Extracts from Ofcom Complaint, by Category: Misrepresentation of People’s Views

First, temperatures started to rise; and second, the miners went on strike.

To Margaret Thatcher, energy was a political problem. In the early 70s, the oil crisis had plunged the world into recession. The miners had brought down Ted Heath’s conservative government. Mrs Thatcher was determined the same would not happen to her. She set out to break their power.

What we have seen in this country is the emergence of an organised revolutionary minority who are prepared to exploit industrial disputes, but whose real aim is the breakdown of law and order and the destruction of democratic parliamentary government.

The politicisation of the subject started with Margaret Thatcher.

She was very concerned, always – I remember when I was Secretary of State for Energy – to promote nuclear power, long before the issue of climate change came up, because she was concerned about energy security; and she didn’t trust the Middle East, and she didn’t trust the National Union of Mineworkers: so she didn’t trust oil, and she didn’t trust coal. Therefore she felt we really had to push ahead with nuclear power. And then when the climate change/global warming thing came up, she felt: “well this is great: this is another argument – because it doesn’t have any carbon dioxide emissions – this is another argument why you should go for nuclear. And that is what she was really, largely, saying. It’s been misrepresented since then.

And so she said to the scientists – she went to the Royal Society and she said: “there’s money on the table for you to prove this stuff”. So of course they went away and did that