Desperate times...

Twenty-eight years ago last Monday began one of the most bitter industrial disputes this country has ever seen. It was March 5th 1984 and the miners in Yorkshire went on strike. They were soon joined by miners from all over the country. The dispute lasted a year, put an end to coal mining as a major UK industry and tested the resolve of the miners who suffered great hardships during that year long strike.

"We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty" - so said Margaret Thatcher about the miners' strike. You've no doubt heard many stories over the years of miners breaking the law during this action; either through riots at picket lines and rallies or through the use of flying pickets. I dare say there's much truth in these stories. These were desperate times.

What you won't hear so much is of the police brutality when mounted officers charged against picket lines or when they goaded miners to retaliate. You won't hear of Thatcher's government ordering the illegal sequestration of strike funds or the illegal tapping of phone lines. You won't hear of the libelous stories served up daily in some tabloid newspapers. These were, indeed, desperate times.

My own perspective was of a time when political connections were created. For the first time I saw working class communities ally themselves with minority groups they had hitherto kept an unfamiliar distance from: the feminist movement, the peace movement, student politics and the lesbian and gay movement. Students stood shoulder to shoulder with miners on picket lines, miners' wives visited the women at Greenham Common to thank them for donations, Sian James, a miner's wife from South Wales, addressed the London Lesbian and Gay Pride rally following support from Lesbians and Gays Support The Miners.

Furthermore, the mining communities started to to question the media where before they had accepted what was said. They questioned the BBC after they lied about the miners instigating, what became known as, The Battle of Orgreave. They stopped buying The Sun after it repeatedly portrayed them as the enemy. They ceased their unquestioning respect for the village bobby after their first hand experience of police violence.

Radical politics seem to have melted away. With the demise of Thatcher and the unions and the fading of her legacy, we no longer live in what most people would perceive as desperate times. The police are no longer trusted blindly as they once were. The media are no more believed as organs of the gospel truth.

The world has changed much. I dare say the connections made during this bitter dispute that happened 28 long years ago have a lot to do with social and cultural changes in the UK over the last three decades. As a gay man I have seen a growing acceptance of my sexuality and it is my belief that some of the seeds were sown during those desperate times.

Only connect...