So this is the long-term survival of British coal

Maybe they plan to use the 'Big Brother' method to close the last few pits, with the public voting each year

Now, when you hear that a coal mine is being shut down, it's like hearing that an old actor from Z Cars or Upstairs, Downstairs has died and you think, "Blimey, I had no idea they were still going in the first place." It's just been announced that Selby is to shut, which leaves eight to go. Maybe the plan is to close down the last few using the Big Brother method, with the public voting each year for which one they want to shut. Then the last one will be declared the winner, and the miners from that pit will win a prize and go on to give consumer advice on cable television.

And yet I remember distinctly, throughout the 1984 strike, Margaret Thatcher and her Cabinet repeating the mantra that their proposals were "the best plans ever for British coal'', guaranteed to "ensure the long-term survival of the industry''. Which, in retrospect, doesn't appear to have been entirely honest. Even Osama bin Laden didn't have the audacity to announce his scheme was "the best plan ever for New York skyscrapers''.

Arthur Scargill was vilified and ridiculed for suggesting there was a long-term plan to reduce the industry to eighty pits, but all along the Government must have been cackling like the Joker in Batman: "Eighty, he says? Aha ha, the fool, how little he knows. HA HA HA.'' Strangely, the decline of the pits is often blamed on Scargill, so much so that most people under 25 must think the miners' strike was when Mrs Thatcher wanted to produce loads of coal, but Scargill demanded the closure of every mine possibly so he could use them as underground bunkers from where he could plot to take over the world.

And many of the articles about the closure of Selby have repeated the line that Scargill guaranteed the strike would fail by calling it in the summer of 1984. Which ignores he fact that the strike began in response to the closures, and that was when they were announced. So what should he have done? Even Scargill was unlikely to call the strike six months earlier, declaring: "We demand the Government withdraws whatever it is they're thinking of announcing next year."

The other favourite to accompany the latest closure is its inevitability as part of the unstoppable march of progress. I'm sure Stalin said the same, when he starved millions of peasants in the drive to fill Russia with wonky factories: "It's a sad but indisputable aspect of modern life that there is no longer a demand for peasants. The world price of peasants has fallen dramatically in recent times and we would be failing in our duties if we continued to pour food into these uneconomic units. But believe me, the starvation plans we have announced amount to the best plans ever for the Russian peasant industry.''

Far from being inevitable, the closures, including this latest one, are conscious decisions made by human beings. For example, on the same day as the Selby announcement, British Nuclear Fuels admitted that clearing up their problems with "waste" will cost £1.9bn more than expected. Just like that. Don't they even have to get three estimates? Was there a bloke with a clipboard prodding isotopes and going: "Oh dear oh dear oh dear, you've got radiation coming through from your boiler in here. I mean, I can patch it up with plutonium for now, but in six months you'll have the same thing back again. Best to do it properly. It's an extra £1.9bn, but it'll save you in the long run."

The total charge of £2.35bn, it is said, will be "added to the £45bn of undiscounted liabilities...'' I can't tell you what it says after that because every time I get to £45bn I can't help stopping and yelling: "HOW MUCH?" Yet strangely, no one has suggested the inevitability of closing down the nuclear industry. Even though I'd guess that £1.9bn more than expected on clearing up waste just creeps into the category of "uneconomic".

The miners' strike may have been defeated, but that doesn't mean the principles behind it were wrong. Or that we'd be better off if it had never taken place. Apart from anything else, it did so much to bring together disparate groups in British society. Yorkshire miners would appear at rallies in London and make speeches that went: "'Appen there's coil int' grarnd fot 40 year and we're art solid but fot one scab but we need donations like for us snap.'' And everyone would clap, whispering: "Is he for the strike or against it, this bloke?'' And the whole strike was justified when a miners' brass band was chosen to lead the 1985 Gay Pride march. At which it's to be hoped someone wandered up to the conductor and asked: "Is there any chance you could do 'Relax' by Frankie Goes to Hollywood?"

Whereas even if nuclear plants had brass bands, no one would dare ever book them for a march, as you'd have nightmares imagining the trombonist coming up afterwards and saying: "It's about our expenses – only they've turned out to be a little bit more than expected.''