The beginning of this month marks the thirtieth anniversary of the great miners’ strike. This article, by Sean Matgamna, written in 1992, at a time when the Tories were pushing through many pit closures, discusses the lessons of the heroic miners’ fight, and the effects of their defeat. It is a famous picture, the one of Arthur Scargill being arrested at the “Battle of Orgreave”, on 30 May 1984, where miners fought a long battle with troops of police and with police cavalry at a coke depot outside Sheffield. It was one of the turning points of the 1984-85 miners’ strike.
We are right to criticise “slippery slogans” around Israel/Palestine as elsewhere. Se must push back against another problem too: a sole and superficial focus on individual words, on their emotional and rhetoric force over substance, and using these for virtue-signalling or “gotcha!” politics. One recent protest chant is “Not a war! Not a conflict!”
Expanded and updated 11th November“If we could come up with a geoengineering answer to this problem, then Copenhagen wouldn’t be necessary. We could carry on flying our planes and driving our cars.” Richard Branson, 2009
Expanded and updated 11th November“If we could come up with a geoengineering answer to this problem, then Copenhagen wouldn’t be necessary. We could carry on flying our planes and driving our cars.” Richard Branson, 2009