I've often thought about this, as someone who was a little 'un at the time and wasn't really directly affected by it.
From a modern perspective, the concept of men going into mines to dig up coal is so archaic and, in fact, seems pretty distasteful in many ways.
So, was the real problem with the shutting down of the coal mining not the end aim of removing that industry, but the manner in which is it was done? The timescales, the pension issues, the police behaviour etc.? Because I cannot imagine any world in which manual coal mining would still be a thing now.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not defending Thatcher in any way at all, I'm just curious what people think the "best" solution should have been to this assuming that we should have arrived ultimately at a point where coal mining was a thing of the past anyway.