When Theresa stood on the steps of Downing Street and made her victory speech, she didn’t exactly quote Francis is Assisi.
However, she did say that things were going to change. Of course they have, but not quite the way she seemed to suggest.
She was going to champion the little (wo)man, the working classes who had been so badly done by the Eton/Oxford government that her predecessor had led. She was going to sort out ‘Burning Injustice’.
Well, she had a chance to demonstrate how she could do that. It can be summed up in one word. Orgreave.
At Orgreave, during the miners’ strike of the early 1980s, striking miners were beaten by the police and then falsely accused of rioting… crimes that carried serious sentences. And the police got away with it with government support.
Does that ring any bells?
Were there not football fans at Hillsborough who suffered death at the hands of an incompetent policeman out of his depth, incapable of making the correct decision…and were these fans not then blamed for the catastrophe which ensued, accused of urinating on and stealing from dead bodies to make the fans seem at fault? Were they not made to look like inhuman monsters? And was the government not complicit in that?
Yes, they were. And, which force was responsible for this?
The very same one. South Yorkshire Police.
So, given all these facts and the prime minister’s vow, and the fact that she had shown an inclination to have an inquiry into Orgreave when she, herself, was home secretary, it came to me as something of a surprise to find out that the new home secretary, one Amber Rudd, thinks that it’s unnecessary.
Nah, why bother? No one died, could sum up Rudd’s written response. Somehow now, unless people die, it seems that police can get away with anything.
If there had been an inquiry at the time, perhaps the South Yorkshire Police might have sharpened up its procedures a bit and maybe, just maybe, Hillsborough wouldn’t have happened five years later.
Ms Rudd is of the opinion that there was no miscarriage of justice. Let that be a warning to people in England. The police can beat you and accuse you of rioting, but that is NOT a miscarriage of justice.
And there was me thinking that an inquiry would have investigated whether indeed there was a miscarriage of justice, and if there was, named and shamed the people responsible for it.
So Mrs May has fallen at the first hurdle. She gives not a damn about these men, their families, or what they went through.
Seriously folks, could we really expect anything else from the Pound Shop Thatcher?
Tris
I’m not surprised to be honest. It was a shameful act by Thatchers private army and not just down south but everywhere. Didn’t they remove their badge numbers and put on a home office symbol so they couldn’t be identified.
The Tories are scum. Will always be scum and I have no sympathy or time for anyone who votes for them. People can say it’s all in the past but it will never be for the inert or for.my generation who saw their mothers and fathers treated as scum and shit on the boots of the stazi of the UK.
Shameful.
Bruce
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s shameful that they won’t give these people the benefit of an inquiry. Who made the decision? Amber Rudd: She was educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, an independent school in Gloucestershire,[5] and from 1979 to 1981 at Queen’s College, London,[6] an independent day school for girls in London, followed by Edinburgh University where she read History. (Wikipedia) S just a normal kinda girl with a normal kinda background. She would understand all about miners.
It goes on…
“After graduating from university, Rudd joined J.P. Morgan & Co., working in both London and New York.
“She helped to find extras for the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral, for which she was credited as the “aristocracy co-ordinator”, and appeared briefly in one of the church scenes in the film.[3][7]
“From 1995, Lawnstone became involved with Zinc Corporation, which intended to mine for zinc in Peru. Rudd became a director, and the family firm was again a significant shareholder. Zinc Corporation never made a profit and was taken over by Monticello in 1999. Rudd was also a co-director of Monticello between 1999 and 2000. Zinc Corporation was liquidated in 2001; Monticello in 2003.[8]
“Between 1998 and 2000 she was a director of two companies based in The Bahamas, Advanced Asset Allocation Fund and Advanced Asset Allocation Management.”
So yeah… just the person to make judgements about the legality of police brutality carried out when she was 20.
I don’t think this will go away. And I suspect that at some time they will have to reverse her decision.
It just shows what we all said at the time, that May’s words were empty and weasel.
LikeLike
Can’t ‘like’ this for some reason, but agree wholeheartedly.
LikeLike
I used to think Blogger was temperamental… Sorry Conan!
LikeLike
Sorry for the typos. I meant fathers and mothers .
LikeLike
Bah humbug… I had a spelling mistake in the title…
LikeLike
“And there was me thinking that an inquiry would have investigated whether indeed there was a miscarriage of justice, and if there was, named and shamed the people responsible for it.”
Thatcher, her cabinet and the party she was head of, were to blame.
Along with the so called Labour movement and trades unions, that turned their backs on the miners in their time of need; falling for the Tory press’ divide and conquer tactic. Bastards.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Aye, Thatcher was determined that the police be on her side. There was no way that she would let them take the blame for beating up a pile of working men.
She gave the police a massive rise within a short time of taking office, and then leant on them for support as she sorted out the lower orders, and put them in their place. The dole queue.
No wonder she was a close friend of Mr Pinochet.
LikeLike
I remember the strike, very well; Ayrshire was a mining area. I used to collect cash for the miners, in Ayr high street, not a pleasant task I assure you; I was spat at by middle class types, Thatcher’s chosen ones.
Then there were the Labour men, actively speaking against the miners, using Thatcher’s arguments, “not a legitimate strike, the need for a vote”; bollocks of course, the men voted with their feet, as they had done for years.
There are towns in Ayrshire, and most likely else where in Scotland, England and Wales, where whole housing schemes have been razed from existence, the hearts bled dry in the communities; the social scarring will take generations to heal, and for what?
So we could import “cheaper” coal, twas only cheap through subsidies. The cheapness did not take into account, the billions of cash needed to destroy the industry by putting generations on the dole.
Dean can protest as much as he wants, but I make no apology, I hate the Tory party and all that it stands for.
LikeLike
That was moving, Jim. No mines in Dundee, or the surrounding areas. I guess it sinks in less here.
But what I know is that this is a cover up. They have enough embarrassment. One day maybe they will even get a half meaningful inquiry into the child abuse that shames the state.
As Kat says… British state at its finest.
LikeLike
I’m with you jimnarlene, the tories are scum.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m sure there are decent Tories out there. With few exceptions, they just don’t seem to reach high office.
LikeLike
The British state at it finest yet again…after hills borough, chilcot report, newspaper intrusion, and child abuse cover ups, this latest episode is just following along the same lines…proof if needed that anyone who votes for this dictatorship is morally bankrupt in my opinion…how much longer do we have to endure this shambles…Indy 2 please…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hear hear.
And there is so much more.
It’s not, and never has been, a pleasant union of countries.
LikeLike
The cheapness did not take into account, the billions of cash needed to destroy the industry by putting generation on the dole.
Should read generations.
LikeLike
I seem to remember military in police uniforms, too and again.
Fascist Tory not forgotten nor could it be with their current antics.
Au revoir the Union asap, and Ms Davidson and Co ponder their consciences and futures deeply.
LikeLike
Did they? Good lord; there was pretty much nothing that woman wouldn’t do or cover up when it suited her to do so. Crimes in NI, crimes against workers, cover up of her deviant ministers, officials and friends.
Probably Rudd looked at the cabinet papers on it and decided that it would be too dangerous to let anyone, even a trusted fellow traveller get their heads around it.
The thing is that when governments refuse to have something like this out in the open, it’s natural for us ordinary folk to assume the worst.
LikeLike
Some of the imported police were undoubtedly ex military, and some were billeted in Territorial drill halls which may have given rise to this; there may have been some tight lipped special forces there, but standing in a line with riot shields seems a waste of their training.
There were definitely Special Branch arseholes used as agent provocateurs though.
Believe me, if line regiment squaddies had been involved, we would know all about it now.
Et vino veritas…
LikeLike
Just for the folk history record, it was all the talk of Lanarkshire, Scotland that a picketing miner (trying to stop the delivery by convoys of trucks of coal from Hunterston which had arrived by boat) was face to face with his own son who was a regular soldier.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Where is is discord, eh…
Well done Mrs ThaTcher.
I heard they dressed the troops up in police uniforms.
LikeLike
No, it hasn’t. We – the British State – seems to ‘cover up’ stuff that should be readily available,
Why?
LikeLike
I think we all know the answer to that, Douglas.
LikeLike
Three words. Special Patrol Group. Thatcher’s SS. The hate I felt then hasn’t abated a jot.
I hope the socks she knits in Hell don’t fit Dennis.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yep, evil!
I imagine it’s the old drunk that’s knitting socks for her. Mind I still hope they don’t fit. 🙂
LikeLike
I just saw that Thatcher put an 80-year ban on the papers on Orgreave being released. That kinda seals it then, if there were any doubt before.
The only two times she was noted for crying, after all her evil doings in Downing Street, were when her precious war mongering, weapons dealing, shiftless, idiot of a son got himself lost in Africa and when her party saw her as the liability that she was and dumped her, and she was marched out of Downing Street.
Cried for herself and her wastrel offspring. Says it all.
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good stuff
LikeLike