The Death of Margaret Thatcher - The Orwellian Catalyst

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By Thomas Sheridan

When I first began researching political psychopathology back in the 1990′s, I managed, through a music group, to get in contact with an English policeman who found himself in the middle of Thatcher’s Miner’s Strike which was the catalyst of social reengineering to bring about the increasingly Orwellian state we have today. I have been saving this letter for today:

Thatcher was manipulating the situation for her own political gain. At the beginning of the strike the family and community bonds between the police and miners worked well to make the strike  peaceful and ordered.

Things began to go wrong when a few miners, one in particular decided to break the strike. At the time nobody could understand why he wanted to break the strike, but eventually it was discovered that not only was he a registered mental health patient but he’d also been encouraged to stand up for his rights by a local Conservative politician. Seeing this guy breaking the strike and thus turning against his own kind, his own community, caused much anger in the pit villages.  This lead to minor violence and then an steady increase in the level of violence.

In the end the police were escorting this single man into a closed pit using mounted police, an armoured bus and literally hundreds of police. Once he was inside he had to be guarded all the time, and then we went through the whole farce again to get him out at the end of the day.  The silly thing was that he had nothing to do once he was at work because the pit was closed anyway!

The local police wanted to prevent him from entering the pit on the  grounds that his actions were the cause of the disturbances, but the political directive was that he MUST be allowed to enter the pit if he wanted to.  This is an interesting fact since the police were allowed to prevent others from entering the area, but not him.

The Tory government passed laws prohibiting what is called  Secondary Picketing. This means that workers can only picket their own place of work. Any picket from another location isn’t a ‘legal’ picket and is breaking the law.

This allowed the police to stop vehicles entering the strike areas and turn away anyone whom they suspected of being a secondary picket or being likely to contribute to a breach of the peace. The ‘strike area’ was interpreted as up to 100 miles away from the pits on occasions for the breach of the peace, and anywhere in the country for the secondary picketing. 

Incredible how in a so called free country Thatcher’s government abused the law like this.  There was no reason for such conduct other than to increase tension and further the downfall of the miners.

The real turning point came with the deployment of officers  from the rest of the country, the Met in particular. It was these  officers who enabled Thatcher to break the strike. They did the  following:

1. They photocopied and coloured in five pound notes, then stuck them all over the windows of their riot vans.  The miners, unpaid for months, didn’t see the funny side of this!

2. They set out to provoke violence by excessive use of force on their part. They would pick on small groups of pickets and push them around. As soon as somebody swore, they’d be arrested, thus normally creating a minor disturbance.  In no time there would be a battle between enraged pickets and the police.  More police, often local, would be called up to help the Met. Regardless, and often ignorant, of the cause of the disturbance they would arrive to find miners fighting police.

Miners were arrested in ‘good faith’ and then the local police were  associated with the bad conduct of the visiting officers.

3. Some visiting officers simply arrested pickets and journalists for  no reason.  Whilst this might have seemed a bit daft, they had a  reason for it.  Towards the end of a tour of duty they’d realise that the double or even triple pay was about to end. If they arrested an innocent person he was almost bound to defend himself and plead not guilty.  That would mean a court case at which the arresting officer and witnesses would have to be present - and that meant an all expenses paid trip back to South Yorkshire, Wales or Scotland, a couple of nights in a hotel and double pay for being on duty away from their home station.  For officers in the Met it was worth 2 days travel minimum, a day in court and two nights in a hotel.

The Met has quite a reputation for the the ignorant and bigoted  attitude of many of it’s officers.  Recruitment has always been  difficult in London and the Met has tended to take anyone it could get.   If you failed every school exam you could still get a job in the police by passing a very simple math and English test.  An actual maths question from the paper was ..

10+5 = ?

Ok, so this and the very, very low pay offered by the job until just  before the strike ( co-incidence that Thatcher gave the police a massive pay rise?) meant that many officers tended to be ignorant, short tempered, politically naive and heavy drinkers

Thatcher, who is on record as saying many times that she would break the miners for good, manipulated the whole strike, fully intending to generate violence and hostility all along. She gave the police massive pay rises and new equipment just before and during the strike, buying the political good will of many officers. After the strike, when the Police were no longer needed she cut back the pay rises and reduced the expenditure on Police.

She even encouraged the formation of a breakaway miners union to split the strikers.  The new union was made promises which she knew were lies even when she made them.  As soon as the strike was over the promises were revoked, the pits which she promised would be saved were closed, the jobs were lost and the leader of the breakaway union was rewarded with a government job in charge of re-developing the old pit sites. Sneaky eh?

The effects are still there to see. The pits have gone, but the people remain, out of work and very poor. There is nothing else for them to do. The pit villages were tight communities, often in the middle of nowhere. 

There have been very few re-investments in the areas and the majority of the population will never get another job.  This has increased poverty, crime and depression.

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