A day out with the new Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, former miner, Labour councillor and admirer of Benn, Scargill and Skinner.
The unions were small-c conservatives. They paraded under heraldic banners, had no truck with such new-fangled ideas as women’s rights, and wanted to keep every coal mine in the country open.
Johnson’s joke was not only ill-judged, but squandered an opportunity to tackle a pernicious bit of left-wing myth-making.
The Gilets Jaunes protests are not just a challenge to his tax policy, but to the democratically elected government of France. He must hit back.
“If the police pre-planned a mass, unlawful assault on the miners at Orgreave, and then sought to cover up what they did, we need to know.”
Why Nick Timothy’s call for an inquiry on this site earlier this week is mistaken.
If the police planned an unlawful assault on the miners, arrested people on trumped-up charges and then covered it up, we need to know.
Watch for a pre-referendum announcement of enquiry of one kind or another into the “Battle of Orgreave” during the miners’ strike.
They’ve been compared to the miners, who only lost when careful Government planning and irresistible technological change undermined them.
The saga shows how vulnerable Britain’s planning system can be to high profile, articulate pressure groups.