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A month of great conflicts, disputes and tragedies both at home and abroad with the Miner’s dispute and Mrs Thatcher’s bullying of her colleagues and the Miners being the headline at home and the tragic Bhopal Gas leak overshadowing a month of numerous disasters. A good family month with my children and also as my mother arrives at Papworth for her heart operation in the New Year and Freda comes up to visit and Dad arrives with my new doves and stays with us. A busy month in industry politics and some more triumphs and setbacks. The hope of the month came with the start of East/West arms limitation discussions
This month saw some very serious, controversial and even violent confrontations that started with the Miner’s High Court appeal and the arrest of two miners for the death of Taxi driver David Wilkie and ended with the CND protests at Alconbury where cruise missiles were due to be installed. The miners had to eventually respect the Court’s authority as to oppose it would be hopeless, given a government quite willing to change the law to suit its purposes and a judiciary anxious to do their bidding, but they defied it when they could. The TUC could only support them within the new draconian laws and then the government actually funded the sequestrators when the courts would not let them use the money. There was time for the family and our friends as we visited the new Jordon’s Mill shop now that it had begun to sell cereals to the public; visited Cambridge to see Diana’s people. I spent considerable time helping Daniel and Debbie with their schoolwork in front of our new log fire and this involved his Chemistry but I was also pleased with Daniel’s triumph in his French test.