The Harrods Bombing

THE HARRODS BOMBING

Not content with a conventional war in the Falklands and an impending nuclear world war, Thatcher was now declaring war on trade unions; using the power of government and the courts to cripple them legally and financially and then using the police to crush them physically. And just to round things off there was still the matter of the war in Northern Ireland.

“It's all very simple while you keep the war vocal,” as Crass had declared a few years earlier “But the bombs in Belfast are coming down your local. I want to know how much you can take cos you've taken it all, and that's just great.”

Rather than gaining them the freedom for their country that they sought or at least a place at the negotiating table, the IRA's war against the British State was only leading to being responded to in kind. Not that this specific war was one that Thatcher was willing to name as such.

Conventional war, nuclear war, State violence, State control; the capacity for the government to continue inflicting problems and misery seemed to hold no bounds as did the capacity for people to carry on regardless under whatever circumstances. These were problems for the IRA that they were continuously trying to break.

On December 10^th 1983, a bomb planted by the IRA went off at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, London, injuring four soldiers and a passerby. Two weeks later another bomb went off outside Harrods, in London, killing three police officers, three members of the public and injuring many more. An apology was quickly issued by the IRA over the loss of innocent lives in the explosion; that is, for the deaths of the three members of the public, not the police officers though of course, the apology counted for nothing.

It begged the question, however: If the Angry Brigade had managed to plant bombs without causing any loss of life then why couldn't the supposedly more professional IRA?

On visiting the injured in hospital, the Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Graham Leonard spoke of the “intensity of evil” of those responsible for the bomb, adding “The real agony is that there are actually human beings who can do this.”

Which also begged another question: What might the Bishop think of Thatcher and co, and their willingness to see millions upon millions of dead and injured from an even bigger bomb?

Warrington

THE WARRINGTON DISPUTE

Away from Greenham Common, something altogether different was taking place that was still extremely significant to the way the country was being governed and would prove to have huge repercussions for British workers for evermore. An industrial dispute at a print works in Warrington, near Manchester, had escalated into a state of affairs that no-one – except perhaps Thatcher – could have anticipated after a newspaper entrepreneur called Eddie Shah took on printers union the National Graphical Association (NGA) over the issues of closed shops and the employment of non-union labour.

Less than a fortnight after being elected to government in 1979, Thatcher had started to lay out plans for trade union reform; focussing on picketing, the closed shop and ballots. Her aim was to not just curb but destroy the power of unions and in a bid to do this had devised a raft of new laws and two new Employment Acts.

In Warrington, Eddie Shah had recruited non-union labour for his new printing plant causing NGA members to stage a walkout. Shah sacked the strikers immediately which led to a bout of mass picketing at the plant in support of them. Hundreds of union members were bussed in to take part in the pickets which prompted Shah to cite the new Tory Employment Acts, and to call upon the government for support.

Thatcher was only too pleased to oblige and gave the police the green light to do whatever it took to prevent the pickets having any effect. To Thatcher, not only was this a case of law and order and the pickets acting illegally but also a question of a greater struggle between union and government power.

The NGA was fined huge sums for breaking the rules of the new Employment Acts and finally had their entire funds sequestered for non-compliance. As for the pickets themselves, they were facing a newly equipped, combative police force, trained in the lessons of the riots of '81 and given the go-ahead from the highest level of government to act with impunity.

The strike culminated with the exits of the M6 motorway being blocked by the police to prevent the pickets getting to Warrington and then finally with a full-on battle between the two sides outside the plant where 2,000 baton-wielding police charged, drove at in Range Rovers and fought hand-to-hand with 4,000 workers.

Nobody knew at the time, of course, but this was the shape of things to come in terms of policing future industrial disputes...