Latest news with #MargaretThatcher
Times
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Times
Orgreave inquiry serves no one but Labour
In the early 1980s Arthur Scargill became president of the National Union of Mineworkers and set out to bring down the elected government through a campaign of industrial confrontation. The bulk of Britain's miners decided to back him. And Margaret Thatcher was determined to stop him. Let's have an inquiry into all of that. Last week the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced an inquiry into the so-called Battle of Orgreave that she has been advocating for more than ten years. Some people have argued this is pointless, and an odd priority for a government with so many other challenges. Well yes, but I think it is worse than that. • Orgreave inquiry into miners' strike clashes to begin in autumn On June 18, 1984, somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 pickets assembled outside the British Steel coking works in Orgreave, South Yorkshire. It was the climactic moment of the miners' strike that both Scargill and Thatcher had long been preparing for. The aim of the NUM was to stop lorries moving coke from the plant, but the pickets failed. Their challenge was met by something like 5,000 police officers and the confrontation became violent. Exactly why that happened is what the inquiry will seek to establish. There is no question that many officers were violent and overstepped professional boundaries, and that afterwards there was quite a lot of official lying, covering up and fabricating evidence. All of this is quite well known, since the prosecutions of the arrested miners collapsed due to the unreliable evidence, and a number of them received compensation in an out-of-court settlement. The Orgreave inquiry will certainly tell of scandalous behaviour and find plenty that it will wish to criticise. This does not make the inquiry a neutral investigation of the truth. It is, instead, a nakedly political exercise which will be led by someone — the Bishop of Sheffield — who has been campaigning on the issue for many years. What is taking place is an attempt to re-litigate the rights and wrongs of the miners' strike, using the evidence and grievances of only one of the parties involved. Having lost the political argument over the strike at the time, the left has sought to rewrite the history of that disastrous dispute, and Orgreave is their weapon. The idea they are advancing is that the strike was somehow thrust upon the miners against their will, a class provocation by the establishment designed to crush working-class spirit. The Orgreave inquiry will seek to portray the dispute's violence as being originated by the police, with the miners as victims. This narrative must be vigorously resisted. What happened that day wasn't the whole of the miners' strike. The so-called Battle of Orgreave wasn't even the only encounter in Orgreave. On May 29, less than three weeks before the famous battle, mass pickets threw darts and bricks at the police and dozens of people were injured. The miners' strike of 1984 was thrust on to the rest of us by the miners, not by us on to them. It was the NUM who decided to try to bring the UK economy and broader society to its knees, pursuing an economic demand that was utterly ridiculous. The insistence that we continue mining coal whatever its economic viability could not possibly be yielded to by any government. And Scargill did not even really mean it to be yielded to, since his intention was actually to depose the government. The miners gathered in large and deliberately intimidating numbers in order to use their physical presence to prevent other people from going to work. They sought to collapse the economy, destroying the livelihoods of millions of people. They made their particular target those miners who went to work, treating them as traitors in the class struggle — even though Scargill hadn't had the decency to hold a proper strike ballot. All of this was a repeated and violent act, which they intended to continue until we all agreed to do whatever they wanted. Margaret Thatcher and her government determined that this would not be allowed to happen. The police undoubtedly overstepped the mark quite seriously on occasion, but they were defending the freedom of all of us to elect our own government, decide our energy policy, keep the lights and heating on and go about our lawful business as workers and customers. If the police had lost at Orgreave and elsewhere, the losers would have been all of us, and the consequences economically and for the rule of law would have been disastrous. The great irony of the Orgreave inquiry is that it comes about through an appeal to an elected home secretary and relying on the strong sense of the rest of us that justice and the law be upheld, when in fact the strike was an assault on all these things — elected governments, law and justice. That is the actual story of the miners' strike and if Yvette Cooper really feels it is worthwhile, we can have an inquiry into all of that. Let me explain why I think this matters. Liberal democracies must have the self-confidence to defend themselves and to insist that political disputes are settled politically. The moment one group shows it can get its way by violence or threat of violence, everyone will start to do it. People must be free to protest, but using your body to prevent someone going about their lawful business cannot be accepted as a way to win an argument. Take the protests outside migrant accommodation. I have been arguing for much of the past 20 years against rapid mass migration and against the many failures of our asylum system that the disastrous migrant hotels manifest. Protest is inevitable and the reason for it obvious. However, the arrival at these protests of far-right groups and violent individuals, threatening the safety of those inside the hotels and attacking police officers, needs to be met with a vigorous response. Liberal democracies need to police their borders and prevent illegal migration, but they also cannot allow vigilante justice and physical menace to determine asylum policy. The Home Office has rightly formed an investigations unit, with police officers providing intelligence on the protests gathered from social media. Yet this was attacked by Nigel Farage as 'sinister' and by Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, as turning Britain into a 'surveillance state'. An outrageous position. This is not the moment for the home secretary to round on the police and place herself on the side of violent protest, even if that protest was more than 40 years ago. The idea she is pursuing facts to right an ancient injustice is one I completely reject. It is partial truth and sectional justice she is after, in the political interests of the Labour Party.
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Starmer shows no guts or compassion on Gaza
You published a photograph of aid being airdropped into Gaza by the United Arab Emirates and Jordan (Palestinians wary as Israel begins military pauses to allow 'minimal' aid into Gaza, 27 July). Any aid is welcome, but they dropped 25 tonnes in one day, about 11 grams per Palestinian, barely a couple of teaspoonfuls. That's not going to keep people alive, and neither are a few truckloads delivered over a limited period. In 1984-85, I served with Operation Bushel, the RAF detachment in Ethiopia that flew aid into areas of famine. The operation was approved by Margaret Thatcher, despite Ethiopia's government being a brutal regime propped up by the Soviet Union. Delivering aid by air is difficult, risky and expensive; it's appropriate only when there is no other option. In Gaza, the so-called safe area of al-Mawasi is only 10 miles by road from the Rafah crossing; just north of Gaza is a major Israeli port, with road access into Gaza just a few miles away. This is one of the worst aspects of the famine in Gaza: unlike in Ethiopia, where access was extremely difficult, in Gaza there is a mountain of aid sitting close by, but kept inaccessible by Israel's actions. That Benjamin Netanyahu is allowing a trickle of aid into Gaza is a sign that international pressure has an effect. Most of the pressure here is coming from the public while our government spouts platitudes. Mrs Thatcher might have had the compassion and guts to take difficult decisions. Sir Keir Starmer clearly hasn' MaughanDunblane, Perthshire I agree with Nesrine Malik (Protesting over Gaza's starvation feels like screaming into a void – but we mustn't stop, 28 July), but unfortunately we have allowed pro-Israel pressure groups to redefine criticism of Israel as antisemitism, and the government to redefine expressing support for Palestine as terrorism. The former can be brushed away, but an arrest under anti-terrorism laws, even if no charges are brought, can have serious affects on someone's employment prospects and freedom to travel for the rest of their lives. If the proscription of Palestine Action is ever reversed, we must demand that any related arrests, charges and convictions are expunged from people's PerryIckenham, London Nesrine Malik powerfully expressed the true nature of the catastrophe, the true horror of its outcomes and the true failure of governments to halt Israel's wanton destruction of Palestine and its people. But her words, and these few, are wasted unless governments come together to halt military and trade relations, and institute sanctions that will force Israel to end military action, withdraw from Gaza, allow meaningful aid to reach its people, restore infrastructure and agree to a two-state solution. I have been a passive, if horrified, observer. I am now an active BoohanLondon My country can't single-handedly stop what's happening, but we could at a stroke cut off every atom of support, every shred of legitimacy to the perpetrators. And by choosing not to, my government is making me and all my fellow citizens accessories to an atrocity. How can I make it clear that I do not consent to this? Being ignored is what drives desperate law-abiding citizens first to be paint-sprayers and eventually to more violent forms of JennisonWitney, Oxfordshire Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Al Jazeera
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
The UK is slipping into racist dystopia
It has been a year since the Southport attack, which triggered furious racist riots in the streets of the United Kingdom. Unruly crowds, galvanised by false claims that the perpetrator was Muslim, went on a rampage, attacking mosques, Muslim-owned businesses, homes, and individuals they perceived as Muslim. As the riots were raging, I was finishing my novel, The Second Coming. The book is set in a dystopian future in which a Christian militia inspired by English nationalism seizes London, bans Islam, and exiles Muslims to refugee camps in Birmingham. The events unfolding in the streets as I was writing the final chapters made me realise that today, we are much closer to the dystopian world in my novel than I had imagined. The scenes and images that helped me shape this fictional world were inspired by the England I lived in during my youth, when racist violence was rampant. Gangs of white youth would hunt us down, especially after the pubs closed, in wave after wave of what they called 'Paki bashing'. Knife attacks and fire bombings were not uncommon, nor were the demands by far-right groups, such as the National Front and the British National Party, for the repatriation of Black (ie, non-white) 'immigrants'. Attending school sometimes meant running through a gauntlet of racist kids. In the playground, sometimes they swarmed around, chanting racist songs. As a student, I lost count of the number of times I was physically attacked, at school, in the street, or in pubs and other places. When I lived in East London, I was with the local youth of Brick Lane, where hand-to-hand fighting took place to stop hordes of racist attackers. These assaults were not an isolated phenomenon. Similar scenes took place across the country, with the National Front and British National Party organising hundreds of marches, emboldening white supremacist gangs. Around this time, some of my peers and I were arrested and charged with 'conspiracy to make explosives' for filling up milk bottles with petrol as a way of defending our communities against racist violence; our case came to be known as the Bradford 12. These struggles, whether in Brick Lane or Bradford, were part of a broader fight against systemic racism and far-right ideologies that sought to terrorise and divide us. The overt, street-level violence of those years was terrifying, but it came from the margins of society. The ruling political class, though complicit, avoided openly aligning with these groups. A case in point is Margaret Thatcher, who in 1978, as the leader of the Conservative Party, gave an infamous interview in which she said, 'People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture.' It was a subtle nod of approval for racist mobs, but as prime minister, Thatcher still kept far-right groups at an arm's length. Today, that distance has disappeared. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other prominent members of Labour regularly echo far-right rhetoric, promising to 'crack down' on those seeking sanctuary here. His Conservative predecessor, Rishi Sunak, and his ministers were not different. His Home Minister Suella Braverman falsely claimed grooming gangs had a 'predominance' of 'British Pakistani males, who hold cultural values totally at odds with British values'. While the old crude white racism has not disappeared, a more vicious form – Islamophobia – has been fanned over the past few decades. It feels like the old 'Paki' bashing gangs have been replaced by a new crusading wave that equates Islam with terrorism; sexual abuse with Pakistanis; asylum seekers with parasitic hordes about to overrun the country. This is the soil in which the Reform Party has taken root and flourished, in which ever cruder forms of racism are made respectable and electable. When both Labour and the Tories have become havens for a complex web of political corruption, Reform's simple anti-migrant and Islamophobic tropes are projected as an honest alternative. This has propelled the far-right party to the top of polls, with 30 percent of voters supporting it, compared with 22 percent for Labour and 17 for the Conservatives. In this environment, it was rather unsurprising that for the anniversary of the riots, the Economist magazine decided to run a poll focusing on race rather than on issues of economic decline, social deprivation and the never-ending austerity to which the working people of this country have been subjected. The survey showed that nearly 50 percent of the population think that multiculturalism is not good for the country, while 73 percent thought more 'race riots' will happen soon. The nurturing of violent racism at home has run parallel with England's long history of enacting it abroad. The new face of racism is fed on old imperial tropes of savages that need to be tamed and defeated by civilised colonial rule. These racist ideologies, which welded the empire together, have come back home to roost. They are playing out in the racist violence on the streets and in the state's repression of Palestine supporters. They are also playing out in the UK's unwavering political and military support for Israel, even as it bombs hospitals and schools in Gaza and starves children. Empire taught Britain to use racism to dehumanise entire peoples, to justify colonialism, to plunder, to spread war and famine. Genocide is in Britain's DNA, which explains its present-day collusion with genocidal Israel. Against this backdrop of racist, imperial violence, people of all colours and religions and none have mobilised. While they may not have stopped the genocide, they have laid bare the hypocritical barefaced lies of the British political elite. Only this sort of solidarity and challenge to racism can stop the dystopic world of my book becoming a reality. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Dale Vince calls for Battle of the Beanfield to be included in Orgreave policing inquiry
The entrepreneur Dale Vince has called for the recently announced inquiry into violent police clashes at the Orgreave miners' strike to be extended to cover a similar aggressive clash with new age travellers heading for Stonehenge the following year. Vince, who was involved in the Wiltshire clash, known as the Battle of the Beanfield, said the truth of both incidents had been covered up by police. He said he believed both episodes were part of a plan by the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, to 'smash' the miners and travellers, who she considered to be 'enemies of the state'. He said he was writing to the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, to ask her to include the Battle of the Beanfield in the Orgreave inquiry. The founder of Ecotricity was part of a travellers' convoy trying to set up a free festival at Stonehenge to celebrate the solstice in 1985. As the convoy grew, so too did complaints about the impact of some of its followers. Police enforced a high court injunction to block it, and scores of vehicles raced along narrow lanes being chased by police in riot gear. ITV News showed police smashing the windows of travellers' vehicles as they careered around a field. The episode resulted in more than 500 arrests and numerous injuries. Vince said: 'You're talking about people driving around [the field]. The police are with truncheons, smashing the windows as [the travellers] are driving along. Kids being handed out [of windows]; people being dragged out by their hair through broken glass windows. I mean, it was truly horrific, and probably shouldn't be forgotten … no. 'You know, the police got away with the most incredible lawlessness that day and I don't think they should be allowed to get away with that. And if we don't put that right, then it's not a good thing.' Vince recently told an audience at Glastonbury festival: 'I think I buried [the trauma] for a few years. I left the country, actually, to get away from the police.' He said he believed he may still be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. More than 530 travellers were detained by police, many of them injured, in one of the largest mass arrests in British history. Eight police officers were also reported hurt. Intermittent calls for a public inquiry since then have been rejected. Vince said he hoped the recent decision to open an inquiry into the clashes between police and miners at Orgreave coking plant in 1984 would strengthen his case. His company has supported Labour with more than £1.5m, making Vince the party's biggest individual donor. Ben Davies, who was working as a photographer for the Observer during the clashes in Wiltshire, said he was arrested and had his film confiscated. 'I was filming a woman being battered over the head when I was arrested for alleged breach of the peace. They gave my camera back but banned me from taking more pictures – it was clearly just a way of stopping news coverage. 'It was very frightening and I feared someone might get killed. Certainly, they weren't like any police I had seen.' The event marked the end of an era. From the early 1970s, hundreds – then thousands – of people made the annual pilgrimage to Stonehenge in the weeks before the solstice. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion But as numbers reached 100,000, complaints grew of damage to the stones, trespassing and vandalism. Police said some travellers were anti-police and anti-establishment, and the convoy did include anarchists alongside environmentalists, druids and people living an alternative lifestyle. There were complaints that supermarkets had been ransacked and travellers were camping in woodland and cutting wood for fires. Eventually, an injunction was put in place to stop it. A 4-mile exclusion zone was set up and police blocked a convoy of more than 100 vehicles. Helen Hatt, whose converted ambulance was part of the convoy, told the BBC: 'Police started smashing the windscreens of the vehicles at the front [of the convoy] and dragging people to the ground, hitting them with truncheons. Somebody ran past me with a head wound and blood running down his face.' She said her vehicle's windows were smashed, and two officers grabbed her by the hair. 'I can remember how excruciating the pain of having both sides of hair pulled. I was screaming: 'Stop, stop, tell me what to do'.' Vince said: 'Margaret Thatcher identified the miners and the new age travellers as the country's two biggest threats – and sent the cops out to smash both. We were both enemies of the state, of the highest order. And both experienced the same state-authorised brutality and lawlessness. The same leaders, the same cops, the same plan – from Orgreave to the Beanfield just a few months and counties apart – even the same cover-up.' Nearly six years after the event, 24 members of the convoy sued the police for wrongful arrest, assault and criminal damage. The police were cleared of wrongful arrest, but the members were awarded £24,000 for damage to 'persons and property'. Wiltshire police and the Home office haven't commented on Vince's request. A police spokesperson told the BBC that 'much has changed' since 1985. He said the force reflects on everything it does, and seeks to learn lessons from major events.
The Star
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Star
UK made ‘Armageddon scenario' plan for mass Hong Kong exodus in handover run-up
The UK government prepared a secret contingency plan dubbed 'the Armageddon scenario' in the lead-up to the 1997 handover for the evacuation of millions of Hong Kong residents who might have wanted to flee the city, according to newly unsealed documents. The British national archive documents date back to 1989 in the period immediately preceding and following the Tiananmen Square crackdown. A number of scenarios and recommendations for UK authorities were outlined in the event Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule triggered an exodus of people from the city. The documents, which were made public on Tuesday UK time, stated that the United Kingdom could 'not handle a mass evacuation alone' and that other countries would need to help, highlighting the United States as 'particularly important'. Repeated references were made to the 'Official Group on Contingency Planning for Hong Kong', which was said to have been formed following then prime minister Margaret Thatcher's meeting with the governor of Hong Kong on June 8, 1989. The governor at the time was David Wilson. The internal communications, labelled 'secret', categorised the plan into three scenarios – green, amber and red. When the most serious red phase was reached, indicating a mass exodus was under way, the British government would launch an evacuation, reception and resettlement plan, according to the file. In the contingency plan dated November in the released files, air and ship operators should be instructed to deploy earmarked aircraft and ships covered by dormant contracts immediately to Hong Kong in the red phase. Planes were expected to reach Hong Kong within 24 to 48 hours, while cruise ships were likely to have taken at least a week. The plan noted that the basic cost of moving 1 million people by sea to Taiwan would be around £165 million on the most favourable set of assumptions, while that of flying them to the island would have reached about £170 million. It set out that civilian evacuation would require the use of cruise ships and 143 of the vessels were available from 21 different countries. Costs were estimated to reach £200,000 per ship every day. The plan noted that efforts would need to be stepped up to get Southeast Asian governments to offer 'immediate, practical help', such as public appeals targeted at ethnic Chinese communities. It added that military deployments 'might be necessary', including using aircraft and vessels to assist in evacuation, as well as the deployment of land, air and sea assets to 'deter or counter Chinese military action'. But the plan noted that the capacity of military assistance in transporting a large number of people was 'small' compared with the size of the potential exodus and the capacity of the civil sector. The document said the British Royal Air Force had a readily available maximum single lift capacity of about 5,000 people. The team also drew up resettlement plans, in which the cost of reception centres would be about £5 million per 1,000 people and £5 billion per million based on past experience. The figures assumed each refugee would stay in a reception centre for six months, where basic needs would be met with some minimal English language training. The team said accommodation capacity would 'pose severe problems' in the event of an influx of arrivals. It estimated that only 400,000 properties would be available in the UK for resettlement in the short term, of which 300,000 would have to be requisitioned from the private sector. The internal documents outlined four scenarios that could trigger such an exodus, including two before and two after the 1997 handover. The report outlined one potential situation in which there would be a 'steady ebbing away of confidence' among people in Hong Kong before the handover, leading to an outflow of capital and talent from the city. Another pre-handover scenario referenced a 'panic provoked by further developments in China', such as the use of military force against Chinese civilians. It said Hong Kong people would be more sensitive than before to such developments. The post-handover scenarios were predicted to play out largely similarly – one based on people losing confidence in whether the Sino-British Joint Declaration was working, and a second that outlined a 'greater' risk of Beijing directly interfering in the city's affairs after 1997. The declaration is an agreement signed by Britain and China in 1984 to settle the future of Hong Kong. The two governments agreed China would reassume control of Hong Kong from July 1, 1997. One document, signed off by a DG Manning in August, included an attachment to a report commissioned by the South China Morning Post in 1989 outlining 'best case scenarios' on the impact of 3 million arrivals in the UK from Hong Kong. The report was produced by experts from well-known UK universities, who found that the economic costs were not 'dramatic', even in the extreme case of 3.2 million immigrants. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
