"...We're acting like dinosaurs, said the Daily Mail, and I was the chief dinosaur... They said `He wants to go back to the 1970s'...Too true, I do! In the 1970s we could do things!"
Manchester's May Day rally yesterday was honoured by the presence of legendary miners' leader, Arthur Scargill, now definitely in the realm of `national treasure'. Age certainly has not withered him as he tore into the current state of capitalism by urging the packed audience to `change the world'.
"You can consign austerity to the dustbin of history but you can't do it by simply moving resolutions; we can't do it by great speeches" he said "Two of the greatest, James Larkin and James Connolly spoke here in Manchester in 1913, and they warned that independence from an oppressor...will fail unless you replace the capitalist system that causes it, and exchange it with a system where human beings matter and not profit. In other words, you change the world."
Arthur was sharing the rally platform with the general secretaries of three trade unions representing teachers, civil servants and firefighters (PCS, NUT and FBU), as well as representatives from the North West TUC, the junior doctors, Manchester University students and the Hillsborough Justice Campaign. And he had messages for them all...
"The fight by junior doctors is for the NHS itself" he explained "It's a fight about whether we have a health service available at the time of need, on demand and free of charge...or alternatively we go backwards to the quagmire where, if you couldn't pay you couldn't get treatment. I'll tell you one of the problems we've got, and it's a legacy from 1945 to 1950; we have the scandal here of seeing consultants doing a third of their work in private hospitals. I'll make it clear where I stand; I would ban all private medicine.
"They keep saying `What can we do about the NHS?'" he added "I'll tell you what we can do, we can finance it. Pay doctors what they're worth, pay cleaners, those who cook the food, those who do all the jobs; they can pay them a decent wage and if they won't do that we won't have a decent NHS. It's a struggle that our forefathers and sisters fought for..."
One of the biggest laughs Arthur got was when he recounted supporting the junior doctors...
"I went to the picket line with the junior doctors and I didn't say who I was" he quipped "This young doctor said to me `Do you know, this is my first strike; it's the first time I've been on the picket line'...I said `Me too!'"
He added that the greatest victory of the miners' strike "was the struggle itself", before focusing on Hillsborough and subsequent calls for the truth about Orgreave, when police attacked striking miners, to be finally revealed.
"We certainly haven't got the full truth about Orgreave" he said "I've been asked by the BBC at least six times today to give them an answer as to who was to blame. Six times I've given them an answer. Six times they don't like the answer. I'll tell you who I blame...
"...The people responsible for the events in Orgreave which led to mass arrests, including me; which led to terrible injuries, including mine, was Margaret Thatcher, who gave the order, and Leon Brittan" he insisted to more applause "They are to blame. The Chief Constable of South Yorkshire was in cahoots with them. It wasn't an unplanned issue; they planned to attack with dogs, staves...and boy did they attack.
"You've seen it yourself on television" he added "Young men with t-shirts and plimsolls. That's all they had, facing literally a paramilitary force...The papers published in 2013 and 2014 demonstrate that they lied deliberately, not just to the miners but they lied to the British public. The papers that have not been disclosed need to be disclosed, and we who participated at Orgreave want to know the truth. We want to see who covered up what, and when..."
Together with the Hillsborough and Orgreave cover ups, Arthur added the cover up over unemployment figures which had been "cooked". The official figure of 1.8million had been disproved by The Guardian which showed 11million people out of work... "You don't need a statistician" he said "Go around any city, go around any town, see the homeless on the streets with no food; go and see the food banks. It's a crime against humanity."
Most controversially, Arthur slated Europe and his `friend', Jeremy Corbyn, who he accused of the `ultimate betrayal'...
"I thought there was a glimmer of hope because policies that were being advocated to scrap Trident, to come out of Europe, to do all the things that are necessary to make a fundamental change were being espoused from a platform" he said "But first of all a compromise; that we could have submarines without nuclear warheads. It doesn't make sense but you could understand, just about, why it was said.
"Sorry" he added "but nothing prepared me for Jeremy Corbyn saying that Britain should stay in the EU..."
He explained that the European Union was an American concept dating back to the 1940s and campaigns to join it were financed by American intelligence agencies, while the incredibly unpopular TTIP was "a policy designed to further assist international capitalism at the expense of workers"...
"I have to say I am disgusted in the way Jeremy has come out in favour of Britain remaining a member of the EU" he said "He was elected as party leader last September, and he was elected on a programme that was committed to coming out of Europe."
Adding that this was a political, rather than personal, criticism, he said "It's time we recognised that decisions like this represent the ultimate betrayal. And it's one of the reasons why the people who want to attack him and undermine him are having a field day. Instead of compromising on these issues he should have stood square and said `Look, I will scrap Trident and use that money to fund the NHS...We will come out of the EU and go back into the world'. If he had done that he would have support from all sections of the labour and trade union movement.
"...We're acting like dinosaurs, said the Daily Mail, and I was the chief dinosaur" Arthur added "They said `He wants to go back to the 1970s'...Too true I do! In the 1970s we could do things!
"Think of what we could achieve without the EU" he said "...You heard the struggle about the suffragettes; they won the vote, for everyone; that was a victory without the EU!...We can't protect our own industries; we can give £350billion to banks who are in trouble but we can't give one or two million pounds to the steel industry in order to preserve jobs..."
Arthur concluded his speech by returning to James Connolly...
"I have been a socialist and a Marxist since I was 15 years of age" he said "I'm proud of my record, I'm proud of my faith, and I want to see a world without war and without want, without discrimination of any kind...In other words the world I want, in the words of Connolly, is very simple... `We don't ask for too much, we only want the Earth'..."
His words were met with a standing ovation by the audience which packed out the main hall in the Mechanics Institute. Afterwards, socialist superstar Arthur Scargill cracked jokes, posed for photos and signed autographs for people of all ages...People who knew they were in the presence of someone who has not only talked the talk, but walked the walk, and been dragged down the street by the full force of the state for his beliefs and commitment to the cause.
• For a full report on the Manchester May Day Festival, including extracts from all the other speeches - click here
• To hear the full Arthur Scargill speech on a really shaky video see the Salford Star YouTube channel – click here
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