The miners’ story has at all times been the identical, however the telling of it has modified.
It’s a story of wrestle for wages, jobs and a lifestyle that flourished in close-knit communities for greater than a century. But in 1984, putting pitmen and their households had been vilified by Thatcher as “the enemy within” who needed to be crushed.
Forty years later, their nice strike for jobs is being celebrated in books, TV and radio reveals and exhibitions. What’s modified, aside from the pure need of individuals to see historical past via rose-tinted spectacles?
Power has. The as soon as mighty National Union of Mineworkers is not a risk to the Tory Party’s conceited presumption of a proper to rule. In sensible phrases, it’s safely lifeless. We can now lionise the heroes of 84, and pay tribute to the sacrifices of communities devastated by the Tory conflict towards the NUM. There is a sample. In 1976, Jayaben Desai, an Asian stitching machinist, who led a two-year dispute at Grunwick, London, was abused as “a striker in a sari”.
After her loss of life 34 years later, she was given a laudatory obituary in “top people’s paper” The Times. Jack Jones, left-wing chief of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, bought the identical remedy. Reviled by the media in life, praised in loss of life.
Ditto Jimmy Reid and Jimmy Airlie, leaders of the well-known (and profitable) Upper Clyde “work in” of 1971-2. Both had been communists, smeared throughout the battle and acclaimed after they had been lifeless. Crocodile tears at the moment are being shed by the bucket-load for the miners and their households. It’s hypocrisy, and it sickens me.
Men and ladies combating for what they imagine in deserve help when the battle is on, not when their wrestle is decreased to historic materials for obituary writers and TV producers.