from 1979-1990 Mrs Thatcher oversaw the closure of nearly 100 mines as part of a bitter dispute with trade unions.
A crowd gathers outside the TUC conference hall in Brighton, demanding a General Strike to show support for the ongoing miners’ strike in September 1984 ‘Thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who closed so many coal mines across the country, we had a big early start and we’re now moving rapidly away from coal altogether.’
Political opponents took umbrage at the comments, arguing they minimised the ‘devastating’ impact on mining communities of Mrs Thatcher’s policies. Ms Sturgeon wrote on Twitter: ‘Lives & communities in Scotland were utterly devastated by Thatcher’s destruction of the coal industry .
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