O brave new world..October CW

‘O brave new world! That has such people in it.’

‘Twas a hot morning on 18^th June as the warring forces drew up on opposite sides of the field of battle.  They were evenly balanced as per numbers with perhaps five thousand men each and from the purely historical perspective it promised to be another classic encounter – well-organised government ranks ranged against a rag-tag of hastily assembled alliances which on this occasion has been drawn into the open against their better judgement and with the result that the rebels already found themselves surrounded on three sides by establishment forces.  The war, such as it had been to date, had started quietly enough, hesitantly even, and despite the history of attrition between the participants with tactics being deployed by both sides hoping from the start to avoid major conflict.  However, subsequent increasingly violent skirmishes hád put paid to any hope of a negotiated peace and the forthcoming full-on confrontation was enevitable.

And yet despite all their respective experience, on this day discomfort and nervousness were still the prevailing sentiments as the two armies faced each other.  On the one side,sun-warmed armour chafed against scratchy tunics, sending sweat dribbling into eyes and down necks. On the other, men squinted into the sharp sunlight, straining to carch any sudden movement from the enemy.  Which they did.  A couple of ranks of infantry advanced, weapons beating aggressively on their shields.  The rebels moved forward in response, banners flying, against the grimly efficient government ranks. Only the one army, however, had a cavalry division and in the opening skirmishes the horsemen drew close, frothing horses pushing the enemy’s forward ranks steadily backwards.

“Owwww, pig! Get yer ‘orse off of me foot!”

One of Yorkshire’s finest pushed up his riot visor and leaned down from the seventeeen-and-one-half hand, twelve hundredweight police horse he was riding.

“I’m sorry. He didn’t hear you”

“I said yer ‘kin’ ‘orse is trod on me foot. Get it orf.”

“And I said he didn’t hear you. You’ll have to ask him nicely.”

“Arghhh! Me ‘effin’ foot’s broken. Gerroff!”

“Ask him nicely.”

Police Constable Muir pressed a heel imperceptibly into the horse’s flank and in response it leaned slightly onto the offending hoof.

“OOOHYERRBASTAD!!!”

“Now, that’s not very nice.  You heard what I said, matey. Ask him nicely.”

With tears of pain coursing down his cheeks, the previously aggressive miner had no option.

“Please, gerroff me foot.”

Another almost telepathic command and the horse shifted its weight and took a step backwards.  Its eyes, deep and dark with generation upon generation of trust, training and understanding, viewed its prisoner dispassionately through the protective plastic visor that police horses have been forced to wear since those days whilst the requisite collar was felt.  “Come here, Sonny Jim. You’ve been very obstructive to my horse in the performance of his duties and you’re nicked.”

With that the limping protester was hauled unceremoniously from the field of battle and taken back to one of the ‘Black Maria’ police vans that in these modern times took the place of former camp followers.  All around them the riot raged. Miners and activists hurled stakes, stones and anything else that came to hand against the police lines whilst the latter, in turn, launched repeated charges against the strikers.  The Battle of Orgreave, 1984, was on.

The newspaper headlines subsequently screamed about the ‘Battle of Orgreave’, yet most people from readers of the Daily Express to those of the Socialist Worker had never heard of this previously quiet town, but Orgreave had entered the national psyche.

Orgreave – new word, that had such peaceful limits.

‘Well alas we’ve seen it all before,
Knights in armour, days of yore;
The same old fears and the same old crimes;
We haven’t changed since ancient times.’

OZ