Miners’ Strike 20th anniversary

Is today. What can I say? The very first political event I remember – I was 4 years old, but I do recall the “day counter” on Look North and everyone being Deeply Concerned. Some people – and I remember this in the blood after a nasty confrontation with one of them – say Scargill was a mad dictator who lost everything through his arrogance. Others will point out that he was quite right to fear that the first round of pit closures was simply the beginning of total closedown, more than even the military thought a Russian nuclear attack would take out of coal production. It happened and it was just as bad or worse than predicted. I have a terrible ambivalence about it – Scargill was wrong as hell to order the miners out on his own say-so, which probably doomed the strike, but that takes nothing from the social devastation of South Yorks or the underhand viciousness of government.

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