‘It seems there are some who are out to destroy any properly elected government. To bring down the framework of the law. This is what has been seen in this strike –
‘But the law they seek to defy is the common law, upheld by fearless judges and passed down across the centuries. It is legislation scrutinized and enacted by the Parliament of a free people. It is British justice and it is renowned across the world.
‘This nation faces what is probably the most testing crisis of our time –
‘The battle between the extremists and the rest.
‘But we fight as we have always fought, for the weak as well as the strong –
‘For great and good causes –
‘To defend against the power and might of those who rise up to challenge them.
‘This government will not weaken. This nation will meet that challenge –
‘Democracy will prevail!’
It is the speech of her life; the life she almost lost.
The Jew is on his feet with the entire hall. The Jew applauds with the entire hall –
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight –
For eight minutes the hall applauds.
The Jew has tears running down his face, tears streaming over his skin –
Streaming down mountains. Running in rivers –
Rivers of blood. Mountains of skulls.
Martin
cars before it. Ten cop cars after it — Flies past us at eighty mile an hour. Right up Pit Lane and in — That’s that then, I think. Think wrong — Turn round to see this police Transit coming towards us with searchlight on. Fuck-ing wedge of riot coppers with full-length shields behind it — Everyone starts to edge back. Backing away — Knowing what’s fucking coming for us. Knowing what we’re fucking going to get — Few of lasses from Action Group try to send some lads off down ginnels and over gardens. But fucking pigs have them. Either send them back or handcuff them to lamp-posts and gates for later. Then I hear them — Hear hooves. Ten horses behind riot squad and dogs — This other wedge of coppers coming out, too. Foot of lane. I look at my watch — Half-six when whistle goes and horses charge and all bloody hell is let loose on us — Their commander today is a fucking cunt. He says clear as day, Get bastards and do them — Fifty reporters next to him. Fifty cameramen. Not one bastard will report it. Not one bastard will film it. No report of what that cunt said. No fucking film of all chaos that follows — Everybody running. This way. That way — Truncheon for this one. Truncheon for that one. For this one. For that one — Horses and boots pushing us back up towards Barrel and over motorway bridge. Folk running out into traffic and what have you. Then this big cheer goes up. I turn to look back — Lad has chucked a bin lid at that bastard on white horse. Knocked him flying off horse onto ground. Fucking brilliant. To see him lie there in road. That cunt off his white bloody horse. That cunt and his horse that have chased and fucking hit us all over bloody county — Doesn’t last long, mind. Next bin lid misses and it’s back on with running shoes — Past Barrel and over bridge. Lads down on motorway among cars — like fucking Orgreave all over again. Folk doing anything to get out of way — But pigs just keep on coming. Boots up your arse. Truncheon to your hands. Back of their shields into back of your neck. Truncheons to your head — Then, bingo. Fucking bingo — Lads find a pile of bricks and bloody stones. Let fucking fly and all — Pigs have got their shields up but they’re only them short, black, round ones. Have to fucking retreat, don’t they? — Bricks and stones. That’s what it takes to save us. Bricks and bloody stones — I pick up bricks. I pick up bloody stones. I fucking throw them and all — First fucking time. This is what it’s come to for me — To make them leave me be. To save myself. To get away. To be fucking free — Not everyone’s that lucky, though. Lot of blokes get a lot of fucking hammer. They take twelve lads away just for having dirt on their hands. Least it isn’t blood — Not like him. Him — Him that brought them here. Him that’s caused it all — That went back to work. To work? — To scab. To sit on his arse all day up at pit — To play hands of cards with bastard police. Loses his fucking wages to Met, I hear — That sorry scab and his sorry hand. His sorry wages in their greedy paws — Tears in his eyes, they say. Tears in his wife’s eyes. Tears in his kids’ eyes — Him under his hood. Her with a new name. New address — Tears in police eyes and all. Tears of laughter — Laugh at fucking lot of us, they do. Met. MacGregor. Thatcher. The lot of them. The whole bloody fucking lot of them — Laughing at us in our little villages with our little pits. Our little accents and our little clothes — Cunts. Bastards. One day — you’ll see. You’ll see — In the dark lands, I have a candle in my hand. I walk aver heaps. Heaps of fragments. The candle in my hand, in the dark lands — Day 221. I open my eyes on floor under my coat and I remember — Talks collapse. Pits collapse. Strikes collapse. Hotels collapse — But she bloody survives. Lives to tell tale — Fucking lot of them: King. Heseltine. Lawson. Ridley. Havers. Walker. Brittan. Even Tebbit — Iron Bitch without a bloody scratch. Fuckme — If she’d had a shit and not a pee, what a different place this world would be. And to think there’s still them that say there’s a god up there — It’s going to go on for ever, this is. Fucking for ever now — Day 223. It’s total now. Relentless. Total and relentless provocation and aggression against — Every pit. Every village. Every day. Every hour — Kellingley. Maltby. Kiveton Park. Allerton-
The Thirty-third Week
Monday 15 — Sunday 21 October 1984
These are days the Jew was not meant to see. The Jew says so over and over and over. From breakfast to bedtime. Morning, noon and night –
Times have changed. The Jew sees things more than ever in just black and white –
Night and day. Wet and dry. Bad and good –
Them and us –
‘You are either one of them,’ says the Jew again. ‘Or one of us.’
The Jew is back in business. Back behind his desk.
There are flowers from the National Working Miners’ Committee –
Telephone calls to be returned. Telegrams to be answered.
The talks between the Board and the Union at the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service collapsed again last night. The sides had met for less than two hours. The Jew is happy the talks failed. The Jew hates ACAS and all it stands for –
Appeasement. Compromise. And. Surrender –
The old days.
It had been created by a Labour government. Designed for a Labour government –
To interfere. To negotiate. To barter and to abdicate.
It stank of Labour. It stank of defeat. It stank of the past –
The bad old days.
The Jew is happy to watch it fail. Happy to watch them all fail –
Their president and the Union have stated their defiance of the High Court fines. The Jew is very happy about that, too. This time the Jew can admit he is happy –
‘The times have changed,’ the Jew tells Neil again. ‘The times have changed.’
Neil Fontaine waits in the corridor outside the Chairman’s office in Hobart House. The men in suits pace up and down. Up and down. Letters of resignation in their hands.
Neil Fontaine looks at his watch again. He taps his watch. It starts again –
Places to be. People to meet. Things he must know.
Neil Fontaine and the men in suits listen to the Jew ranting on the inside –