The BBC never seems to miss a chance to try and portray the Miners as heroic victims of a callous Thatcher…despite Labour closing more pits and putting more miners on the Dole than Thatcher ever did.
And here we have what is blatantly just pure propaganda of the same kind paid for by you and me.
Any bets that there’s no mention of Scargill who led his miners on a merry dance to their doom just as Unite did for the workers at Grangemouth ?(again ignored by the BBC…see today’s Sunday Times).
Thanks to Disgruntled of Enfield who spotted this:
Maxine Peake has said that she jumped at the chance to play Anne Scargill in a new radio drama.
The Silk actress, 39, has written and stars in the Radio 4 play Queens Of The Coal Age, about four miners’ wives who attempted to save pits from closure by occupying a mine.
She told the Radio Times: ” People talk of (Margaret) Thatcher removing the glass ceiling for women in this country, she’s even been labelled a feminist, but I strongly disagree. These were the real Iron Ladies. “
The Village actress, who grew up in Bolton, Lancashire, told the magazine: “I was 10 years old when the miners’ strike started in 1984 and it’s the sole event that plotted out my political landscape.
“Even at that young age I knew, somehow, that this wasn’t just an attack on the miners, but on working-class people in general.
“The strike was a potent and historic event: the country on the brink of civil war and miners fighting for their community’s survival.”
Maxine said that her grandfather, a member of the Communist Party, was “on the receiving end of police victimisation” after collecting for the miners in 1984.
The Shameless actress said that she “always had a burning desire to tell the truth, but at the time I had no idea how.”
Maxine’s first radio play, about the cyclist Beryl Burton, was broadcast last year.
When asked whether she would like to pen another play, she said that she “didn’t hesitate” to suggest the occupation of Parkside Colliery at Newton-le-Willows in 1993, led by Arthur Scargill’s then wife.
Queens Of The Coal Age will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 2.15pm on Monday November 4.
As said…this is nothing more than socialist propaganda dressed up as ‘art’ by BBC leftwingers indulging themselves on the licence fee payers shilling.
Was ever thus:
The Culture Show
Series 10 – 4. The Culture Show: Maxine Peake – Performance, Protest and Peterloo
Includes a clip from the ever ‘struggling’ Owen Jones’ selling ‘protest for social change’ on the BBC….and they just lap it up.
So she’s a stupid lying bitch or just a bad memory? Shameless? surely she is indeed shameless. I’ll look for details of actual numbers etc in Lancashire fields there were 86 pits when nationalisation began by the NCB in 1947. As had happened for decades (especially in Wales and the valleys) smaller pits were closed to allow modernisation of ‘super pits’. Parkside was the very last completely new coal mine to be sunk on the coalfield (1957). As with all other UK mining regions many pits were closed in every decade; in the Lancashire field by 1967 ONLY 21 pits remained* (many of those closed had workable reserves).
*what I want to find out is how many remained when Margaret Thatcher came to power. My guess is less than 15.
well well:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bernard.platt/the%20lancashire%20coalfield.htm
will need sourcing but: “By 1962, the number of mines had been reduced to 41 and by 1967 to 21. Seven collieries were operating in October 1984.”
SEVEN
Will they ever do a play about the taxi driver who was murdered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_David_Wilkie
To them it was an honorable defeat. To me, it was betrayal of the working class, morals, democracy and the rule of law.
“People talk of (Margaret) Thatcher removing the glass ceiling for women in this country, she’s even been labelled a feminist, but I strongly disagree. These were the real Iron Ladies.”
Mrs Thatcher proved that a woman could get to the top (the very top) and remain feminine at the same time. She achieved more for feminism than butch-types like Ms Peake could ever achieve.
I think it’s called bias through ignorance. But then, if the only version she’s ever heard of the miners’ strike since she was 10 came from the likes of the BBC-Guardian-Labour then it’s not surprising she comes out with sheer unadulterated shite like ‘Even at that young age I knew, somehow, that this wasn’t just an attack on the miners, but on working-class people in general.’
So here’s my suggestion for the BBC’s epitaph, courtesy of Winston Smith in ‘1984’: Everything faded into mist. The past was erased. The erasure was forgotten. The lie became the truth.
Wow, her politics were already shaped at 10? That’s incredible. I was 10 in 1983, and my friends and I were more concerned with things like, playing, and football, and proper Dr Who than politics. Besides, I doubt it was the miner’s strike. I reckon her commie grandfather played a bigger role in her political beliefs than anything. I also doubt here grandfather was on ‘on the receiving end of police victimisation’ simply for collecting money for striking miners. It’s more likely he attracted their attention as a member of the Communist party during a time when communists were enemies of the Western countries.
But anyway, I’ve never really rated her as an actress. In fact, the only decent thing she’s ever done was dinner ladies. And that was Victoria Wood’s baby. When did she decide that anyone would be even slightly interested in her dipshit political beliefs? I’d rather watch those annoying train line ads than listen to a far left idiot.
so true.
At that age I was into kids cartoons and playing football with class mates.
“Even at that young age I knew, somehow, that this wasn’t just an attack on the miners, but on working-class people in general….”
Bollocks you did ! At ten you were politically concious? Suuuuuure you were.
“…… it’s the sole event that plotted out my political landscape.”
So your mindset was ‘aspiced’ before you left primary school ? Bad enough for there to be no wriggle room after the sixth form, as so many have, but this is just beyond parody. I have a mental picture of the infant Peake, wearing a too-large raincoat and nebber, sweet cigarette stuck to her bottom lip, wandering the oppressed streets of Bolton trying to foment red revolution betimes flicking guilty glances at her latest copy of ‘Bunty’ and wishing it was ‘Das Kapital’ instead.
What else would you expect from an actress who was once a member of the Communist Party? A play about Anne Scargill is manna from heaven for the likes of our Maxine.
“…his love affairs which broke our marriage, sob sob…”
Well maybe they’ll leave that bit out.
Filth.
The level of ignorance, when it comes to discussing the miners strikes, is astounding. I have mostly lived in Nottinghamshire all my life. I have even been down a pit (Babbington Colliery – now closed) and right up to the coal face, which was quite scary to be honest. Back in the early to mid-eighties I delivered soft drinks door-to-door in both Cotgrave and Calverton, which are mining villages in Nottinghamshire, so I got to meet lots of miners. A good proportion of them were Scottish who had moved to Nottinghamshire for the work, which is a little known fact. No wonder then, that the Notts miners broke away from the NUM and formed their own UDM (Union of Democratic Mineworkers).
I have to tell you that I once had a heated debate (on a visit to London to meet up with colleagues) with a guy who lived in London and openly admitted he had hardly ever ventured north of Watford. He was so irate that I was so much as daring to shed some balancing light on the subject of ‘nasty’ Thatcher and my suggestion on how Scargill was possibly the greater villain in the whole issue.
I can also tell you that my great great-grandfather was a miner in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, and a union official too. His daughter – my great auntie – met Scargill (also from Barnsley) a few times back in the late 70’s and she said he was a lovely man, but his treatment of the miners was questionable.
And that was from a woman loyal to the miners!
I just wish, when this subject is discussed, the WHOLE STORY is presented to the table, and not just that of hard done by ex-miners who have an axe to grind.
Many miners at that time were very happy with their payoffs and used the generous payouts to further themselves into new careers, which didn’t involve them working in dangerous conditions. I used to work with an ex-miner from Leicestershire who went to night school to develop further the engineering knowledge he had acquired from the pit.
There were very many happy endings came from the closing of the pits. It wasn’t all doom and gloom. Why can’t we have a programme about this side of the argument?
agree 100%
Because the left work on hate and negative emotions. I still can’t get my head around how the left is seen as rainbows and happiness when just look at the deaths caused by socalism in the 20th century.
Every lefty I’ve met is a jealous loser.
Even the so-called successful ones like Owen Jones are jealous of rich people especially self-made ones.
Look at few years ago how the lefty’s used ‘rage against the machine’ a few years ago to stop simon cowell getting the number one Christmas spot.
Simon Cowell is more successful than ever, but were are the lefty’s who did this.
Just more older, bitter jealous losers than before.
It is also never mentioned that Scargill would not allow the Miners to be ballotted on the strike much to the chargin of many Miners outside his yorkshire fiefdom. There was a reason for that, he knew he would loose. The miners came out on strike mostly out of misplaced loyalty to the Union who were bullying them to do so. I recently watched a ‘where are they now’ type documentary in which a tv crew returned to one of the villages which was at the centre of some of the most violent incidents between Police and Pickets. Several of those involved were interviewed and all except one were doing very well for themselves having obtained new employment or in some cases started up new businesses using their redundancy pay. The one exception being a very bitter and twisted Union rep who was the most militant of them all. Couldnt say I was surprised.
Ps the fact that one of these females is wearing a New York Dolls T shirt reveals she s a pretentious twat. This second rate unoriginal Rolling Stones tribute act are much loved by pretentious twats.
No BBC plays about courageous strike breakers in Notts and elsewhere? Thought not.
It is extraordinary that liberals and luvvies venerate hard and dangerous physical labour.
They never ever do it themselves of course.
No man should spend his life hewing coal underground. It was no way to live and the country is a better place now those days are nearly gone.
I spent some time in my early 20s doing hard physical work. There was nothing good about it. Only the people I worked with made it tolerable.
Children these luvvies are without the saving grace of real childishness.
I always remember Scargill when at an Official reception in Warsaw during the late 70s. He was accompanied at that time by his NUM President, Joe Gormley.
In discussions with their international Socialist brothers in Arms, it was often suggested to them, by known KGB sources, how the NUM could help rack up the TUC opposition to the Western developed ‘Neutron Bomb’, which was the socialist propaganda flavour of the month at that time.
This bomb was so controversial in that it had the ability to kill humans and leave buildings standing!
Joe Gormley was so fed up of this Soviet propaganda line constantly being fed him, he turned around to those Westerners around him at this reception and said:
“If this KGB bugger does not shut up about this bloody Neutron Bomb, I’ll give him that many SS 20s up his backside he won’t know whether he is coming or going”.
Needless to say Scargill was taking it all this propaganda on board ready to bring up the campaign at the next TUC Conference.