Stories of how the police become brutal and oppressive keep surfacing. Don’t believe it’s a thing of the past because it keeps happening. Try to complain then it’s covered up with rules and red tape designed to keep any whistle blower at bay.
The problem for us and the police is that the police become tarnished as a whole, although it’s also clear there are many in the force who are unhappy with what they know goes on. Now a senior officer has spoken out about what he witnessed in the miners’ strike and at the Battle of Orgreave in particular. More.
Aerhur Scargill, the miners’ leader, had been involved in an earlier iconic incident before in 1972 in Birmingham, which has become known as the “Battle of Saltley Gate”, when his actions had helped order 15,000 workers who had marched on Saltley Gate ensure the gate was closed and that no further supplies could be delivered. The outcome was the fall of an earlier Conservative government. 12 years later the Thatcher government was to ensure that there was no repeat of what happened in ’72 and the police had their orders to make sure it didn’t.
The consequences for Britain following confrontations with determined working class opposition was to throw out baby with bath water as manufacturing industries were closed down and production was transferred more and more overseas. Coal continued to be necessary but was imported, much of it inferior and dirtier than that mined here. For the government it seems no price was too high to defeat the “enemy within.” The question for me remains just who was, and is, our true enemy. More.