Attila the Stockbroker poem on British miners’ strike

This video from England says about itself:

Orgreave/Hillsborough: South Yorkshire Police Cover-Up?

By poet Attila the Stockbroker from Britain:

Orgreave: we’ll carry on the fight for justice

Thursday 12th June 2014

I’ve written this for the Orgreave mass picnic and festival this Saturday at Catcliffe Recreation Ground, South Yorkshire, which commemorates the 30th anniversary of the battle of Orgreave during the 1984 miners’ strike.

I am so honoured to be compering the main stage. Hope to see you there.

Never Forget

I remember my stepfather moaning
In the first strike in ’72
‘Miners holding the country to ransom…..’
I was fourteen. I thought about you.
You worked underground, often in danger.
Hewed the coal we depended upon.
He earned more checking tax forms in Brighton.
I knew then just whose side I was on.

I remember Kent pickets at Shoreham
When our port bosses shipped in scab coal.
By the time they were back twelve years later
A new anger burned deep in my soul.
You’d won once, but this time would be harder
For your foe was no bumbling Heath.
It was Thatcher, revenge her agenda.
A class warrior, armed to the teeth.

You were miners on strike for your future:
For your pits, your communities, ways.
We were punks, poets, anarchists, lesbians.
Theatre groups, Rastafarians, gays.
Different worlds in a rainbow alliance
Standing firm and determined to win.
And Thatcher lumped us all together:
Punk or miner. The enemy within.

As a poet, I crisscrossed the country
From Durham to Yorkshire to Kent
Doing benefits, arguing, learning.
Raising funds that were so quickly spent.
Did my tiny bit in that great battle
That you fought so hard right to the last.
A battle so proudly remembered
Now that thirty long years have passed.

I remember those pictures from Orgreave.
Police faces contorted with hate.
The communities brutalized, shattered
By the raw, naked power of the state.
If it took guns and tanks to defeat you
She’d have used guns and tanks on you too.
The veneer of democracy shattered.
The paid thugs of the privileged few.

After Orgreave came Wapping, then Hillsborough.
With the press and police on her side
Thatcher smiled as the printers were beaten
And those ninety six football fans died.
She had a quite open agenda
Summed up well when she famously said
That there’s not such a thing as society.
Don’t blame us for being pleased that she’s dead.

Now the bankers destroy the economy
And the jobless and sick get the blame
And our once mighty, proud labour movement
Is shackled, and timid, and tame
But this poet will always remember
All the brave men and women I met
We will carry on fighting for justice –

And we’ll never, no never, forget.

Full details of the event are available at www.otjc.org.uk.

Barbara Jackson, secretary of the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC), was speaking to the Morning Star a few hours before hundreds of people began making their way to Orgreave, site 30 years ago of state-organised violence against striking miners in retaliation for their audacity in fighting for their jobs, their industry, their families and their communities: here.

Police are accused of foot-dragging over miners’ strike inquiry. Three decades after Orgreave clashes, the IPCC inquiry is under fire for delaying tactics: here.

Battle of Orgreave 30th anniversary: We demand justice for victims of police brutality, says 1,500-strong crowd: here.

South Yorkshire Police provoked fury on Saturday by deploying a helicopter to hover menacingly over a festival marking the 30th anniversary of the Battle of Orgreave: here.