Issue 7 A History Talks Vol 1 by John Tognolini

1984-85 British Miners Strike

“On “Digger” priorities when landing on a New Guinea beach during the Second World War and being inadvertently attacked by American planes: After a while, I put my head up-to have a look around. I’ve never been so proud of my countrymen. First things first. Every bloody man had taken his tin hat off his head and clapped it over his balls. Quoted in Russell Ward, A Radical Life (Melbourne and Sydney, 1988, p 148”

Dictionary of Australian Quotations Edited by Stephen Murray-Smith, Richmond, Victoria, Heinemann. 1984

“In 1919, noted conservative economist Joseph Schumpeter presented a surprisingly critical picture of Roman imperialism, in a world that might sound familiar to present-day critics of U.S. “globalism”:

….That policy which pretends to aspire to peace but unerringly generates war, the policy of continual preparation for war, the policy of meddlesome interventionism. There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies: and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest-why, then it was national honour that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbours, always fighting for breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome’s duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs.”

The Assassination of Julius Caesar , A People’s History of Ancient Rome by Michael Parenti, The New Press, New York, London 2003.

“Across the Atlantic, Thatcher was attempting an English version of Friedmanism by championing what has become known as “the ownership of society”,……With British workers now categorized as “the enemy within” Thatcher unleashed the full force of the strikers, including, in a single confrontation, eight thousand truncheon-wielding riot police, many on horseback, to storm a plant picket line, leading to roughly seven hundred injuries. Over the course of the long strike, the number of injuries reached into the thousands. As the Guardian reporter Seumas Milne documented in definitive account of the strike, The Enemy Within: Thatcher’s Secret War Against the Miners, the prime minister pressed the security services to intensify surveillance of the union and, in particular, its militant president Arthur Scargill…..”

The Shock Doctrine, The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klien, Allen Lane an imprint PENGUIN BOOKS Australia, 2007