Thatcher against British miners and pro-peace women, new documents

This video from Britain says about itself:

Feb 5, 2012

The miners’ strike in 1984 was one of the longest and most brutal in British labour history. A community fighting for jobs and survival was wholly denigrated and depicted as violent by the majority of the media. THE BATTLE FOR ORGREAVE puts the record straight, as miners recount their own history, their economic and political struggles over decades and the trial they endured for 48 days in Sheffield when charged with riot at Orgreave – facing life imprisonment.

Containing compelling testimonies, emotive cinematography, in depth analysis coupled with meticulous detail of the mass picket and the ensuing events of June 18 1984 at the Orgreave coking plant, the documentary also has unique footage of police violence — all these make this an historic and important document of our time.

By Paddy McGuffin in Britain:

Thatcher plotted to break miners with army scabs

Thursday 01 August 2013

Thatcher secretly considered bringing in the army to break the 1984-85 miners’ strike, according to newly published Cabinet documents.

National Archive papers reveal the extent of the planning by the Tories for the brutal dispute with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and Thatcher’s determination to win at any cost.

Miners had forced her to cave in to the NUM’s pay demands in 1981 and she vowed to get her revenge.

An October 27 1983 Cabinet Office memo states: “The law and order problems of coping with pickets not just at the power stations but also at the pitheads would be enormous and would arise from the very outset of the strike.

“A major risk might be that power station workers would refuse to handle coal brought in by servicemen in this way.”

But minutes of a meeting of top ministers chaired by Thatcher the next day show that they considered “more radical options for extending endurance” – namely getting squaddies to move coal to power stations.

Miners’ MP Ian Lavery told the Morning Star that “this is the sort of things we see in despotic dictatorships.”

He said: “It doesn’t surprise me but it just shows the lengths to which the Tory government at the highest level were prepared to go and what they thought of the miners.

“If you look back at the history of this country there are very few disputes where the government considered bringing in the armed forces.

“To think about what the consequences could have been is unimaginable. This could have led to civil war.”

NUM president Chris Kitchen went further, saying that he believed that soldiers were deployed in police uniforms as shock troops.

“This just reinforces what we already knew – that from day one Thatcher was out to destroy the NUM,” he said.

“It is not surprising that in 1983 she was planning this vindictive attack.

“It is my belief that they followed through on this and did actually use the army, dressed up as police.

“If you looked at the sheer numbers of police, not wearing identification numbers, at places like Orgreave and elsewhere you can’t reconcile those figures.”

He said if, as he believed, the Thatcher government had gone to such lengths to attack the NUM and its members it should be a stark warning for unions today.

This video is called Christmas 1982 Greenham Common Women.

By Paddy McGuffin in Britain:

Thatcher’s Greenham jibes exposed

Thursday 01 August 2013

Margaret Thatcher dismissed inspiring Greenham Common peace activists as an “eccentricity,” newly released Cabinet documents revealed yesterday.

The women’s peace camp was set up outside the Berkshire airbase following the decision to site US cruise missiles there in the early 1980s.

Papers released by the National Archives at Kew showed that Thatcher was adamant she would not be deterred by the protests.

A note of a meeting with then US vice-president George Bush in June 1983, five months before the first missiles arrived, states: “The prime minister said they had become an eccentricity.

“Their activities had been inflamed by the media.

“They were very unpopular in the area of Greenham Common because of the disruption caused to normal life.

“She had no doubt that when the time came to deploy cruise there would be further problems, but these would have to be surmounted.”

CND general secretary Kate Hudson said yesterday: “Margaret Thatcher’s campaign of dirty tricks against the peace movement in the early 1980s is well documented and these new Cabinet papers unfortunately serve to reinforce what we already know.

“While hundreds of thousands of people were mobilising to oppose the madness of nuclear weapons, Thatcher was slurring CND as a Soviet proxy and organising a cloak and dagger campaign to discredit the anti-nuclear movement.

“While the inspiring women of Greenham Common were fighting against cruise missiles in the UK, Maggie was dismissing them as troublesome eccentrics to be ‘surmounted.’

“If nothing else, it reveals how cynically Thatcher opposed democratic expression.”

Thatcher vs the miners: official papers confirm the strikers’ worst suspicions – See more here.

Margaret Thatcher had secret plan to use army at height of miners’ strike: here.

Related articles

• Thatcher made secret plans to bring in the military during the miners’ strike (telegraph.co.uk)
• Thatcher’s troops plan for striking miners revealed (itv.com)
• Thatcher considered using troops to break miners’ strike, secret Government files reveal (walesonline.co.uk)
• Thatcher wanted troops to move coal (bbc.co.uk)
• Civil servants’ secret papers brief anti-nuclear leader Michael Foot on using the weapons (walesonline.co.uk)