Divided They Fall

Twenty-five years on from the miners' strike, what of the Police, cut off from the communities from which they had been drawn?

Unlike the campus Trots, the old working class had not despised the Police. Very far from it, in fact - the beat-level Police, at least, were an integral part of that class. But the likes of Margaret Thatcher had always looked down on them (and still do, of course), and simply used them as they would and do use any other category of workers, especially public sector workers, to their own ends.

There were, as there always are, initial rewards. But, again as always, they did not last. Once the campus Trots, who really hated and hate the Police for exactly the same reason as their Thathcherite parents did and do (sheer snobbery), had attained office in the form of New Labour, probably with the majority of Police votes, they duly turned on them, particularly over pay.

The task now is to restore the pre-Blair, pre-Thatcher, pre-Scragill coalition of, among other people, skilled workers and community Police Offiers. Not least by restoring, among other things, skilled work and community policing.