One sinner repents...

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Natascha Engel, Labour MP for North East Derbyshire regrets supporting the smoking ban (quote courtesy of Natalie Solent on Samisdata):

Writing in today's Times behind a paywall, Natascha Engel, Labour MP for North East Derbyshire, relates how she stood in the rain outside a miner's welfare hall smoking with a angry but partially mollified constituent.

...he told me about his father in law who used to come to the welfare every night and spent all evening drinking one pint of Guinness. He was a chain smoker. Since the smoking ban he's never been back.

"He's can't stand outside in the rain like this. He's an old man." He told me about how his father-in-law never goes out any more. "He's lonely and miserable. And he still chain smokes."

Natascha Engel now says that, given the chance again, she would not vote for the ban.

One sinner repenteth - just a few more to go.

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The Blackleg Miner

Some of you will know I have something of a penchant for lefty folk music – well folk music really but quite a lot of it is pretty lefty! And, while driving back from Carlisle to sunny Cullingworth, I was listening to a little ditty entitled “The Blackleg Miner”. Let me share with you some of the lyrics:

Oh, Delaval is a terrible place,
They rub wet clay in the blackleg's face,
And around the heaps they run a footrace
to catch the blackleg miner.
And even down near the Seghill mine,
Across the way they stretch a line
To catch the throat, to break the spine
of the dirty blackleg miner.

Harkening to this, a thought struck me about strikes, unions and the problems of collective action. Essentially, what right do these men have to enforce what they desire through violence, bullying and intimidation? What right do they have to treat someone who just wishes to go to work, earn a wage and feed his family with such bullying intimidation?

By all means disagree with the strike-breaker, perhaps even have nothing to do with the blackleg. But violence and intimidation are wrong however much they are enforcing the desire of the majority. And the punishment meted out to those who break a strike – the intimidatory bullying – continues long beyond the end of the dispute. Here’s a report from 2009 in the Scottish Daily Record:

None of the strike-breakers approached by the Record would agree to be interviewed. Some have died, some moved away, a few defiant individuals stood their ground pleading their case but, to a man, they were reluctant to re-open old wounds.

This includes Jim Pearson, 76, of Dunfermline, who worked at the Longannet pit and was the first-miner in Fife to return to work. Pearson regularly appeared in the Record during 1984 after breaking the strike.

There were furious scenes on the day he returned. More than 150 police clashed with 200 pickets as he made his way to work. His van was ambushed by around 100 brick-throwing pickets and he ran the gauntlet for two terrifying miles with blood running down his face.

All because he chose to challenge the majority decision – to make a different and pretty tough choice about his life.

I guess we make our choices but no-one deserves this kind of treatment just for going to work.

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A reminder to Britain's left about Libya

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From The Times October 28, 1984:

Arthur Scargill, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and Roger Windsor, the union’s chief executive, have been holding secret talks with the Libyan government.

Three weeks ago, on October 8, the two men flew to Paris to meet Salem Ibrahim, described by French intelligence as Colonel Gadaffi’s paymaster. Last Monday, Windsor flew to Tripoli, where he met Gadaffi, the Libyan leader.

Windsor’s visit was arranged by a Pakistani living in England named Mumtaz Abbasi, who admits he is the “European representative” of Al-Zulfikar, a Libya-backed terrorist group. Windsor was in the Libyan capital on Thursday when the High Court in London ordered the sequestration of the NUM’s assets after seven months of its national strike. 

But then the NUM took money from any stray left-wing totalitarian dictatorship didn't they!

Newly discovered documents showed substantial sums of money in hard currency were secretly transferred to the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) during the major industrial action.

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