General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
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Hunterston: the forgotten battle that paved the way for Orgreave
Forty years on, an ex-miner tells MATT KERR about the brutal police tactics used against Scottish pickets at a crucial coal terminal, part of the hidden history of state violence and media manipulation during the miners’ strike
Hunterston
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I REMEMBER the sunshine blazing in our living room window in Stanley Road, Saltcoats, as my dad came home from work and plonked himself down on his seat. My sister and I would usually try to climb onto his lap.
It could have been any day really, but this one sticks in the memory. The television was switched on for the news and we watched images of miners apparently attacking police in what looked like open warfare. I watched it, transfixed. When the scenes ended and the news returned to the studio, my dad said something that still rings in my ears: “Do you believe what you just saw? Don’t. Don’t believe it. Don’t believe the state news.”
It stuck for years in part because at the time I didn’t really understand it, and partly because he wasn’t in the habit of being in that sort of mood when he got home.
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