Notes
It is a complacent British habit to claim that our most extreme political figures are really deeply lovable, patriotic and soft- hearted. So, when Mr Ken Livingstone bowed politely to the Queen at the opening of the Thames Barrier, there was a good deal of self-congratulation all round, and tile' One was churlish enough to point out Tat Mr Livingstone is a keen supporter of the organisation which murdered her uncle. Something similar happens, even now, with Mr Arthur Scargill. There are always people O n hand to praise his sincerity (he is sincere, but so what?), his oratory, his sense of humour. No ideologue he, we are told, but a free spirit, a home-grown English radical. It is claimed that he is persecuted and misunderstood by the popular press. Against all this, the truth about It ir Scargill needs to be reasserted. He has organised a strike
against a closure plan which would
Probably not involve a single compulsory redundancy. He has never sought the opi- ri,I°11 of his union's members on that strike. He has tried his best to terrify those miners who do not agree with him into submission, and he has shown his readiness to force the strike to continue indefinitely without regard to the poverty that this inflicts on the strikers and their families. He has never Fondemned any violent act by pickets, and rIF never ceases to shout about the 'fascist' violence of the police. Even in tangential Mil afters, he is incapable of telling the truth: always claims, for instance, that there .1:'e 41/2 million people on the dole'. To his 1_I!S and bullying he adds a strutting vanity, °I3vious in his repulsive hairstyle, and in the vay he courts the television cameras. Mr cargitl manages to be both evil and silly at the same time.
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