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"teacher who carried a placard at a pro-Palestinian protest depicting Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as coconuts has been found not guilty of a racially aggravated public order offence. Marieha Hussain, 37, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire denied the charge at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday. She carried a picture showing the faces of the then Prime Minister and Home Secretary superimposed on coconuts under a palm tree in November 2023. Her defence said the placard was not racist, but satirical and humorous. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2x202v2ejo Where to begin? ... can every slur be satirical and humorous?" Was the woman accused white? | |||
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"teacher who carried a placard at a pro-Palestinian protest depicting Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as coconuts has been found not guilty of a racially aggravated public order offence. Marieha Hussain, 37, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire denied the charge at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday. She carried a picture showing the faces of the then Prime Minister and Home Secretary superimposed on coconuts under a palm tree in November 2023. Her defence said the placard was not racist, but satirical and humorous. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2x202v2ejo Where to begin? ... can every slur be satirical and humorous? Was the woman accused white?" Think the name gives it away,  Asian rather then West Indian, where the term is known. | |||
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"teacher who carried a placard at a pro-Palestinian protest depicting Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as coconuts has been found not guilty of a racially aggravated public order offence. Marieha Hussain, 37, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire denied the charge at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday. She carried a picture showing the faces of the then Prime Minister and Home Secretary superimposed on coconuts under a palm tree in November 2023. Her defence said the placard was not racist, but satirical and humorous. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2x202v2ejo Where to begin? ... can every slur be satirical and humorous? Was the woman accused white?" Doesn't look like it. I think the colour of the accused matters in cases of racial slurs, and it shouldn't. #cynicalme | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho " The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned." Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x" Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law. | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law." Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x" Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x" Or were the police deployed to protect the rights of ordinary people trying to go about their lawful business without being intimidated and physically assaulted.  | |||
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"My point is that if any action is considered racist then if the law doesn't reflect this then there is nothing a court or the police can do to prevent such actions. The rights and wrongs of what happened 40 years ago with the miners is surely a new thread?" Only said this in response to the post that said politicians using the police for their own agendas shouldn't happen, Mrs x | |||
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"For the "anti-racists", some types of racism are always fair game " Boom. He shoots, he scores. | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned.Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x" Like Starmer and his two tier policing. Look for examples, they're there. | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. " Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs x | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs x" yea thatcher was a cunt along with Blair brown Cameron May Boris truss sunak and now starmer if you think any primeminister has the general publics best interests at heart your deluded,they work for there owners not the public | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs xyea thatcher was a cunt along with Blair brown Cameron May Boris truss sunak and now starmer if you think any primeminister has the general publics best interests at heart your deluded,they work for there owners not the public" Thatcher attacked her own people for a political point, put cities into 'managed decline' for not agreeing with her politics, sacrificed 300 years worth of a national resource to prove a point. Other politicians may have been bad, incompetent but nothing on the scale of that cunt. Mrs x | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs xyea thatcher was a cunt along with Blair brown Cameron May Boris truss sunak and now starmer if you think any primeminister has the general publics best interests at heart your deluded,they work for there owners not the publicThatcher attacked her own people for a political point, put cities into 'managed decline' for not agreeing with her politics, sacrificed 300 years worth of a national resource to prove a point. Other politicians may have been bad, incompetent but nothing on the scale of that cunt. Mrs x" really Blair opening the doors to the world and being responsible for dead soilders and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis isn't a cunt? Brown baili g out the banks with our money isn't a cunt? Cameron running of like a bitch after brevity isn't a cunt? May doing her best to not follow through on a vote isn't a cunt? Boris need I say more isn't a cunt? Truss fucking the economy isn't a cunt? And on and on it goes like I said they answer to there owners not you or me | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs xyea thatcher was a cunt along with Blair brown Cameron May Boris truss sunak and now starmer if you think any primeminister has the general publics best interests at heart your deluded,they work for there owners not the publicThatcher attacked her own people for a political point, put cities into 'managed decline' for not agreeing with her politics, sacrificed 300 years worth of a national resource to prove a point. Other politicians may have been bad, incompetent but nothing on the scale of that cunt. Mrs xreally Blair opening the doors to the world and being responsible for dead soilders and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis isn't a cunt? Brown baili g out the banks with our money isn't a cunt? Cameron running of like a bitch after brevity isn't a cunt? May doing her best to not follow through on a vote isn't a cunt? Boris need I say more isn't a cunt? Truss fucking the economy isn't a cunt? And on and on it goes like I said they answer to there owners not you or me" Say Cnut again, makes your argument completely 🙄 | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs xyea thatcher was a cunt along with Blair brown Cameron May Boris truss sunak and now starmer if you think any primeminister has the general publics best interests at heart your deluded,they work for there owners not the publicThatcher attacked her own people for a political point, put cities into 'managed decline' for not agreeing with her politics, sacrificed 300 years worth of a national resource to prove a point. Other politicians may have been bad, incompetent but nothing on the scale of that cunt. Mrs xreally Blair opening the doors to the world and being responsible for dead soilders and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis isn't a cunt? Brown baili g out the banks with our money isn't a cunt? Cameron running of like a bitch after brevity isn't a cunt? May doing her best to not follow through on a vote isn't a cunt? Boris need I say more isn't a cunt? Truss fucking the economy isn't a cunt? And on and on it goes like I said they answer to there owners not you or me" None of them attacked their own, none of them deliberately wasted 300 years worth of a natural resource just to prove a political point. Thatcher was in a league of their own. Mrs x | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs xyea thatcher was a cunt along with Blair brown Cameron May Boris truss sunak and now starmer if you think any primeminister has the general publics best interests at heart your deluded,they work for there owners not the publicThatcher attacked her own people for a political point, put cities into 'managed decline' for not agreeing with her politics, sacrificed 300 years worth of a national resource to prove a point. Other politicians may have been bad, incompetent but nothing on the scale of that cunt. Mrs xreally Blair opening the doors to the world and being responsible for dead soilders and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis isn't a cunt? Brown baili g out the banks with our money isn't a cunt? Cameron running of like a bitch after brevity isn't a cunt? May doing her best to not follow through on a vote isn't a cunt? Boris need I say more isn't a cunt? Truss fucking the economy isn't a cunt? And on and on it goes like I said they answer to there owners not you or meNone of them attacked their own, none of them deliberately wasted 300 years worth of a natural resource just to prove a political point. Thatcher was in a league of their own. Mrs x" Starmer says hold my beer | |||
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"teacher who carried a placard at a pro-Palestinian protest depicting Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as coconuts has been found not guilty of a racially aggravated public order offence. Marieha Hussain, 37, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire denied the charge at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday. She carried a picture showing the faces of the then Prime Minister and Home Secretary superimposed on coconuts under a palm tree in November 2023. Her defence said the placard was not racist, but satirical and humorous. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2x202v2ejo Where to begin? ... can every slur be satirical and humorous?" Remember when jade goody used the phrase popadom as in my little, the whole Asian world lost its mind | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs xyea thatcher was a cunt along with Blair brown Cameron May Boris truss sunak and now starmer if you think any primeminister has the general publics best interests at heart your deluded,they work for there owners not the publicThatcher attacked her own people for a political point, put cities into 'managed decline' for not agreeing with her politics, sacrificed 300 years worth of a national resource to prove a point. Other politicians may have been bad, incompetent but nothing on the scale of that cunt. Mrs xreally Blair opening the doors to the world and being responsible for dead soilders and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis isn't a cunt? Brown baili g out the banks with our money isn't a cunt? Cameron running of like a bitch after brevity isn't a cunt? May doing her best to not follow through on a vote isn't a cunt? Boris need I say more isn't a cunt? Truss fucking the economy isn't a cunt? And on and on it goes like I said they answer to there owners not you or meNone of them attacked their own, none of them deliberately wasted 300 years worth of a natural resource just to prove a political point. Thatcher was in a league of their own. Mrs x" Iirc labour shut down more mines then the Tories | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs xyea thatcher was a cunt along with Blair brown Cameron May Boris truss sunak and now starmer if you think any primeminister has the general publics best interests at heart your deluded,they work for there owners not the publicThatcher attacked her own people for a political point, put cities into 'managed decline' for not agreeing with her politics, sacrificed 300 years worth of a national resource to prove a point. Other politicians may have been bad, incompetent but nothing on the scale of that cunt. Mrs xreally Blair opening the doors to the world and being responsible for dead soilders and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis isn't a cunt? Brown baili g out the banks with our money isn't a cunt? Cameron running of like a bitch after brevity isn't a cunt? May doing her best to not follow through on a vote isn't a cunt? Boris need I say more isn't a cunt? Truss fucking the economy isn't a cunt? And on and on it goes like I said they answer to there owners not you or meNone of them attacked their own, none of them deliberately wasted 300 years worth of a natural resource just to prove a political point. Thatcher was in a league of their own. Mrs x Iirc labour shut down more mines then the Tories "Do you have any facts on that? Mrs x | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs xyea thatcher was a cunt along with Blair brown Cameron May Boris truss sunak and now starmer if you think any primeminister has the general publics best interests at heart your deluded,they work for there owners not the publicThatcher attacked her own people for a political point, put cities into 'managed decline' for not agreeing with her politics, sacrificed 300 years worth of a national resource to prove a point. Other politicians may have been bad, incompetent but nothing on the scale of that cunt. Mrs xreally Blair opening the doors to the world and being responsible for dead soilders and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis isn't a cunt? Brown baili g out the banks with our money isn't a cunt? Cameron running of like a bitch after brevity isn't a cunt? May doing her best to not follow through on a vote isn't a cunt? Boris need I say more isn't a cunt? Truss fucking the economy isn't a cunt? And on and on it goes like I said they answer to there owners not you or meNone of them attacked their own, none of them deliberately wasted 300 years worth of a natural resource just to prove a political point. Thatcher was in a league of their own. Mrs x Iirc labour shut down more mines then the Tories Do you have any facts on that?
Mrs x"Harold Wilson closed more than double the number that Thatcher did. Thatcher is just associated with it more because it was basically the end of coal mining so she is always thought of as having ‘killed the mines’. Callaghan closed plenty aswell. Interestingly Ted Heath, the previous Conservative PM closed only a handful. I think the minister responsible for the highest volume of coal miner job losses was Tony Ben, I don’t think there is a labour member of parliament I would associate less with pit closures and job losses than Tony Ben ! | |||
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"Wilson shut down twice as many as Thatcher, Google is your friend "Tories shut down more than Labour since 1948. Thatcher ruined the last remaining deepcast mines, which can never be reopened. Google is your friend, maybe not this time. The loss of 300 years of coal was done under Thatchers watch. We then had to import it from Germany. Mrs x | |||
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"Wilson shut down twice as many as Thatcher, Google is your friend Tories shut down more than Labour since 1948. Thatcher ruined the last remaining deepcast mines, which can never be reopened. Google is your friend, maybe not this time.
The loss of 300 years of coal was done under Thatchers watch. We then had to import it from Germany.
Mrs x"And Poland as you know. Mrs x | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned." So you’re ok with the “coconut” term then? | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. " Yeah I remember that. | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs xyea thatcher was a cunt along with Blair brown Cameron May Boris truss sunak and now starmer if you think any primeminister has the general publics best interests at heart your deluded,they work for there owners not the publicThatcher attacked her own people for a political point, put cities into 'managed decline' for not agreeing with her politics, sacrificed 300 years worth of a national resource to prove a point. Other politicians may have been bad, incompetent but nothing on the scale of that cunt. Mrs xreally Blair opening the doors to the world and being responsible for dead soilders and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis isn't a cunt? Brown baili g out the banks with our money isn't a cunt? Cameron running of like a bitch after brevity isn't a cunt? May doing her best to not follow through on a vote isn't a cunt? Boris need I say more isn't a cunt? Truss fucking the economy isn't a cunt? And on and on it goes like I said they answer to there owners not you or meNone of them attacked their own, none of them deliberately wasted 300 years worth of a natural resource just to prove a political point. Thatcher was in a league of their own. Mrs x" Let’s be honest, the mining and steel industries were completely dead in this country, and propping them up was bringing the country to its knees. It as a tough time, but had to be done. The unions wanted to destroy the country just so their workers could keep earning a living from a dead industry. | |||
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"'Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990.' Labour 354/(358 inc 4 Callaghan) closed, Tories 387 closed. So Tories closed 29 more in this period. But it's not just how many they closed but why. Labour closed inefficient pits as did most Tories but Thatcher was a totally different story... 'Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments. The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair. Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that: “The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.” The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome: “Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.” Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that. 43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry. As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week: “Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’ “Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’: “…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’” So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy. But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage. So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.' But carry on with your pro Thatcher narrative and don't let the truth stand in the way of your story. Mrs x" So various leaders from different parties closed huge numbers of mines, but it’s all thatcher’s fault? I see. You accuse others of “pro thatcher” narrative, while producing a one-eyed anti-thatcher narrative, apparently without s hint of irony. | |||
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" Where to begin? ... can every slur be satirical and humorous?" It is offensive, but not racist. The comment is a lament by people from one culture that people of that culture are behaving culturally like another (brown on the outside, white on the inside). The colour reference is an observation, not a racial slur. We cannot consider every reference to the colour of someone's skin as racist, especially when specifically used between people sharing that colour. However, Western sensitivity is such that we baulk at any mention of colour. In the same way as the Western world is confused about how to react to black people using n***** between themselves. It might be wrong, okay, playful, offensive (depending on whom you ask), but, in that context, it isn't an act of racism. | |||
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" Where to begin? ... can every slur be satirical and humorous? It is offensive, but not racist. The comment is a lament by people from one culture that people of that culture are behaving culturally like another (brown on the outside, white on the inside). The colour reference is an observation, not a racial slur. We cannot consider every reference to the colour of someone's skin as racist, especially when specifically used between people sharing that colour. However, Western sensitivity is such that we baulk at any mention of colour. In the same way as the Western world is confused about how to react to black people using n***** between themselves. It might be wrong, okay, playful, offensive (depending on whom you ask), but, in that context, it isn't an act of racism." It's hard for me to see that there wasn't racist intent in this instance. It was a clear reference to identification of certain individuals by their race and was antagonistic in nature. That's pretty much the definition of racism. imo the judge got this wrong and has muddied the waters on what is and what isn't racism. | |||
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" Where to begin? ... can every slur be satirical and humorous? It is offensive, but not racist. The comment is a lament by people from one culture that people of that culture are behaving culturally like another (brown on the outside, white on the inside). The colour reference is an observation, not a racial slur. We cannot consider every reference to the colour of someone's skin as racist, especially when specifically used between people sharing that colour. However, Western sensitivity is such that we baulk at any mention of colour. In the same way as the Western world is confused about how to react to black people using n***** between themselves. It might be wrong, okay, playful, offensive (depending on whom you ask), but, in that context, it isn't an act of racism." If a white person invents a slur word that says someone is white on the outside but brown on the inside and uses it to mock someone, would it be racist or just offensive? | |||
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" Where to begin? ... can every slur be satirical and humorous? It is offensive, but not racist. The comment is a lament by people from one culture that people of that culture are behaving culturally like another (brown on the outside, white on the inside). The colour reference is an observation, not a racial slur. We cannot consider every reference to the colour of someone's skin as racist, especially when specifically used between people sharing that colour. However, Western sensitivity is such that we baulk at any mention of colour. In the same way as the Western world is confused about how to react to black people using n***** between themselves. It might be wrong, okay, playful, offensive (depending on whom you ask), but, in that context, it isn't an act of racism. If a white person invents a slur word that says someone is white on the outside but brown on the inside and uses it to mock someone, would it be racist or just offensive?" Colour, in this instance, is a proxy for culture and attitude, not an indication of race. | |||
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" Where to begin? ... can every slur be satirical and humorous? It is offensive, but not racist. The comment is a lament by people from one culture that people of that culture are behaving culturally like another (brown on the outside, white on the inside). The colour reference is an observation, not a racial slur. We cannot consider every reference to the colour of someone's skin as racist, especially when specifically used between people sharing that colour. However, Western sensitivity is such that we baulk at any mention of colour. In the same way as the Western world is confused about how to react to black people using n***** between themselves. It might be wrong, okay, playful, offensive (depending on whom you ask), but, in that context, it isn't an act of racism. If a white person invents a slur word that says someone is white on the outside but brown on the inside and uses it to mock someone, would it be racist or just offensive? Colour, in this instance, is a proxy for culture and attitude, not an indication of race." I think that saying a person with one skin colour must follow one particular culture is itself racist. | |||
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" Colour, in this instance, is a proxy for culture and attitude, not an indication of race. I think that saying a person with one skin colour must follow one particular culture is itself racist. " Absolutely, 100%! | |||
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" Where to begin? ... can every slur be satirical and humorous? It is offensive, but not racist. The comment is a lament by people from one culture that people of that culture are behaving culturally like another (brown on the outside, white on the inside). The colour reference is an observation, not a racial slur. We cannot consider every reference to the colour of someone's skin as racist, especially when specifically used between people sharing that colour. However, Western sensitivity is such that we baulk at any mention of colour. In the same way as the Western world is confused about how to react to black people using n***** between themselves. It might be wrong, okay, playful, offensive (depending on whom you ask), but, in that context, it isn't an act of racism. It's hard for me to see that there wasn't racist intent in this instance. It was a clear reference to identification of certain individuals by their race and was antagonistic in nature. That's pretty much the definition of racism. imo the judge got this wrong and has muddied the waters on what is and what isn't racism." Yeah, looks and sounds racist. Definitely “hate” | |||
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" Where to begin? ... can every slur be satirical and humorous? It is offensive, but not racist. The comment is a lament by people from one culture that people of that culture are behaving culturally like another (brown on the outside, white on the inside). The colour reference is an observation, not a racial slur. We cannot consider every reference to the colour of someone's skin as racist, especially when specifically used between people sharing that colour. However, Western sensitivity is such that we baulk at any mention of colour. In the same way as the Western world is confused about how to react to black people using n***** between themselves. It might be wrong, okay, playful, offensive (depending on whom you ask), but, in that context, it isn't an act of racism. If a white person invents a slur word that says someone is white on the outside but brown on the inside and uses it to mock someone, would it be racist or just offensive?" Such terms already exist, no need to “invent” one | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs x" Funny old world isn’t it. Right Wingers snd Authoritarians believe the BBC when it comes to things like this Mis-portrayal of the Miner’s strike but then look at the Grooming gang thread and countless others and you’d think the BBC was the TV channel for the Socialist Workers Party! | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs x" Disgusting thing to post. You ought to be ashamed of yourself . | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs x Disgusting thing to post. You ought to be ashamed of yourself . " Why should she be ashamed? Which bit of the very long post do you object to? | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs x Disgusting thing to post. You ought to be ashamed of yourself . Why should she be ashamed? Which bit of the very long post do you object to?" Her final sentence. It’s perfectly possible to say you don’t agree with a policy without repeatedly referring to the decision maker in such disgusting terms. | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs x Disgusting thing to post. You ought to be ashamed of yourself . Why should she be ashamed? Which bit of the very long post do you object to? Her final sentence. It’s perfectly possible to say you don’t agree with a policy without repeatedly referring to the decision maker in such disgusting terms. " What's really disgusting is your outrage of my calling Thatcher a cunt and not being outraged by what that despicable woman did to our population. She was evil itself. Mrs x | |||
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"What I can't get over is ... she's a teacher! Wonder if she called a pupil a coconut, or a pupils parent called her the slur. I think the courts have got this wrong imho The courts tend to interpret the law, so the judge might be correct but the law needs changing. The judge concluded that the proscecution had not proved the placard was rascist nor that the lady been intentionally rascist. Perhaps the proscecution needed a better barrister? The placard was displayed at a pro-Palestine march which at the time was controversial with the right wing. I read that the case was politically motivated. Braverman described the march as a "hate march". Sunak supported her. They both tried to knobble the Met to stop or significantly reduce people's right to peacefully demonstrate in support of the Palestine people. When politicians try to use the courts or the police for their own agendas I think we should be concerned. Like when Thatcher used the police at miners strikes, Mrs x Yes but she was turfed out 34 years ago, so does anyone under 50 have much direct adult experience of her? To make my point, she realised she had to change the law (secondary picketing, ballots before stikes etc.) to ensure the public were better protected from demonstrations/rioters/strikers and their actions, where as Braverman and Sunak resorted to trying to blame the Met for their own political failings. We saw the same thing with XR and JSO, but it took far too long for the Tories to amend the law.Thatcher used the police to incite riots to paint the narrative bright blue. Mrs x Are you sure? I was at school when the news would show police at picket lines to protect the "scabs" as they went into work. Both the Police and the Beeb used by Thatcher. Both lied similar to Hillsborough. From the Guardian in 2015. 'On that day in 1984, 8,000 miners who went to picket lorry drivers supplying to the steel industry were met by 6,000 police officers drawn from all over the country, commanded by South Yorkshire police. The force included 42 officers on horseback and the first units with short shields and truncheons ever used in Britain. Their official purpose, stated in the police’s tactical manual, was to “incapacitate” demonstrators. The news footage beamed into the nation’s homes that night is itself central to the continuing dispute. The BBC showed miners throwing stones and other missiles at the police, followed by mounted officers charging into them, and then officers chasing miners, some clearly being hit over the head with truncheons. The miners always said the police had brutally attacked them without justifiable provocation, and that the attack felt preplanned. They complained that the BBC had reversed footage, to show miners who threw missiles seemingly before the police charge rather than in retaliation for it. That night the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to defeat the strike, and with it the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, made it clear she believed in the police. This was, she famously said, “mob rule” by the miners. Far less publicised, a year later, was the unravelling of the police case. Officers had arrested and charged 95 miners with riot, an offence of collective violence carrying a potential life sentence. Yet in July 1985 the prosecution withdrew and all the miners were were acquitted after the evidence of some police officers, including those in command, had been discredited under cross-examination. In 1991 South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 compensation to 39 miners who had sued the force for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. But still the police did not admit any fault, and not a single police officer was ever disciplined or prosecuted. South Yorkshire police paid out £425,000 to miners who had sued for assault, but still did not admit fault In 2012, after reporting by the Guardian and a BBC documentary that showed that dozens of police officers’ statements had identical opening paragraphs setting out the scene of a riot, South Yorkshire police referred themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission for possible misconduct. The IPCC took two and a half years to read the available paperwork – which did not include any documents relating to the planning of the operation, as South Yorkshire police said they had not found any. Owing to the passage of time, the IPCC decided it would not mount a formal investigation. But in its report, finally published last month, the IPCC found “support for the allegation” that three senior police officers in command at Orgreave had “made up an untrue account exaggerating the degree of violence (in particular missile throwing)” from miners to justify their use of force and the charges of riot. The report said one of these most senior officers had his statement typed and witnessed by another officer who led a team of detectives which, the IPCC said, dictated those identical opening paragraphs of junior officers’ statements.The report says the BBC had indeed reversed footage in its news broadcast that night, an accusation the BBC has never officially accepted. Explosively, the IPCC revealed for the first time that South Yorkshire police, when contemplating the civil claims, recognised there had been some excessive violence by officers and perjury in the trial that followed, but covered it up. The force settled the claims, the IPCC stated, “very much prompted” by senior officers’ knowledge of this misconduct. The BBC and its coverage of the battle of Orgreave | Letters Three decades on, former miners and their supporters in the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign believe they have been vindicated, but feel frustrated by the IPCC’s decision not to formally investigate. The call for a public inquiry, or a Hillsborough-style disclosure of all police documents to an independent panel, is backed by dozens of Labour MPs, including party the leadership frontrunners Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. May faces a difficult decision, of course, in confronting the established police narrative, which many in her own party still believe. But the campaign has already found her more receptive than might have been assumed of a Conservative home secretary. In her support for several new inquiries, the new Hillsborough inquests and criminal investigations, and a starkly challenging speech last year to the Police Federation, May has consistently been intolerant of police malpractice. And there are wider reasons for her to set up a public inquiry or an independent panel to review the evidence. Police in many mining communities remain widely and deeply distrusted, which the acknowledgement of lingering injustice could help to reconcile, locally and nationally. More broadly, Orgreave was a landmark event in British history, pivotal not only to the ultimate defeat of the miners’ strike, but to the closure of the mines and other major industries that followed, and it is important the nation knows the truth. Most basically, the police, who have the vital and difficult job of upholding the law, stand accused of grave criminal acts, and it is hard to justify their being tolerated just because time has passed. If May rejects an inquiry, she risks in effect sanctioning the years of lies, and sending the message she has set her tenure against: that cover-ups do work, if the lid can be kept on them for long enough.' The police lied, politicians lied, and the Beeb lied to the point they actually reversed footage showing the miners attacking first when it was actually the police. Fucking scandalous, shows how deep rooted the Tories hatred of the working class truly goes. As the song goes 'Thatcher is a Cunt', never a truer word sang. Mrs x Disgusting thing to post. You ought to be ashamed of yourself . Why should she be ashamed? Which bit of the very long post do you object to? Her final sentence. It’s perfectly possible to say you don’t agree with a policy without repeatedly referring to the decision maker in such disgusting terms. What's really disgusting is your outrage of my calling Thatcher a cunt and not being outraged by what that despicable woman did to our population. She was evil itself. Mrs x" I am no fan of thatcher, but choose to express criticisms in proper language rather than stoop to the level that you have repeated done. The forum mods always say to keep it light on the forum, as it’s supposed to be fun. | |||
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"'Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990.' Labour 354/(358 inc 4 Callaghan) closed, Tories 387 closed. So Tories closed 29 more in this period. But it's not just how many they closed but why. Labour closed inefficient pits as did most Tories but Thatcher was a totally different story... 'Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments. The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair. Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that: “The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.” The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome: “Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.” Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that. 43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry. As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week: “Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’ “Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’: “…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’” So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy. But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage. So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.' But carry on with your pro Thatcher narrative and don't let the truth stand in the way of your story. Mrs x So various leaders from different parties closed huge numbers of mines, but it’s all thatcher’s fault? I see. You accuse others of “pro thatcher” narrative, while producing a one-eyed anti-thatcher narrative, apparently without s hint of irony. " the plan to undertake mass closures of pits in the 1980s was the so called Ridley Plan, after Nicholas Ridley. Even efficient pits were to be closed and replaced by open cast mining, which was very profitable for landowners like the Ridley family, who went on to have huge opencast mines on their land around Blaydon in Northumberland. Funny, that. Oh and on the pit closures row, the stats are hugely unreliable sinc pit mergers (like three pits going into one near me, with no job losses) would count as two closures. | |||
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"'Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990.' Labour 354/(358 inc 4 Callaghan) closed, Tories 387 closed. So Tories closed 29 more in this period. But it's not just how many they closed but why. Labour closed inefficient pits as did most Tories but Thatcher was a totally different story... 'Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments. The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair. Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that: “The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.” The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome: “Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.” Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that. 43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry. As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week: “Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’ “Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’: “…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’” So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy. But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage. So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.' But carry on with your pro Thatcher narrative and don't let the truth stand in the way of your story. Mrs x So various leaders from different parties closed huge numbers of mines, but it’s all thatcher’s fault? I see. You accuse others of “pro thatcher” narrative, while producing a one-eyed anti-thatcher narrative, apparently without s hint of irony. the plan to undertake mass closures of pits in the 1980s was the so called Ridley Plan, after Nicholas Ridley. Even efficient pits were to be closed and replaced by open cast mining, which was very profitable for landowners like the Ridley family, who went on to have huge opencast mines on their land around Blaydon in Northumberland. Funny, that. Oh and on the pit closures row, the stats are hugely unreliable sinc pit mergers (like three pits going into one near me, with no job losses) would count as two closures. " Unlike other prime ministers who closed inefficient mines she just wanted to destroy the industry just to attack the unions, you only need to read her memoirs. Mrs x | |||
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"'Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990.' Labour 354/(358 inc 4 Callaghan) closed, Tories 387 closed. So Tories closed 29 more in this period. But it's not just how many they closed but why. Labour closed inefficient pits as did most Tories but Thatcher was a totally different story... 'Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments. The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair. Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that: “The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.” The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome: “Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.” Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that. 43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry. As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week: “Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’ “Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’: “…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’” So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy. But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage. So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.' But carry on with your pro Thatcher narrative and don't let the truth stand in the way of your story. Mrs x So various leaders from different parties closed huge numbers of mines, but it’s all thatcher’s fault? I see. You accuse others of “pro thatcher” narrative, while producing a one-eyed anti-thatcher narrative, apparently without s hint of irony. the plan to undertake mass closures of pits in the 1980s was the so called Ridley Plan, after Nicholas Ridley. Even efficient pits were to be closed and replaced by open cast mining, which was very profitable for landowners like the Ridley family, who went on to have huge opencast mines on their land around Blaydon in Northumberland. Funny, that. Oh and on the pit closures row, the stats are hugely unreliable sinc pit mergers (like three pits going into one near me, with no job losses) would count as two closures. Unlike other prime ministers who closed inefficient mines she just wanted to destroy the industry just to attack the unions, you only need to read her memoirs. Mrs x" Indeed, and not a moment too soon. The country was being (mis)run by Trade Unions and not the elected representatives of the people. | |||
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"'Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990.' Labour 354/(358 inc 4 Callaghan) closed, Tories 387 closed. So Tories closed 29 more in this period. But it's not just how many they closed but why. Labour closed inefficient pits as did most Tories but Thatcher was a totally different story... 'Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments. The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair. Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that: “The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.” The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome: “Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.” Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that. 43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry. As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week: “Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’ “Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’: “…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’” So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy. But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage. So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.' But carry on with your pro Thatcher narrative and don't let the truth stand in the way of your story. Mrs x So various leaders from different parties closed huge numbers of mines, but it’s all thatcher’s fault? I see. You accuse others of “pro thatcher” narrative, while producing a one-eyed anti-thatcher narrative, apparently without s hint of irony. the plan to undertake mass closures of pits in the 1980s was the so called Ridley Plan, after Nicholas Ridley. Even efficient pits were to be closed and replaced by open cast mining, which was very profitable for landowners like the Ridley family, who went on to have huge opencast mines on their land around Blaydon in Northumberland. Funny, that. Oh and on the pit closures row, the stats are hugely unreliable sinc pit mergers (like three pits going into one near me, with no job losses) would count as two closures. Unlike other prime ministers who closed inefficient mines she just wanted to destroy the industry just to attack the unions, you only need to read her memoirs. Mrs x Indeed, and not a moment too soon. The country was being (mis)run by Trade Unions and not the elected representatives of the people." You are welcome to your opinion but when the Beeb and the Police lie to support a cunt like Thatcher then you are right the country was being run corrupted, just not by the people you suggest. Mrs x | |||
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"'Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990.' Labour 354/(358 inc 4 Callaghan) closed, Tories 387 closed. So Tories closed 29 more in this period. But it's not just how many they closed but why. Labour closed inefficient pits as did most Tories but Thatcher was a totally different story... 'Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments. The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair. Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that: “The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.” The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome: “Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.” Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that. 43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry. As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week: “Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’ “Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’: “…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’” So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy. But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage. So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.' But carry on with your pro Thatcher narrative and don't let the truth stand in the way of your story. Mrs x So various leaders from different parties closed huge numbers of mines, but it’s all thatcher’s fault? I see. You accuse others of “pro thatcher” narrative, while producing a one-eyed anti-thatcher narrative, apparently without s hint of irony. the plan to undertake mass closures of pits in the 1980s was the so called Ridley Plan, after Nicholas Ridley. Even efficient pits were to be closed and replaced by open cast mining, which was very profitable for landowners like the Ridley family, who went on to have huge opencast mines on their land around Blaydon in Northumberland. Funny, that. Oh and on the pit closures row, the stats are hugely unreliable sinc pit mergers (like three pits going into one near me, with no job losses) would count as two closures. Unlike other prime ministers who closed inefficient mines she just wanted to destroy the industry just to attack the unions, you only need to read her memoirs. Mrs x Indeed, and not a moment too soon. The country was being (mis)run by Trade Unions and not the elected representatives of the people.You are welcome to your opinion but when the Beeb and the Police lie to support a cunt like Thatcher then you are right the country was being run corrupted, just not by the people you suggest. Mrs x " It's not an opinion, it's a plain fact. The UK was a complete basket case before Thatcher stood-up to the Unions. She was democratically elected on a mandate to turn the country around, and that she did. Some didn't like the nasty medicine mind   | |||
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"'Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990.' Labour 354/(358 inc 4 Callaghan) closed, Tories 387 closed. So Tories closed 29 more in this period. But it's not just how many they closed but why. Labour closed inefficient pits as did most Tories but Thatcher was a totally different story... 'Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments. The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair. Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that: “The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.” The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome: “Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.” Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that. 43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry. As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week: “Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’ “Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’: “…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’” So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy. But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage. So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.' But carry on with your pro Thatcher narrative and don't let the truth stand in the way of your story. Mrs x So various leaders from different parties closed huge numbers of mines, but it’s all thatcher’s fault? I see. You accuse others of “pro thatcher” narrative, while producing a one-eyed anti-thatcher narrative, apparently without s hint of irony. the plan to undertake mass closures of pits in the 1980s was the so called Ridley Plan, after Nicholas Ridley. Even efficient pits were to be closed and replaced by open cast mining, which was very profitable for landowners like the Ridley family, who went on to have huge opencast mines on their land around Blaydon in Northumberland. Funny, that. Oh and on the pit closures row, the stats are hugely unreliable sinc pit mergers (like three pits going into one near me, with no job losses) would count as two closures. Unlike other prime ministers who closed inefficient mines she just wanted to destroy the industry just to attack the unions, you only need to read her memoirs. Mrs x Indeed, and not a moment too soon. The country was being (mis)run by Trade Unions and not the elected representatives of the people.You are welcome to your opinion but when the Beeb and the Police lie to support a cunt like Thatcher then you are right the country was being run corrupted, just not by the people you suggest. Mrs x It's not an opinion, it's a plain fact. The UK was a complete basket case before Thatcher stood-up to the Unions. She was democratically elected on a mandate to turn the country around, and that she did. Some didn't like the nasty medicine mind "It's not a fact, it's your opinion, that's all. You are arguing against facts, those of which I've posted and if you don't like it take it up with them. It's not necessarily my opinion, it's based on the facts that happened. It's called the truth. Loads of people don't like it it seems, Mrs x | |||
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"'Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990.' Labour 354/(358 inc 4 Callaghan) closed, Tories 387 closed. So Tories closed 29 more in this period. But it's not just how many they closed but why. Labour closed inefficient pits as did most Tories but Thatcher was a totally different story... 'Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments. The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair. Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that: “The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.” The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome: “Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.” Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that. 43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry. As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week: “Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’ “Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’: “…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’” So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy. But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage. So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.' But carry on with your pro Thatcher narrative and don't let the truth stand in the way of your story. Mrs x So various leaders from different parties closed huge numbers of mines, but it’s all thatcher’s fault? I see. You accuse others of “pro thatcher” narrative, while producing a one-eyed anti-thatcher narrative, apparently without s hint of irony. the plan to undertake mass closures of pits in the 1980s was the so called Ridley Plan, after Nicholas Ridley. Even efficient pits were to be closed and replaced by open cast mining, which was very profitable for landowners like the Ridley family, who went on to have huge opencast mines on their land around Blaydon in Northumberland. Funny, that. Oh and on the pit closures row, the stats are hugely unreliable sinc pit mergers (like three pits going into one near me, with no job losses) would count as two closures. Unlike other prime ministers who closed inefficient mines she just wanted to destroy the industry just to attack the unions, you only need to read her memoirs. Mrs x Indeed, and not a moment too soon. The country was being (mis)run by Trade Unions and not the elected representatives of the people.You are welcome to your opinion but when the Beeb and the Police lie to support a cunt like Thatcher then you are right the country was being run corrupted, just not by the people you suggest. Mrs x It's not an opinion, it's a plain fact. The UK was a complete basket case before Thatcher stood-up to the Unions. She was democratically elected on a mandate to turn the country around, and that she did. Some didn't like the nasty medicine mind It's not a fact, it's your opinion, that's all. You are arguing against facts, those of which I've posted and if you don't like it take it up with them. It's not necessarily my opinion, it's based on the facts that happened.
It's called the truth. Loads of people don't like it it seems, Mrs x"OK then, let's examine the 'facts' in the years preceding Thatcher:- - Rampant inflation - Crippling unemployment. - Endless strikes in the public - Industry working a 3 day week - Electricity off frequently - Knee high rubbish on the streets - Begging the IMF for bailouts. That bad enough for you? It's just the facts after all. | |||
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"'Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990.' Labour 354/(358 inc 4 Callaghan) closed, Tories 387 closed. So Tories closed 29 more in this period. But it's not just how many they closed but why. Labour closed inefficient pits as did most Tories but Thatcher was a totally different story... 'Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments. The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair. Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that: “The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.” The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome: “Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.” Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that. 43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry. As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week: “Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’ “Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’: “…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’” So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy. But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage. So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.' But carry on with your pro Thatcher narrative and don't let the truth stand in the way of your story. Mrs x So various leaders from different parties closed huge numbers of mines, but it’s all thatcher’s fault? I see. You accuse others of “pro thatcher” narrative, while producing a one-eyed anti-thatcher narrative, apparently without s hint of irony. the plan to undertake mass closures of pits in the 1980s was the so called Ridley Plan, after Nicholas Ridley. Even efficient pits were to be closed and replaced by open cast mining, which was very profitable for landowners like the Ridley family, who went on to have huge opencast mines on their land around Blaydon in Northumberland. Funny, that. Oh and on the pit closures row, the stats are hugely unreliable sinc pit mergers (like three pits going into one near me, with no job losses) would count as two closures. Unlike other prime ministers who closed inefficient mines she just wanted to destroy the industry just to attack the unions, you only need to read her memoirs. Mrs x Indeed, and not a moment too soon. The country was being (mis)run by Trade Unions and not the elected representatives of the people.You are welcome to your opinion but when the Beeb and the Police lie to support a cunt like Thatcher then you are right the country was being run corrupted, just not by the people you suggest. Mrs x It's not an opinion, it's a plain fact. The UK was a complete basket case before Thatcher stood-up to the Unions. She was democratically elected on a mandate to turn the country around, and that she did. Some didn't like the nasty medicine mind It's not a fact, it's your opinion, that's all. You are arguing against facts, those of which I've posted and if you don't like it take it up with them. It's not necessarily my opinion, it's based on the facts that happened.
It's called the truth. Loads of people don't like it it seems, Mrs x
OK then, let's examine the 'facts' in the years preceding Thatcher:-
- Rampant inflation
- Crippling unemployment.
- Endless strikes in the public
- Industry working a 3 day week
- Electricity off frequently
- Knee high rubbish on the streets
- Begging the IMF for bailouts.
That bad enough for you? It's just the facts after all.
"Thanks for that. But why just quote the headlines without giving any actual news. Yes all these soundbites occurred but the question is why? And were the unions responsible for this? You are also missing out the biggest player in what actually happened here. The Oil Crisis of 1973 played the biggest role in almost all of the areas you mention. Even though it did help bring down Heaths government, lead to inflation, and eventually affect unemployment the 70s was definitely a decade of 2 halves. When we recall the 70s, we often think of nationwide hardship. It is characterised as a decade of strikes, the three-day week, sky-high inflation - and finally, streets strewn with rubbish. But, economically speaking, it wasn’t all bad – especially not at the start. ‘Early on in the decade, we had a booming economy,’ says PWC chief economist John Hawksworth when discussing the 1970s. And that means things weren't as bad throughout the 1970s as often characterised. Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG Group agrees: ‘Lots of people remember the dim and dark back-end of the 70s and their view is coloured by that. 'But at the start of the decade, we had a period of record low unemployment,’ he says. The post-war years were characterised by this buoyant jobs market. Between 1945 and 1975 the unemployment rate barely exceeded three or four per cent. There were two driving forces behind it. Firstly, it was a great period of British manufacturing. ‘People think of the 19th century as the greatest time for British manufacturing, but actually, in the post-war years we had very strong manufacturing levels – in fact the strongest it has ever been,’ Beauchamp says. And the Government – headed up by Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath – proactively worked to maintain the country's position as a global, industrial powerhouse. Beauchamp explains that the ‘activist’ Government was ‘loyal to the state industries’. Certain policies and a conscious effort to promote British exports helped to buoy the UK’s dominance in this field and therefore support the jobs market. ‘It helped that other major trading partners had been so badly beaten down by the war that they didn’t really begin to eat into the UK’s pre-eminence in manufacturing until the early 70s,’ he adds. Secondly, there was the strength of the trade unions. Strong representation from the unions meant there was good protection for workers and a company couldn't get away with shedding large numbers of employees. What's more, through much Government and union bargaining, wages were kept low, which meant it wasn’t a huge stretch for companies to take on more staff. ‘The unions being invited into the Government to talk about wages is so alien from what we think about now, but that was the rule,’ Beauchamp notes. Politicians were particularly keen to ensure people had jobs to go to because they were ‘frightened’ of going back to the extreme unemployment levels Britain suffered through in the 30s, Hawksworth adds. It was only towards the end of the decade when the trade unions started to push Government for wage increases after years of pay freezes that there was a huge fallout, and the troubles which colour most people’s perception of the 70s really kicked off. In 1973 the UK was hit by an oil crisis that sent the cost of the black stuff soaring. It was a fallout from the Yom Kippur War: Oil giant Opec (which at the time dominated around 60 per cent of the world’s oil market) stopped supply to the West. Firms started to lay off workers, wages didn’t rise to keep pace with rocketing inflation and it’s easy to see how discontent brimmed Chris Beauchamp, IG Before long, oil prices in the UK had quadrupled, pulling the rug out from beneath many of its biggest companies. ‘It goes back to that classic idea that higher oil prices hurt economic growth,’ says Beauchamp. ‘When you jack prices up by the amount they did in the 70s, of course it does! 'Firms started to lay off workers, wages didn’t rise to keep pace with rocketing inflation and it’s easy to see how discontent brimmed and Britain ended up with national strikes.' This led to major industrial action by miners in 1974. In the years that followed, the record-low unemployment levels were ‘shattered’. And inflation swelled as well, from low single digits to around 24 per cent by 1975 – the highest level in decades. A Treasury answer to a question put to then Chancellor Gordon Brown in 2004, published by Hansard, reveals how wages shot up in the 70s. In 1974, New Earnings Survey data survey showed the average full-time weekly wages as £41.70 (£2,168 per year) In 1975, this had jumped to £54 (£2,808 per year) - putting wage inflation at 29.5% that year. The Opec crisis is often seen as the point at which Britain woke up to its vulnerability to fundamental shifts in the global economy. It was also the first time the country experienced ‘stagflation’ – rising inflation and rising unemployment at the same time – which eventually led to the total unwinding of the post-war consensus on how to run the economy. But life got worse a few years later when, in 1978, a wage dispute between Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan and the unions culminated in the Winter of Discontent. Streets were lined with litter, some dead went unburied and parents rushed to feed their own ill children in hospital as everyone from rubbish collectors to grave diggers and nurses went out on strike. Litter mounted on the streets during the Winter of Discontent as collectors went on strike Gravediggers joined the strike action too, meaning that vans were filled with bodies to be embalmed and stored in disused factories Still, the 70s 'wasn't a disaster' on the jobs front, Hawksworth says, because Government was able to keep a handle on unemployment, keeping it mostly under 6 per cent. GDP growth in the 70s actually remained at around 2.6 per cent, which is much higher than the 2 per cent average we’ve seen in Britain for the last 30 years. ‘It had been Government policy to protect jobs, so we didn’t see the same sort devastating job losses in the 70s that we suffered in the 80s,’ Hawksworth explains. ‘When manufacturing got into trouble in those later years, however, Thatcher’s Government refused to protect employment in the same way and jobs were allowed to go to the wall.' In the early 80s, unemployment rocketed to around 12 per cent.' So as you can see the issues from the 70's were not of the unions doing but rather what happened due to the global impact of the Oil Crisis. Unions actually kept wages low, were actually invited into government meetings to discuss issues like this. It was Thatcher that stopped this and went after them purely for ideology. She wanted them destroyed even though they had no part in the issues you mention other than by asking for pay rises to keep up with inflation. They had previously kept wages low and made it attractive for companies to employ workers. Thatcher went after them for no good reason.... but don't let the facts get in the way of your story. Just give headlines and no news, it would make reading books quicker if you just read the chapter titles without reading the actual story. Mrs x | |||
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"'Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990.' Labour 354/(358 inc 4 Callaghan) closed, Tories 387 closed. So Tories closed 29 more in this period. But it's not just how many they closed but why. Labour closed inefficient pits as did most Tories but Thatcher was a totally different story... 'Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments. The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair. Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that: “The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.” The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome: “Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.” Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that. 43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry. As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week: “Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’ “Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’: “…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’” So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy. But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage. So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.' But carry on with your pro Thatcher narrative and don't let the truth stand in the way of your story. Mrs x So various leaders from different parties closed huge numbers of mines, but it’s all thatcher’s fault? I see. You accuse others of “pro thatcher” narrative, while producing a one-eyed anti-thatcher narrative, apparently without s hint of irony. the plan to undertake mass closures of pits in the 1980s was the so called Ridley Plan, after Nicholas Ridley. Even efficient pits were to be closed and replaced by open cast mining, which was very profitable for landowners like the Ridley family, who went on to have huge opencast mines on their land around Blaydon in Northumberland. Funny, that. Oh and on the pit closures row, the stats are hugely unreliable sinc pit mergers (like three pits going into one near me, with no job losses) would count as two closures. Unlike other prime ministers who closed inefficient mines she just wanted to destroy the industry just to attack the unions, you only need to read her memoirs. Mrs x Indeed, and not a moment too soon. The country was being (mis)run by Trade Unions and not the elected representatives of the people.You are welcome to your opinion but when the Beeb and the Police lie to support a cunt like Thatcher then you are right the country was being run corrupted, just not by the people you suggest. Mrs x It's not an opinion, it's a plain fact. The UK was a complete basket case before Thatcher stood-up to the Unions. She was democratically elected on a mandate to turn the country around, and that she did. Some didn't like the nasty medicine mind It's not a fact, it's your opinion, that's all. You are arguing against facts, those of which I've posted and if you don't like it take it up with them. It's not necessarily my opinion, it's based on the facts that happened.
It's called the truth. Loads of people don't like it it seems, Mrs x
OK then, let's examine the 'facts' in the years preceding Thatcher:-
- Rampant inflation
- Crippling unemployment.
- Endless strikes in the public
- Industry working a 3 day week
- Electricity off frequently
- Knee high rubbish on the streets
- Begging the IMF for bailouts.
That bad enough for you? It's just the facts after all.
Thanks for that. But why just quote the headlines without giving any actual news.
Yes all these soundbites occurred but the question is why? And were the unions responsible for this?
You are also missing out the biggest player in what actually happened here. The Oil Crisis of 1973 played the biggest role in almost all of the areas you mention.
Even though it did help bring down Heaths government, lead to inflation, and eventually affect unemployment the 70s was definitely a decade of 2 halves.
When we recall the 70s, we often think of nationwide hardship. It is characterised as a decade of strikes, the three-day week, sky-high inflation - and finally, streets strewn with rubbish.
But, economically speaking, it wasn’t all bad – especially not at the start.
‘Early on in the decade, we had a booming economy,’ says PWC chief economist John Hawksworth when discussing the 1970s.
And that means things weren't as bad throughout the 1970s as often characterised.
Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG Group agrees: ‘Lots of people remember the dim and dark back-end of the 70s and their view is coloured by that.
'But at the start of the decade, we had a period of record low unemployment,’ he says.
The post-war years were characterised by this buoyant jobs market. Between 1945 and 1975 the unemployment rate barely exceeded three or four per cent.
There were two driving forces behind it. Firstly, it was a great period of British manufacturing.
‘People think of the 19th century as the greatest time for British manufacturing, but actually, in the post-war years we had very strong manufacturing levels – in fact the strongest it has ever been,’ Beauchamp says.
And the Government – headed up by Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath – proactively worked to maintain the country's position as a global, industrial powerhouse.
Beauchamp explains that the ‘activist’ Government was ‘loyal to the state industries’. Certain policies and a conscious effort to promote British exports helped to buoy the UK’s dominance in this field and therefore support the jobs market.
‘It helped that other major trading partners had been so badly beaten down by the war that they didn’t really begin to eat into the UK’s pre-eminence in manufacturing until the early 70s,’ he adds.
Secondly, there was the strength of the trade unions.
Strong representation from the unions meant there was good protection for workers and a company couldn't get away with shedding large numbers of employees.
What's more, through much Government and union bargaining, wages were kept low, which meant it wasn’t a huge stretch for companies to take on more staff.
‘The unions being invited into the Government to talk about wages is so alien from what we think about now, but that was the rule,’ Beauchamp notes.
Politicians were particularly keen to ensure people had jobs to go to because they were ‘frightened’ of going back to the extreme unemployment levels Britain suffered through in the 30s, Hawksworth adds.
It was only towards the end of the decade when the trade unions started to push Government for wage increases after years of pay freezes that there was a huge fallout, and the troubles which colour most people’s perception of the 70s really kicked off.
In 1973 the UK was hit by an oil crisis that sent the cost of the black stuff soaring.
It was a fallout from the Yom Kippur War: Oil giant Opec (which at the time dominated around 60 per cent of the world’s oil market) stopped supply to the West.
Firms started to lay off workers, wages didn’t rise to keep pace with rocketing inflation and it’s easy to see how discontent brimmed Chris Beauchamp, IG
Before long, oil prices in the UK had quadrupled, pulling the rug out from beneath many of its biggest companies.
‘It goes back to that classic idea that higher oil prices hurt economic growth,’ says Beauchamp. ‘When you jack prices up by the amount they did in the 70s, of course it does!
'Firms started to lay off workers, wages didn’t rise to keep pace with rocketing inflation and it’s easy to see how discontent brimmed and Britain ended up with national strikes.'
This led to major industrial action by miners in 1974.
In the years that followed, the record-low unemployment levels were ‘shattered’.
And inflation swelled as well, from low single digits to around 24 per cent by 1975 – the highest level in decades.
A Treasury answer to a question put to then Chancellor Gordon Brown in 2004, published by Hansard, reveals how wages shot up in the 70s.
In 1974, New Earnings Survey data survey showed the average full-time weekly wages as £41.70 (£2,168 per year)
In 1975, this had jumped to £54 (£2,808 per year) - putting wage inflation at 29.5% that year.
The Opec crisis is often seen as the point at which Britain woke up to its vulnerability to fundamental shifts in the global economy.
It was also the first time the country experienced ‘stagflation’ – rising inflation and rising unemployment at the same time – which eventually led to the total unwinding of the post-war consensus on how to run the economy.
But life got worse a few years later when, in 1978, a wage dispute between Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan and the unions culminated in the Winter of Discontent.
Streets were lined with litter, some dead went unburied and parents rushed to feed their own ill children in hospital as everyone from rubbish collectors to grave diggers and nurses went out on strike.
Litter mounted on the streets during the Winter of Discontent as collectors went on strike Gravediggers joined the strike action too, meaning that vans were filled with bodies to be embalmed and stored in disused factories
Still, the 70s 'wasn't a disaster' on the jobs front, Hawksworth says, because Government was able to keep a handle on unemployment, keeping it mostly under 6 per cent.
GDP growth in the 70s actually remained at around 2.6 per cent, which is much higher than the 2 per cent average we’ve seen in Britain for the last 30 years.
‘It had been Government policy to protect jobs, so we didn’t see the same sort devastating job losses in the 70s that we suffered in the 80s,’
Hawksworth explains.
‘When manufacturing got into trouble in those later years, however, Thatcher’s Government refused to protect employment in the same way and jobs were allowed to go to the wall.'
In the early 80s, unemployment rocketed to around 12 per cent.'
So as you can see the issues from the 70's were not of the unions doing but rather what happened due to the global impact of the Oil Crisis. Unions actually kept wages low, were actually invited into government meetings to discuss issues like this.
It was Thatcher that stopped this and went after them purely for ideology. She wanted them destroyed even though they had no part in the issues you mention other than by asking for pay rises to keep up with inflation. They had previously kept wages low and made it attractive for companies to employ workers.
Thatcher went after them for no good reason.... but don't let the facts get in the way of your story. Just give headlines and no news, it would make reading books quicker if you just read the chapter titles without reading the actual story.
Mrs x
"I concede that there were external factors like the OPEC oil crisis, but to claim that the Unions "had no part in the issues you mention" is frankly laughable and a gross distortion of what actually happened. Scargill, McGahey, Robinson. Crow et al were political wreckers - the Bolsheviks of their day. Let's not have revisionist history by absolving them from the carnage they created. | |||
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"'Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990.' Labour 354/(358 inc 4 Callaghan) closed, Tories 387 closed. So Tories closed 29 more in this period. But it's not just how many they closed but why. Labour closed inefficient pits as did most Tories but Thatcher was a totally different story... 'Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments. The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair. Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that: “The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.” The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome: “Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.” Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that. 43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry. As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week: “Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’ “Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’: “…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’” So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy. But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage. So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.' But carry on with your pro Thatcher narrative and don't let the truth stand in the way of your story. Mrs x So various leaders from different parties closed huge numbers of mines, but it’s all thatcher’s fault? I see. You accuse others of “pro thatcher” narrative, while producing a one-eyed anti-thatcher narrative, apparently without s hint of irony. the plan to undertake mass closures of pits in the 1980s was the so called Ridley Plan, after Nicholas Ridley. Even efficient pits were to be closed and replaced by open cast mining, which was very profitable for landowners like the Ridley family, who went on to have huge opencast mines on their land around Blaydon in Northumberland. Funny, that. Oh and on the pit closures row, the stats are hugely unreliable sinc pit mergers (like three pits going into one near me, with no job losses) would count as two closures. Unlike other prime ministers who closed inefficient mines she just wanted to destroy the industry just to attack the unions, you only need to read her memoirs. Mrs x Indeed, and not a moment too soon. The country was being (mis)run by Trade Unions and not the elected representatives of the people.You are welcome to your opinion but when the Beeb and the Police lie to support a cunt like Thatcher then you are right the country was being run corrupted, just not by the people you suggest. Mrs x It's not an opinion, it's a plain fact. The UK was a complete basket case before Thatcher stood-up to the Unions. She was democratically elected on a mandate to turn the country around, and that she did. Some didn't like the nasty medicine mind "I wasn’t a fan of much of her work, but standing up to the unions and reclaiming control was her finest achievement, although unpopular in many quarters. Without her agenda and body of work, the country was bankrupt. | |||
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"'Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990.' Labour 354/(358 inc 4 Callaghan) closed, Tories 387 closed. So Tories closed 29 more in this period. But it's not just how many they closed but why. Labour closed inefficient pits as did most Tories but Thatcher was a totally different story... 'Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments. The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair. Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that: “The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.” The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome: “Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.” Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that. 43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry. As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week: “Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’ “Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’: “…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’” So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy. But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage. So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.' But carry on with your pro Thatcher narrative and don't let the truth stand in the way of your story. Mrs x So various leaders from different parties closed huge numbers of mines, but it’s all thatcher’s fault? I see. You accuse others of “pro thatcher” narrative, while producing a one-eyed anti-thatcher narrative, apparently without s hint of irony. the plan to undertake mass closures of pits in the 1980s was the so called Ridley Plan, after Nicholas Ridley. Even efficient pits were to be closed and replaced by open cast mining, which was very profitable for landowners like the Ridley family, who went on to have huge opencast mines on their land around Blaydon in Northumberland. Funny, that. Oh and on the pit closures row, the stats are hugely unreliable sinc pit mergers (like three pits going into one near me, with no job losses) would count as two closures. Unlike other prime ministers who closed inefficient mines she just wanted to destroy the industry just to attack the unions, you only need to read her memoirs. Mrs x Indeed, and not a moment too soon. The country was being (mis)run by Trade Unions and not the elected representatives of the people.You are welcome to your opinion but when the Beeb and the Police lie to support a cunt like Thatcher then you are right the country was being run corrupted, just not by the people you suggest. Mrs x " Again, the c-bomb. Every time you do this, it weakens got credibility | |||
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"'Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990.' Labour 354/(358 inc 4 Callaghan) closed, Tories 387 closed. So Tories closed 29 more in this period. But it's not just how many they closed but why. Labour closed inefficient pits as did most Tories but Thatcher was a totally different story... 'Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments. The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair. Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that: “The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.” The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome: “Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.” Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that. 43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry. As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week: “Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’ “Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’: “…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’” So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy. But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage. So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.' But carry on with your pro Thatcher narrative and don't let the truth stand in the way of your story. Mrs x So various leaders from different parties closed huge numbers of mines, but it’s all thatcher’s fault? I see. You accuse others of “pro thatcher” narrative, while producing a one-eyed anti-thatcher narrative, apparently without s hint of irony. the plan to undertake mass closures of pits in the 1980s was the so called Ridley Plan, after Nicholas Ridley. Even efficient pits were to be closed and replaced by open cast mining, which was very profitable for landowners like the Ridley family, who went on to have huge opencast mines on their land around Blaydon in Northumberland. Funny, that. Oh and on the pit closures row, the stats are hugely unreliable sinc pit mergers (like three pits going into one near me, with no job losses) would count as two closures. Unlike other prime ministers who closed inefficient mines she just wanted to destroy the industry just to attack the unions, you only need to read her memoirs. Mrs x Indeed, and not a moment too soon. The country was being (mis)run by Trade Unions and not the elected representatives of the people.You are welcome to your opinion but when the Beeb and the Police lie to support a cunt like Thatcher then you are right the country was being run corrupted, just not by the people you suggest. Mrs x It's not an opinion, it's a plain fact. The UK was a complete basket case before Thatcher stood-up to the Unions. She was democratically elected on a mandate to turn the country around, and that she did. Some didn't like the nasty medicine mind It's not a fact, it's your opinion, that's all. You are arguing against facts, those of which I've posted and if you don't like it take it up with them. It's not necessarily my opinion, it's based on the facts that happened.
It's called the truth. Loads of people don't like it it seems, Mrs x
OK then, let's examine the 'facts' in the years preceding Thatcher:-
- Rampant inflation
- Crippling unemployment.
- Endless strikes in the public
- Industry working a 3 day week
- Electricity off frequently
- Knee high rubbish on the streets
- Begging the IMF for bailouts.
That bad enough for you? It's just the facts after all.
Thanks for that. But why just quote the headlines without giving any actual news.
Yes all these soundbites occurred but the question is why? And were the unions responsible for this?
You are also missing out the biggest player in what actually happened here. The Oil Crisis of 1973 played the biggest role in almost all of the areas you mention.
Even though it did help bring down Heaths government, lead to inflation, and eventually affect unemployment the 70s was definitely a decade of 2 halves.
When we recall the 70s, we often think of nationwide hardship. It is characterised as a decade of strikes, the three-day week, sky-high inflation - and finally, streets strewn with rubbish.
But, economically speaking, it wasn’t all bad – especially not at the start.
‘Early on in the decade, we had a booming economy,’ says PWC chief economist John Hawksworth when discussing the 1970s.
And that means things weren't as bad throughout the 1970s as often characterised.
Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG Group agrees: ‘Lots of people remember the dim and dark back-end of the 70s and their view is coloured by that.
'But at the start of the decade, we had a period of record low unemployment,’ he says.
The post-war years were characterised by this buoyant jobs market. Between 1945 and 1975 the unemployment rate barely exceeded three or four per cent.
There were two driving forces behind it. Firstly, it was a great period of British manufacturing.
‘People think of the 19th century as the greatest time for British manufacturing, but actually, in the post-war years we had very strong manufacturing levels – in fact the strongest it has ever been,’ Beauchamp says.
And the Government – headed up by Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath – proactively worked to maintain the country's position as a global, industrial powerhouse.
Beauchamp explains that the ‘activist’ Government was ‘loyal to the state industries’. Certain policies and a conscious effort to promote British exports helped to buoy the UK’s dominance in this field and therefore support the jobs market.
‘It helped that other major trading partners had been so badly beaten down by the war that they didn’t really begin to eat into the UK’s pre-eminence in manufacturing until the early 70s,’ he adds.
Secondly, there was the strength of the trade unions.
Strong representation from the unions meant there was good protection for workers and a company couldn't get away with shedding large numbers of employees.
What's more, through much Government and union bargaining, wages were kept low, which meant it wasn’t a huge stretch for companies to take on more staff.
‘The unions being invited into the Government to talk about wages is so alien from what we think about now, but that was the rule,’ Beauchamp notes.
Politicians were particularly keen to ensure people had jobs to go to because they were ‘frightened’ of going back to the extreme unemployment levels Britain suffered through in the 30s, Hawksworth adds.
It was only towards the end of the decade when the trade unions started to push Government for wage increases after years of pay freezes that there was a huge fallout, and the troubles which colour most people’s perception of the 70s really kicked off.
In 1973 the UK was hit by an oil crisis that sent the cost of the black stuff soaring.
It was a fallout from the Yom Kippur War: Oil giant Opec (which at the time dominated around 60 per cent of the world’s oil market) stopped supply to the West.
Firms started to lay off workers, wages didn’t rise to keep pace with rocketing inflation and it’s easy to see how discontent brimmed Chris Beauchamp, IG
Before long, oil prices in the UK had quadrupled, pulling the rug out from beneath many of its biggest companies.
‘It goes back to that classic idea that higher oil prices hurt economic growth,’ says Beauchamp. ‘When you jack prices up by the amount they did in the 70s, of course it does!
'Firms started to lay off workers, wages didn’t rise to keep pace with rocketing inflation and it’s easy to see how discontent brimmed and Britain ended up with national strikes.'
This led to major industrial action by miners in 1974.
In the years that followed, the record-low unemployment levels were ‘shattered’.
And inflation swelled as well, from low single digits to around 24 per cent by 1975 – the highest level in decades.
A Treasury answer to a question put to then Chancellor Gordon Brown in 2004, published by Hansard, reveals how wages shot up in the 70s.
In 1974, New Earnings Survey data survey showed the average full-time weekly wages as £41.70 (£2,168 per year)
In 1975, this had jumped to £54 (£2,808 per year) - putting wage inflation at 29.5% that year.
The Opec crisis is often seen as the point at which Britain woke up to its vulnerability to fundamental shifts in the global economy.
It was also the first time the country experienced ‘stagflation’ – rising inflation and rising unemployment at the same time – which eventually led to the total unwinding of the post-war consensus on how to run the economy.
But life got worse a few years later when, in 1978, a wage dispute between Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan and the unions culminated in the Winter of Discontent.
Streets were lined with litter, some dead went unburied and parents rushed to feed their own ill children in hospital as everyone from rubbish collectors to grave diggers and nurses went out on strike.
Litter mounted on the streets during the Winter of Discontent as collectors went on strike Gravediggers joined the strike action too, meaning that vans were filled with bodies to be embalmed and stored in disused factories
Still, the 70s 'wasn't a disaster' on the jobs front, Hawksworth says, because Government was able to keep a handle on unemployment, keeping it mostly under 6 per cent.
GDP growth in the 70s actually remained at around 2.6 per cent, which is much higher than the 2 per cent average we’ve seen in Britain for the last 30 years.
‘It had been Government policy to protect jobs, so we didn’t see the same sort devastating job losses in the 70s that we suffered in the 80s,’
Hawksworth explains.
‘When manufacturing got into trouble in those later years, however, Thatcher’s Government refused to protect employment in the same way and jobs were allowed to go to the wall.'
In the early 80s, unemployment rocketed to around 12 per cent.'
So as you can see the issues from the 70's were not of the unions doing but rather what happened due to the global impact of the Oil Crisis. Unions actually kept wages low, were actually invited into government meetings to discuss issues like this.
It was Thatcher that stopped this and went after them purely for ideology. She wanted them destroyed even though they had no part in the issues you mention other than by asking for pay rises to keep up with inflation. They had previously kept wages low and made it attractive for companies to employ workers.
Thatcher went after them for no good reason.... but don't let the facts get in the way of your story. Just give headlines and no news, it would make reading books quicker if you just read the chapter titles without reading the actual story.
Mrs x
I concede that there were external factors like the OPEC oil crisis, but to claim that the Unions "had no part in the issues you mention" is frankly laughable and a gross distortion of what actually happened. Scargill, McGahey, Robinson. Crow et al were political wreckers - the Bolsheviks of their day. Let's not have revisionist history by absolving them from the carnage they created.
"I don't know what you do, what your field is but I post an actual article from a non partisan media outlet and you still refuse to accept what tge say. The piece is from This Is Money, which clearly states that the unions in the 70s helped keep wages low and helped companies employ workers. It also says the time honoured process was broken by Thatcher. So other than asking for higher wages due to the increase of inflation, which was six times higher than today, what did the unions do wrong? Wages weren't keeping up with inflation so of course the unions would pursue higher wages for its members, that's common sense. So until you can provide some facts it's just your opinion, and unless you are an expert in this field it's just your 'lay person' opinion against experts in their field. Mrs x | |||
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"'Clement Attlee’s Labour government closed 101 pits between 1947 and 1951; Macmillan (Conservative) closed 246 pits between 1957 and 1963; Wilson (Labour) closed 253 in his two terms in office between 1964 and 1976; Heath (Conservative) closed 26 between 1970 and 1974; and Thatcher (Conservative) closed 115 between 1979 and 1990.' Labour 354/(358 inc 4 Callaghan) closed, Tories 387 closed. So Tories closed 29 more in this period. But it's not just how many they closed but why. Labour closed inefficient pits as did most Tories but Thatcher was a totally different story... 'Amid the concerted attempts to reinvent the Thatcher years in recent days, an intriguing, counter-intuitive claim has been doing the rounds that rather than being the enemy of coal mining Margaret Thatcher was actually kinder to the industry than previous governments. The inference seems to be that the lingering animosity towards Mrs Thatcher, particularly in many former mining communities which have celebrated her demise in passing days, is somehow unfair. Alastair Heath in the Daily Mail (where else?) argued that: “The slow demise of coal mining has been a tragedy for many communities, and the cause of much suffering. But more mines were closed during Harold Wilson’s two terms in office than in Thatcher’s three – and yet he remains a left-wing hero.” The point was echoed over at ConservativeHome: “Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.” Unsurprisingly, both are being highly selective with the facts. The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that. 43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher. Also, as the trend rate of economic growth was lower under Thatcher than Wilson (just 2.8 per cent compared to 3.4 per cent) and unemployment was considerably higher throughout the 1980s than the 1960s, redundant miners had fewer alternative job options as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s stewardship of the industry. As former NUM official Ken Capstick put it in The Guardian this week: “Miners had always known that eventually any of the colleries would close and were always prepared to accept that as a fact of life and find employment somewhere else within the industry, but Thatcher’s attack was wholesale. It was seen for what it was, nothing to do with economics, but purely an attempt to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers by wiping out the entire industry.’ “Thatcher was hardly a benign force when it came to coal mining, despite what some of her admirers would now have us believe. She accelerated the trend decline in coal for ideological reasons, using the 1984-85 miners’ strike to break the industry while waging a wider battle against organised labour. Indeed, she records her attitude to the miners in her memoir, ‘The Downing Street Years’: “…it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants.’” So striking miners were infamously described by her as ‘the enemy within’, with the security service MI5 was set loose on them. More recently, allegations that officers conspired to lie in witness statements during the ‘Battle of Ogreave’ – (when 10,000 strikers clashed with 5,000 police at Orgreave Colliery in South Yorkshire in June 1984) – have gained fresh urgency following the revelation that the police used the same modus operandi straight after the Hillsborough tragedy. But many in mining communities also recall the special callousness directed towards them by Thatcher. Striking miners’ wives were denied hardship payments (which they had always previously been able to claim during a strike), with some reduced to selling wedding rings to feed their families as they struggled during the latter stages of the year-long stoppage. So this attempt to rehabilitate Mrs Thatcher’s legacy is a revision of history too far. I’m afraid many mining communities continue to despise Mrs Thatcher for entirely sound, evidence-based reasons.' But carry on with your pro Thatcher narrative and don't let the truth stand in the way of your story. Mrs x So various leaders from different parties closed huge numbers of mines, but it’s all thatcher’s fault? I see. You accuse others of “pro thatcher” narrative, while producing a one-eyed anti-thatcher narrative, apparently without s hint of irony. the plan to undertake mass closures of pits in the 1980s was the so called Ridley Plan, after Nicholas Ridley. Even efficient pits were to be closed and replaced by open cast mining, which was very profitable for landowners like the Ridley family, who went on to have huge opencast mines on their land around Blaydon in Northumberland. Funny, that. Oh and on the pit closures row, the stats are hugely unreliable sinc pit mergers (like three pits going into one near me, with no job losses) would count as two closures. Unlike other prime ministers who closed inefficient mines she just wanted to destroy the industry just to attack the unions, you only need to read her memoirs. Mrs x Indeed, and not a moment too soon. The country was being (mis)run by Trade Unions and not the elected representatives of the people.You are welcome to your opinion but when the Beeb and the Police lie to support a cunt like Thatcher then you are right the country was being run corrupted, just not by the people you suggest. Mrs x Again, the c-bomb. Every time you do this, it weakens got credibility " The problem you have is you're confused about me. I'm not looking for credibility. I am simply putting forward the opinions of experts in their field and facts about what actually happened. This person ruined the lives of individuals for having the cheek to ask for wages which could keep up with the inflation rates at the time, she used the police as storm troopers to attack individuals who had lawfully exercised their right to withdraw their labour, she used the media to paint a different narrative from the truth because the police attack the miners first at Orgreave and she did this to manipulate the publics opinion of the striker, she sold of council housing stock which has caused massive problems today with the shortage if affordable housing and homelessness, she sent an armada 8000 miles away to fight for islands she wanted to give up two years earlier which saw hundreds of families lose loved ones in a cynical attempt to reverse the Tories terrible poll ratings and which helped her win an election she wasn't going to win, she put a city into 'managed decline' because she hated its population and the politics of its leaders. So you may be triggered by what I call her but it's disgusting that you are not triggered more by what she actually did. I sometimes wish she was alive now so I she could die again. She was a cunt and not just to me but lots of people think this too. Whether it weakens my credibility I don't care. I'm not looking for credibility. At least when I say something there's normally some facts, from a reliable source to back it up. Believe them or don't, I don't card, but listening to the 'opinions' of those that don't follow up their opinions with any facts is a waste of time in my opinion. Mrs x | |||
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