In these fickle times
Memory seems short
I wonder if in fact
Social History Is taught.
Captured there on film
The day the miners lost
And generations after
Workers still bear the cost:
A mounted police rider,
Eyes seeming half crazed
Threatening to strike
WIth Baton fully raised,
A helpless woman standing,
Look of horror on her face
Who just happened to be
There in the wrong place.
Whether or not the blow fell
The photo doesn't show
So one of those things
Perhaps I'll never know.
The battle of Orgreave
Sold to the people at large
As an act of civil necessity
But in fact a cavalry charge
Against strikers who were,
Said to be leaving the scene,
In a manufactured conflict
That need never have been.
A deliberate policy to
Curtail workers' rights
Its legacy characterised
By such violent sights.
A hundred years and fifty years
Since the charge of Peterloo
Out rulers again showed there
Wasn't much they wouldn't do
In defence of the established order
And preserve their privileged state
And civil rights, justice and equality
Can go just sit in a corner and wait.
In these days of connectivity
These days of instant news
Bombarded by propaganda
We are fed sanitised views.
We still bow the head
Sing God Save the Queen
As if Peterloo and Orgreave
Had never ever been
