Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has announced that she is apologising for her colliery band fiasco of the 1980's.
Thatcher told the Bandstand, "When we sat down in cabinet back in the 1980's we faced some very difficult decisions. Near the top of the list was the fact that colliery brass bands were not being as successful as they ought to have been. Norman Lemont had told us that the last time a proper colliery band had won the Staveley Challenge Trophy was way back in 1924. We were all shocked!"
"We knew as a cabinet what must be done. We had to shut as many collieries as possible to give the players in those bands even more time to improve their playing. We could have done with the coal, we needed the coal, but we decided to buy our coal off of the Germans and Chinese and allow our colliery bands a bit of time off from digging stuff up to sort themselves out and try and win something".
When pressed by the Bandstand Lady Thatcher said, "Of course it wasn't popular, we can all see that now. Arthur Scargill strutted his stuff, shouting and screaming, we were under pressure. We were sending the police in to beat people up indiscriminately. Then Norman Tebbit said, "You know what, I bet Arthur Scargill's never played top man with a colliery band. I bet he's never been that colliery Band Manager who's had to beg, steal or borrow to fill his band for a park job. That was it, Scargill had to go, he was standing in the way of the development of colliery bands in this country, we passed his details on to Special Branch and they removed him. He wasn't happy but then he always wore a suit and a baseball cap. I wouldn't trust that, would you? A suit with a baseball cap...and a megaphone?"
"Anyway, thanks to those difficult decisions we took back then, colliery bands have been able to make slightly successful movies about themselves culminating in even more related stage shows for less-able bands and a success conveyor belt for colliery bands that we created".
"Looking back on it now the decisions we took reinvigorated colliery banding. Without those difficult and unpopular decisions we took in the 80's we would never have been able to see a working class miner who dressed as a clown part-time hang himself on the silver screen whilst weeping over his father who was dying of mine cancer. Without that cabinet meeting there would of been none of this! It was those difficult decisions we took back then that have seen that have sent colliery bands into their heyday!"
