The diary of a striking miner, republished one day at a time 25 years after the event. Today, the Battle of Orgreave:
There was the coke works in the distance, squatting on the land and belching out smoke from Yorkshire coal. A black line of police spread across the yellow field in front, with horses to the rear and sides. The pickets were to one side facing them and the whole scene was like a science fiction film, or a scene from the English Civil War! As I reached the bottom of the footbridge I heard lots of noise and shouting in the distance and guessed it was a clash between police and pickets so I and everyone else began to run up the lane. After a few hundred yards we could see hundreds of pickets running up the field with pigs on horses in hot pursuit. It was an awesome sight and I remember thinking that there were more pickets than horses and they could easily beat them. It was only later when I was in the mass picket that I found out for myself the panic that spreads instantly when the horses charge and makes you react without thinking!
Meanwhile in Iran, a glimpse of the possibilities unleashed by the economic crisis. In the face of a weak and divided ruling class, the chance of a real breakthrough. The Battle of Orgreave ended in defeat, but it is a battle being fought again and again in the streets of Tehran, in the jungles of Peru and the textile factories of Northern Egypt where another wave of strikes is apparently breaking out.
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