Lee rang at teatime. He and Pete have made more finds on the derelict-buildings front; a subterranean warehouse cellar, half-filled with water in the centre of Watermouth; they also broke into an office complex and had a narrow escape when alarm bells began to ring.
Lee said Oculus aren’t going to press legal action, and Morris is busy mobilising support—our defenders include sixteen councilors (including leader of the Tory council) and the Bishop of Chichester (!), so it looks—as I suspected it would in the end—as if we’ll be able to stay. “They’re fucked,” said Lee emphatically.
Today I stayed in while Dad set off to work and the sun blazed from a clear sky for the second successive day. I wore only shirtsleeves yet sweated inside by the afternoon and continued reading Wilson’s The Occult.
The miner’s strike is now in its fifth week, and the railway and shipping unions have blocked all movements of coal in support, but Ravenscraig steel workers are angrily demanding that coal be allowed through to keep the furnaces running at two thirds normal output: they fear closing the plant will give BSC the chance it’s looking for to shut it down completely. Scargill is right when he says the strike is now resolving itself in class terms. The Ravenscraig men should take sides now, because keeping the plant open is no guarantee of job security. The interests of Ravenscraig lies with the miners.
Dad declares that Hatton, Scargill and Ben ‘are out to undermine democracy, get rid of the monarchy, and establish a dictatorship,” and he can’t understand why such proven “enemies of Britain” are still at large. Today also, the Greenham Common women were evicted from their plastic and wicker tents by 300 police. “Trash!” spits out Dad. Although I think their ‘non-violent’ protests are futile they inspire me with sneaking sympathy for their methods. I admire their persistence.
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