By the time I left home to study, I was personally acquainted
with the viciousness and debilitating nature of racism. That white people could
treat other white people with a disregard and animalistic savagery that took
the breath away was a revelation to me back then.
Despite being a black woman, it is the totemic
white/male working-class struggle of the miners’ strike that sparked my
political life and social awareness more than almost any other significant
happening in the UK.
As a student in Newcastle in the 1980s I cut my
political teeth on that conflict.
As someone scared of both horses and dogs (and police
with batons), a pro-miners demo in London remains one of the scariest
experiences of my life. No smartphones then to document the on-the-ground
truth or counter the misleading BBC images.
As a city councilor in Newcastle, I witnessed
first-hand the oppressive effect on political struggle/debate following the
successful collective punishment beating meted out to working-class
communities.
Move forward and I worked briefly for a Newcastle law
firm that carried a significant caseload of ex-miners personal injury claims.
Like the Post Office scandal, there was a real sense of heel dragging in the
hope that many would die before any compensation had to be paid. And many did.
Stumble into the 21st century and I've watched horrified as the country is devastated by the corrosive effects of complete privatisation, criminal incompetence, extreme cronyism plus rampant and out of control greed.
Most astonishing is the way the Tories successfully
convince socially and economically eviscerated communities that all
the ills they'd visited on them, all the failures, all the inadequate and
hollowed-out services are not the fault of a bunch of posh twits who care
nothing for the majority, but the fault of migrants. The fault of the most powerless and unfortunate. People who were not even here when The Haves began systematically and completely dismantling all the post war gains of The Have Nots.
In the common parlance it's been quite a journey...
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