MARGARET Thatcher’s rhetoric was deliberately misleading and she was lacking in generosity, as instanced when she took away free school milk, but to be fair the South Yorkshire miners did some sickening things too, like attempting to drop a concrete block onto a taxi driver to kill him because he drove a “scab” to and from the colliery.

I agree with Maria Williams that the protests are tasteless, if bitterness can accurately be called that.

Neither Barbara Castle nor Shirley Williams ever attracted similar criticism.

My late cousin’s husband, Kenneth (Kenny) Martin, worked at Manvers Main colliery all his working life, and was reaching retirement age and wanted to take his pension.

He was threatened with death. His pneumoconiosis was severe, but he survived for several years after the strike. I delivered milk in Barnsley in 1984, the police batten charged the miners, totally unjustifiably as the miners were walking peacefully and silently, carrying placards. Roy Wilkinson, of Wilkinson Developments, built Scargill’s house in Barnsley and was persuaded by his father-in-law, my first wife’s uncle, Dennis Stancliffe, to call it Peace house in memory of my late father-in-law, George Peace Stancliffe, a former miner.

How many of its members are happy with that?

Walt Jackson, Llantrisant, Usk