If you are in any doubt that the current government is absolutely determined to undo all the brilliant work undertaken by Margaret Thatcher when she set about saving Britain, news that a public inquiry is scheduled to be held into the “Battle Of Orgreave” should convince you. If you recall, the Battle of Orgreave was a particularly nasty clash between striking miners and the police on June 18, 1984 – 120 people were injured in fighting between 5,000 miners and the same numbers of police.
Blame has been hurled at both sides from the rooftops ever since. And what, pray tell, is the reason for rehashing the events of 41 years ago now? If you’ll allow me to hazard a guess, I’d say it would be to pour opprobrium on the heads of the then Conservative government, particularly and above all on you-know-who, while portraying the miners as put-upon freedom fighters bravely attempting to save their doomed industry in the face of the capitalist war machine.
It’s those evil Tories, innit, grinding the faces of the poor into the dust and no matter that it was an unlawful strike that ended up destroying the miners from within. It was Arthur Scargill who did for the men he represented, not Britain’s greatest post-war Prime Minister.
This of course follows proposed employment legislation which will drag us straight back to the 1970s, when we were termed the “sick man of Europe” and the shameless and cynical handing over of anything David Lammy still considers to be redolent of Empire.
But this one might just backfire, because what Keir Starmer, in his ideologically driven point-scoring seems to have forgotten, is that the majority of the public did not back the miners.
Given that no national ballot was held to kick the thing off, you could even suggest the majority of the miners didn’t back the miners. By the time of the miners’ strike, the country was utterly sick to death of militant unions trying to boss us around.
Communists like “president for life” Scargill were viewed with a mix of fear and contempt by the public: they were considered dinosaurs even back then, let alone now.
And by holding this inquiry, whatever findings that will no doubt be fixed from the start emerge, Starmer risks reminding the country of all that.
He also risks making his wrecking agenda even clearer than it is now. All we need is for a new Mrs T to come along and save us from ruin. Nigel Farage: over to you.