ray hutstone wrote:Anyone else old enough to remember the miners' strike?
Yes, and I still have my signed copy of the script of Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party which I won in a fundraising auction at the United Reformed Church to prove it. As I recall, miners
were seeking 'to go to and from their place of work without fear', i.e. that fear being of pit closures, job losses and the dole.
Not sure what it's got to do with the subject, though. Politicans are rather more than just people going to and from their place of work. They're policy-makers and law-makers, and enjoy a remoteness in a system that's designed to restrict our democratic participation to a pretty meaningless vote every 5 years (or the odd referendum, which they didn't like the result of in any case). It's no wonder people feel disenfranchised, alienated, voiceless, frustrated and angry. Protest is a function of this democratic lack. Surely most politicians have had worse at the hustings. And anyone with a sense of British political history will see that we only arrived at this limited democracy after a series of not-so-merry dances between authority and protest.
