Miners' Gala 1984

Miners' gala
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I’m riding on a lorry through
the Edinburgh streets. Beside
me is a missile, quite small,
made of cardboard painted
silver. Should be black.
Upturned faces in the sun
stare white; some shout:
Save oor pits, missus –
as if this missile
had the power to sweep away
the English government of the day
and blow it back to when
their fathers walked in
heavy boots, pale in the
morning sun and back,
black-faced at dusk
from hellish pits of endless toil
that now would end
and they would miss. And I
and my missile trundle on,
an incidental sideshow
in Thatcher’s Circus 84.

C.M.M 05/12

I don't know why this day all those years ago should suddenly come into my head - I was thinking, perhaps, about the expectation we have of people who put themselves forward in politics and how often that expectation is completely misplaced. In the '80s, my activities were focussed on getting rid of nuclear weapons, which came bound up with the Scottish hostility to the Thatcher government. All this seemed to come together at the annual Miners' Gala in Edinburgh during the now famous miners' strike.

1984 : finis

Before drawing the curtain on my 1984, a few last thoughts. Writing about it was strangely cathartic, and I wonder if I would have felt less affected had I been able to blog about it at the time. Certainly I became aware during the fall-out period that the priest involved in making sure we wouldn't still be around our church by the time the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA (the Episcopal church in the USA) visited the congregation that autumn was terrified Mr B would bring a case of wrongful dismissal - he even had a tame lawyer on hand to dig him out of the hole. At the time no-one was interested in what had actually happened; the priest was more to be believed than those pinko peace people. Actually, that's not true: one couple invited us for dinner and asked us to tell the story.

In the end, I grew tired of the pressure. After appearing in three TV programmes - the most notable being Northern Frontier - and taking on several speaking engagements and after realising that my phone conversations were not private I decided to back off a bit and concentrate on teaching. I didn't go near the Episcopal church for several years, and I still haven't resolved that bit of my past. The people who were involved in making things unpleasant are mostly dead now, and the ones who remain are old. Their places have been taken by a new generation of Christians who practice what they preach - and yes, some of them do preach. There is a great deal more honesty around, though I never take it for granted. And most of them don't have the remotest idea of what happened during the Miners' Strike of '84. Site One has gone, and the pier where we demonstrated looks decrepit. The only Americans are holidaymakers, more or less, and their housing schemes transformed by the very Scottish gardens of their new owners.

Would I do it again? There's only one answer. Yes, I would.

1984 revisited: the Miners' gala

Miners' gala
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

When I first thought of marking the 25th anniversary of the Miners' Strike, this is the photo that I was determined to find. It shows me and a pal from Dunoon CND on the back of a CND float, waiting to take our place in the Miners' Gala procession through the streets of Edinburgh to Holyrood Park. There, in a huge tent, we heard speeches from Bruce Kent and Mick McGachey - a considerably more impressive leader than Arthur Scargill ever was - and met some women who'd been in Dunoon for the action earlier in the year.

It was an extraordinary experience, both exhilarating and sad, but one where, in the midst of all the church hellishness and lack of warmth, I felt at one with so many people. (I had plenty to choose from - there were 10,000 people there). The missile on the lorry, as well as the badges with which we were adorned, made it immediately obvious where our sympathies lay, and people lining the streets cheered us as we passed. I clearly remember passing a group of miners on a street corner - we'd paused to negotiate a tight bend - and hearing one of them call out : "Save our pits, Missus!" - and I remember too thinking that I didn't know where to start.

Thatcher's Britain was a hard place for many Scots, and that June day in 1984 underlined the fact. But it was a day of intense comradeship which made me forget for a while all the stuff back home, and I think my expression shows that.

And it was a day when two ten-year-old boys were allowed by their mad mothers to ride on the back of an open lorry. Now, how many chaps have that to look back on?

25 years on

So it's been 25 years. I was listening this morning to an item about the miners' strike - 25 years ago. I hadn't realised, any more than several of the miners' wives who were speaking. Ok, I'm not married to a miner, but that year - 1984 - was Orwellian in its strangeness, retrospectively. And so many things happened which did involve me that I'm going to do a bit of retrospective blogging. I've fished out some photos of significant places and incidents, and when I've scanned them I shall have a bash at some posts about the year that so many things changed for ever.

Watch this space.