Page 30 of Things We Never Said
By the time the spinning wheel has vanished and Sean’s computer screen has gone blank, he’s no longer doing well. He’s wondering, instead, how to survive this weekend, how to make it through to Monday now that the subject of the next twelve months’ holidays has been launched, like a cruise missile, at his oh-so-fragile cheer.
Because what, after all, could be more depressing than trying to work out when he wants to take five weeks of holiday? Five weeks to be spent alone. What could possibly be worse than deciding what he should do and where he should go? Is there even any possible destination that would not make him feel ten times more scared and one hundred times more vulnerable than he does right now?
Snapshot #10
110 format, colour. A group of young people are posing for a photograph. The front row is made up of children holding handwritten placards. One of these reads: ‘When I grow up I would like to join the coal line, not the dole line.’ The second row is made up of students, some of whom are holding Socialist Workers Party placards saying ‘Victory to the miners’. Behind the group can be seen a row of middle-aged miners’ wives with their own larger banner stretched between flagpoles. It reads ‘BLYTH MINERS WIVES. Thatcher snatched our milk, now she wants our daily bread.’
Sean peers at the photograph until he spots Catherine and Theresa’s grinning faces.
The trip had been organised by the Miners Support Committee of the students’ union. They had booked a coach to take people to the Orgreave picket line, and Theresa, a willing militant for almost any cause, had roped Catherine into going with her, much against Sean’s wishes.
Though Sean had been terrified that the demonstration would turn violent, he had been unable to talk sense into Catherine, and as Theresa was their usual babysitter it had fallen to him to stay behind with baby April. The result was that he wasn’t even able to go along to make sure Catherine stayed out of trouble.
It was, he remembers, the first time that he had been left alone with April for more than a few hours, but Catherine had insisted that he’d be ‘just fine’. He’d been terrified that something would go wrong and he wouldn’t know how to deal with it. But he had been flattered, too, by her confidence in his parenting abilities, and was determined to prove her right.
In a last-ditch attempt at getting her to change her mind, he had walked with her into town through the deserted early-morning streets, little April sleeping in the pushchair. Theresa had stayed at a friend’s house for the night and would meet them there.
He can remember the huddled mass of students waiting in a fug of cigarette smoke, their rolled-up banners at their sides. And he had managed to convince Catherine not to go, albeit momentarily.
Then Theresa had turned up carrying a bunch of Socialist Workers Party placards, which she had spent the previous evening stapling to wooden sticks. ‘She’s coming,’ Theresa had insisted, when Sean had told her the news. ‘I don’t know what kind of patriarchal society you think you’re living in, Sean, but the days when husbands could decide that their wives should stay at home is long gone, honey. It’s her sisterly duty to come and she’s coming, aren’t you, Catherine?’
Catherine, torn between her husband and her friend, had looked hesitant.
‘Plus, it’ll be fun,’ Theresa continued. ‘You’ve hardly been anywhere since April was born. It’ll do you good to get out and about.’
This, apparently, had clinched it, because Catherine had wrinkled her nose and nodded. ‘She’s right, you know. I think I need this.’
‘It’ll be dangerous, though,’ Sean had protested. ‘You’ve seen what’s happening on the telly. It’s really rough out there.’
‘You think I won’t look after her?’ Theresa had asked, feigning offence.
‘No, I—’
‘Well then,’ she said. The subject, it seemed, was now closed.
Sean had spent the day watching the television, partly terrified he might catch a glimpse of his wife being whacked with a truncheon, partly hopeful he’d spot Catherine and be able to say, ‘Look, April, that’s Mummy on the screen.’
But despite the hundreds of support buses Sean knew were travelling from all over the country, there was remarkably little coverage. The news, instead, was full of upcoming elections to the European Parliament, a subject that the media had never shown any interest in before – or, for that matter, since – but which they had, that day, inexplicably preferred to the massive pro-miner demonstrations around the country.
Cassette #10
Hello Sean.
I bet this photo gives you the willies, doesn’t it? Do you remember how scared you were I’d get run over by a horse?
I felt terrible for leaving you behind, and though I pretended otherwise, I worried about April all day. But looking back, I think it was the right thing to do, both in political terms and personally.
I grew up a bit that day, that’s the thing. Talking to all those struggling miners’ wives and singing protest songs on the bus and getting angry, really angry, about the injustice of it all, changed me, or at least started a process of change. It really did.
I was still so young, that’s the thing. I had lived so little. I honestly think that I was still working out who I was meant to be, back then. I had never been on any kind of demonstration before and it was, to my surprise, the most exciting thing I had ever done.
As an aside, thinking back on it all, I do worry about the kids today, don’t you? I mean, we were hardly communist radicals, were we? But we still knew right from wrong. We still knew when to stand up and say, ‘No!’ We knew when to protest and shout and lie down in the road. April’s generation, and younger kids even more so, all just seem so passive to me.
Whether it’s the NHS or the rich not paying their taxes, or this stupid Brexit business, there are plenty of things to be furious about, but I don’t think many of them even consider getting off their arses to vote, let alone demonstrate. I’ve talked to April about this and she’s all, ‘Oh, what’s the point?’ which seems to be the overriding belief of our time. She seems to think that clicking on some Facebook petition is about as radical as it gets. So, I do worry that we’ve somehow produced a generation of ostriches.
And I don’t just mean that they bury their heads in the sand and let the politicians get away with murder these days, either. I mean that April’s generation is missing out on all of that fun, as well. Because, yes, we believed in the causes and, yes, we were genuinely angry about entire mining communities being left without a livelihood. But God, we had fun fighting it, didn’t we?
To start with, on the bus going down that morning, everyone was sleepy. It was a very early start and they were students, after all. But as we got nearer to Orgreave, we began to see the rows of police vans lined up, and the atmosphere became electric. I have never seen so many police, Sean. They were like an army.
