Most spectacularly, the 1985 Gay Pride march was led by a contingent of miners. So on a glorious day in July, a procession wound through Central London that must have left onlookers startled. Round the corner came the banners, the winding wheels, the portraits of Scargill and A J Cook, the legions of miners and the ompah pah pah of the band. ibid.
Blair and New Labour thrive on pessimism … The antidote to pessimism is the understanding that we do make a difference. Blair didn’t scrap the Poll Tax – we did. New Labour didn’t end apartheid – we did. What keeps campaigners going is not a naïve faith that one sugary day we can make the world a better place, but the knowledge that defying authority already makes the world a better place. ibid.
The campaign to save the yards from commercial annihilation gathered momentum ... Clydeside solidarity prevailed over commercial viability. Kirsty Young, The British at Work: Them and Us 1964-1980, BBC 2011
This was the battleground: here where we lived and worked is where we fought the enemy. And for those of us who remain on the blacklist continue to fight. A drab town with a population of over 100,000 where 61% of the houses are rented, 34% have no inside toilets … A battered landscape scarred by years of exploitation. Ken Loach: The Wednesday Play: The Rank and File, BBC 1971
There hadn’t been a strike here for a hundred years. And the union enjoyed the protection of a closed shop where contributions were automatically deducted from workers’ pay packets. And meetings were as rare as a sunny day on a wet weekend. Then it happened. ibid.
A clown official from a bloody clown union. ibid. branch meeting
We’ve lost faith in you completely. ibid.
But what do you do when those who are supposed to be leading the strike go out of their way to defeat it? ibid.
The strike is unofficial. ibid. union official
That’s a reporter: they’ve had a meeting this morning of the management and the bloody union, and the management have offered three pounds and the union’s accepted it. ibid. strike committee member takes phone call
You’re not even entitled to hardship money. ibid. union official
In September 1995 nearly 500 Liverpool dockers were sacked. Their fight for reinstatement has become one of the most important industrial disputes in Britain. Yet it is scarcely reported, is largely ignored by politicians and is not officially recognised by the unions. Ken Loach, The Flickering Flame, 1997
The story of the dockers is the story of a struggle for regular work, regular hours and regular pay. Everyone has a fear of going back to the bad old days. ibid.
They [employers] found a willing ally in Margaret Thatcher. And in 1989 the National Dock Labour Scheme was abolished. ibid.
The T&G had called off the strike everywhere else. ibid.
The evils of casual labour began to reappear. ibid.
329 dock workers were sacked for showing their solidarity with the Torside men. ibid.
The dockers and their families are now up against it – real hardship. ibid.
Women have got organised – Women of the Waterfront. ibid.
There has been solidarity action from dockers in twenty-two countries. ibid.
Piccadilly was already a seething mass of people; the hoarding around Eros was crowded with young people mainly from the Forces. Ken Loach: The Spirit of ’45, woman, 2013
Will we, the people who have won the war, drive home our victory against fascism by defeating our pre-war enemies of poverty and unemployment? ibid. man
We’re still being taken in. ibid.
The great inter-war slumps were not acts of God or blind forces. They were the sure and certain result of the concentration of too much economic power in the hands of too few men. ibid. Labour Party manifesto 45
The Labour Party is a socialist party and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the socialist commonwealth of Great Britain – free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public-spirited, its material resources organised in the service of the British people. ibid.
The best health services should be available free for all. Money must no longer be the passport to the best treatment. ibid.
Newspapers carried the astonishing news to an amazed public – Labour landslide. ibid. Pathé news
We have been the dreamers, we have been the sufferers, now we are the builders. ibid. Aneurin Bevan
The idea that people who worked in the industry had any say in how the industry was run was a completely foreign idea. ibid. Tony Benn
It was not until 1967 that dockers gained permanent employment. ibid.
They [rozzer] seemed to enjoy inflicting pain and suffering on the working man. ibid. striking miner
The last registered dock workers did not get their jobs back. Casual labour has returned to the docks. ibid.
Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice? Lillian Hellman
In Memory of the Rochdale Millworkers who supported the struggle against slavery during the American Civil War 1861-5. David Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History III: A Moral Mission, plaque, BBC 2016
Vietnam was, and still is, the only question that can mobilise the masses. Grin Without a Cat aka The Base of the Air is Red, Paul Verges, 1977
Saint-Nazaire May 1st 1967: End of the longest strike of the post-war in Sud-Aviation. ibid.
1967: We feel we had a real movement. ibid. striker
On April 11th 1968 Rudi was gravely wounded by gunfire while he cycled in a Berlin street. He’d written, We Must Revolutionise Revolutionaries. ibid.
Paris 1962 Metro Charonne: A new attitude in the demonstrations, more aggressive, born from a real need of striking back. ibid.
This is where the New Left was born. ibid.
It’s a struggle between rich and poor. ibid. Douglas Bravo
May 68 and all that: For me, May 68 happened in the Boulevard Saint-Michel. ibid.
But never has this authentic courage, this everyday courage, which consists of sacrificing your personality completely to become effective. ibid.
Indeed, we have occupied the Sorbonne. ibid.
Paris Latin Quarter May 6th: At once the State reveals its oppressive side; the one that stays more or less hidden in everyday life. ibid.
The occupation of the Latin Quarter went fine until 8 p.m. It was the police that set off the incidents attacking us with chlorine grenade-launchers. ibid.
Birth of a legend. Birth of an image. ibid.
It’s always the same scene: a few blows and then they arrest them. ibid.
That time showed us that street violence does not lead automatically to political change. ibid.
In Latin America a whole generation of political fighters would end up under fascist regimes. ibid.
They want a change: political and economic. ibid.
In Saint-Etienne, however, the CGT strikers shunned by their comrades from the other two unions take to counter-attack and attack the CRS with stones, screws and iron bars. ibid. Newsreel October 1948
Anyway, history wasn’t being written in Avignon that summer; it was being written in Prague.’ ibid. striker
In Prague, the archives of the Gestapo were thrown into the streets. ibid. French newsreel
The first Soviet tank that entered Free Prague carried the number 23. It was the same tank, now a monument, that was surrounded by other Russian tanks in August 1968. ibid. commentator
Dubcek goes to Moscow and finds another Brezhnev who threatens with military invasion and ‘normalization’. ibid.
What are you doing in Prague? And you call yourself a communist. ibid. demonstrator to man in tank
Student demonstration, May 68, quickly repressed the Mexican way. Two hundred dead, and the game opened in a pacified capital. ibid. commentator