At the same time as Margaret Thatcher was being buried to the pomp of the British establishment, to the tune of £10 million of our money, thousands of working people in Goldthorpe, a small ex-mining village on the outskirts of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, were celebrating the passing of this hated symbol of all that is bad about the Tories and the capitalist system it represents.
At the same time as Margaret Thatcher was being buried to the pomp of the British establishment, to the tune of £10 million of our money, thousands of working people in Goldthorpe, a small ex-mining village on the outskirts of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, were celebrating the passing of this hated symbol of all that is bad about the Tories and the capitalist system it represents.
The party started mid-morning outside miners’ clubs and pubs in the village with huge crowds gathering. Many young people joined in, proudly take turns in manning the local pit banners and joining with their parents and grandparents in shouting the old anti-Tory chants and songs, many remembered from the days of the 1984 strike. Hull Unison attended bringing along their branch banner, but this was really a local community – scarred by the past and called the “enemy within” by Thatcher – getting a chance to show what they thought of this woman Cameron calls the ”best Prime Minister Britain ever had”.
For many it was also a great time to catch up with old colliery workmates and friends and recall the many stories and anecdotes surrounding their monumental struggle against the might of the state to save their jobs and communities. The atmosphere was similar to the annual mining galas of the past and one of sheer joy at celebrating the death of this spiteful, divisive, woman. Huge cheers greeted the arrival of the horse drawn coffin in which sat upright an effigy of Thatcher which headed the march around the village.
At the end of the march the coffin was finally ‘laid to rest’ by a ceremonial burning with the flames reaching high in the air to even bigger cheers on a piece of waste ground in the village. From the ashes of the effigy of Thatcher we must build a new Goldthorpe and a new world – a socialist world.
