Arthur Scargill must be watching the success of the Just Stop Oil protests with a mixture of awe and bewilderment.
Barmy Arthur, former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, devoted most of his infamous career to bringing Britain to her knees, with limited success.
A revolutionary socialist, he ordered tens of thousands of flying pickets to power stations, coal and coke depots in an attempt to stop electricity production and cripple the economy.
During the 1984-85 miners’ strike, aimed at toppling the Thatcher government, Scargill’s thugs resorted to violence and intimidation.
Arthur Scargill must be watching the success of the Just Stop Oil protests with a mixture of awe and bewilderment. Protesters are pictured on top of a fuel tank in west London
It culminated in a medieval-style pitched battle between 6,000 pickets and an equal number of riot police, many on horseback, outside the British Steel coking plant at Orgreave, in Yorkshire.
Yet supplies of fuel got through, the lights stayed on and the factories remained open. Scargill’s brute force tactics failed to prevent the closure of uneconomic pits.
Not only was the strike defeated, it actually accelerated the decline of the coal industry.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s steely determination that militancy would not prevail and no group would be allowed to hold the nation to ransom was vindicated spectacularly.
Fast-forward 40-odd years and what must the now 84-year-old Scargill make of the very different treatment of various Extinction Rebellion spin-offs and their increasingly demented attempts to disrupt daily life?
Scargill’s brute force tactics failed to prevent the closure of uneconomic pits. Not only was the strike defeated, it actually accelerated the decline of the coal industry. Scargill is pictured being escorted to an ambulance by police
These days revolutionary socialists have all hitched their wagons to the burgeoning green tyranny. Curiously, the same kind of hard-Left headcases, who back then were desperate to keep the coal mines open, now want to ban fossil fuels altogether.
Their tactics may differ from the NUM, but their aims are the same — to cause as much misery and disruption as possible in pursuit of their political ends.
XR demonstrators have blocked motorways, closed oil depots and caused petrol stations to run dry.
This week they have been doing their worst to inconvenience millions trying to make a long-awaited, well-deserved Easter getaway — the first for two years free of Covid restrictions.
They were at it again yesterday, hijacking an Eddie Stobart tanker at the Chiswick roundabout in West London, creating rush hour chaos.
Over the past year, they have glued themselves to bridges and main roads, even preventing ambulances reaching hospitals; blockaded the main entrance to Heathrow airport; and targeted printing plants in an attempt to silence the Free Press.
Protesters have clambered on Tube trains, stopping commuters getting to work; invaded corporate headquarters in the City of London; and committed countless acts of mindless vandalism.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s steely determination that militancy would not prevail and no group would be allowed to hold the nation to ransom was vindicated spectacularly
Yet the alleged forces of law and order bend over backwards to indulge these maniacs.
When XR staged a glue-in on the M25 recently, the police officer in charge asked if they were sitting comfortably and was there anything she could bring them.
Who can forget coppers dancing round that pink yacht parked in Oxford Circus for a week, or the Plod pictured skateboarding with hippy-dippy demonstrators?
The courts continue to show leniency towards them. This week district judge Stephen Leake told a group who closed the M25, disrupting 18,000 journeys, that he was ‘personally inspired’ by their illegality.
A Conservative environment adviser, Ben Goldsmith, publicly backed the fuel depot blockades which caused long queues at petrol stations. ‘I’m with Extinction Rebellion,’ he tweeted.
Can you imagine what would have happened if one of Mrs Thatcher’s advisers had declared solidarity with the NUM in 1984? His feet wouldn’t have touched.
Who can forget coppers dancing round that pink yacht parked in Oxford Circus for a week, or the Plod pictured skateboarding with hippy-dippy demonstrators?
And as for the blockades, she wouldn’t only have sent in the Heavy Mob to clear the Queen’s Highway, she’d have mobilised the Army to distribute petrol, bayonets fixed if necessary.
Then again, Margaret Thatcher’s priority was serving the people who voted her into office, not genuflecting before every passing political fad and bending the knee to the mob.
Yet today, a handful of self-indulgent eco-mentalists are able to cause more chaos and economic mayhem than tens of thousands of striking miners, while the authorities stand back and let them get on with it.
These days, Arthur Scargill wouldn’t have to resort to pitched battles with the police.
He’d only have to glue himself to the gates at Orgreave and the Old Bill would bring him a nice cup of tea.
Shoppers in Britain are again stocking up on canned food and dried pasta over fears that the war in Ukraine will lead to shortages. How long before the Bog Roll Bandits make a comeback?
The flightpath to Rwanda was mapped out 25 years ago when Labour deliberately ripped up our borders and, in the words of the odious Peter Mandelson, ‘sent out search parties for immigrants’.
As a former Blair adviser later admitted, the cynical intention was to ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’.
To ensure the policy could never be reversed, Labour incorporated the pernicious European yuman rites racket into British law.
Consequently, all attempts to halt the flow of migration have failed. Which is why Priti Flamingo has been forced to cut a deal with Rwanda to process those we must now call ‘asylum seekers’ rather than ‘illegals’.
Incidentally, in 1997 when Labour was elected, net migration was just 48,000. This year, 60,000 will arrive by dinghy alone. Ninety per cent will be young men of military age. We know nothing about them.
So the best place to process their claims is as far away as possible.
This latest plan sounds a bit like one of those action films set in Africa, such as The Wild Geese or The Dogs Of War.
How about Flight Of The Flamingo?
I have visions of cross-Channel migrants being met at Dover by Captain Richard Harris in military uniform, loaded on to army trucks by Lieutenant Roger Moore and driven to Biggin Hill where they are put on a creaking DC3 cargo plane being flown by Colonel Richard Burton.
Rather than land at Kigali, they could all be issued with parachutes and told to jump out.
Better still, with the price of aviation fuel going through the roof, drop them off back in France.
The flightpath to Rwanda was mapped out 25 years ago when Labour deliberately ripped up our borders and, in the words of the odious Peter Mandelson, ‘sent out search parties for immigrants’
The Yard playing politics, Cress? Perish the thought
Dick of Dock Green bid us ‘Evenin’ All’ for the last time this week, bemoaning the ‘politicisation of the police’. It would take a heart of stone not to laugh.
Cress was one of the country’s most senior officers when the Yard was effectively accepting its marching orders direct from Labour’s discredited former deputy leader, Nonce Finder General Tom Watson, during the politically motivated Paedos in High Places inquiry designed to smear and prosecute innocent Tory grandees.
When she was Commissioner, her troops took the knee to Black Lives Matter thugs and caved in to the cannabis lobby. Not to mention giving XR nutters the ‘softly, softly’ treatment (see elsewhere).
Her anti-terror chief was allowed to deliver a self-serving sermon about the death of George Floyd 4,500 miles away, and insist that ‘far-Right’ terror was Britain’s fastest-growing threat, despite a litany of Islamist atrocities including the murder of a brave copper on the doorstep of Parliament. For years, the Yard has been increasingly politicised. It is practically impossible to get promoted in the higher ranks without first being brainwashed by the Left-wing freemasonry Common Purpose.
Could that have anything to do with the inordinate amount of time and manpower devoted to investigating Downing Street parties and the decision to prolong the agony by drip, drip dripping the fixed-penalty notices?
Oooh, little bit of politics there. My name’s Cressida Dick, goodnight!
There’s nothing new about vegan food for dogs. Twenty five years ago, I put it to the test on my old late-night LWT show. We had a dog choose between Linda McCartney’s vegan pet food and a tin of Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie. The dog took one sniff of Linda’s dish before devouring the Kate’n’Sidney.
My old lab Ossie would have done the same. And he’d eat anything, except veg. I was intrigued to see Radio 3 is recording a day in the life of a labrador. If they’d stuck a mic next to Ossie, all they’d have got was the sound of flatulence and snoring.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10720393/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-XR-succeeded-Arthur-Scargill-failed.html
