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.
I was able to build his revolutionary Kyoshi Progress 4WD radio controlled buggy for Christmas. Debbie was charming in her school play. As the month progressed, my mother went into hospital for tests and was then admitted to Papworth for a heart operation in the new Year; which brought my father Fred to stay with us for some time, when he could be with his grandchildren, and for Freda to make a rare trip up from Devon to see her. I still had time for visiting my old haunts in Tottenham which had changed in some ways but not in others. I take some fantastic videos of our family Christmas and then our following new year visit to London as Diana and I celebrate our anniversary and review our problems and future. My father brought some fantail doves for me to introduce and train for my dovecotes and this was difficult given the cold and wet at this time of year,. I was keeping abreast of political and economic developments and gaining excellent publicity for Micro Industry views but tariffs and the impact of the IBM micro were still a cause for concern. I had written and presented the BMMG’s views to PITCOM and then authored a policy paper for UK Information Technology and was mastering the first use of Homelink and Prestel for electronic funds transfer by private individuals. There was a tussle with Microsoft for publicity coverage as rivals. I was first invited to chair a NEDO committee and was then embarrassingly rebutted although a full apology was forthcoming but I have many further requests for speaking engagements. At least my new Saville Row suite from Huntsman was taking shape. Probably the biggest tragedy of the month, or the year or even the decade, was the news of the Bhopal gas tragedy with the people it killed and maimed initially estimated at 2,000 killed and 50,000 blinded (though this proved to me a massive underestimate) and this overshadowed the Salford train crash and the internal strife the government was having over student grant and local government curtailment but they were particularly mad about private tax reforms. . Nobel prize winner, Bishop Tutu, was appealing for peace in South Africa and appeals were arriving for the starting of sanctions against that nation when anti-apartheid campaigners were arrested for alleged sedition. A famine of biblical proportions blights Ethiopia and many other conflicts disturbed the world including the murder of an Indian politician and the Polish government dispersing a Solidarity rally with tear gas. but three are charged with the murder of that Solidarity priest. Gorbachev visits Thatcher and she relates his views on arms control to her friend Ronald Reagan returning with a four-point plan and also attends the Hong Kong handover ceremony. . The famous English jockey, Brian Taylor, dies in Hong Kong after a racing fall and 10 were killed during an M25 pile-up in the fog.