Henry's Songbook

Every second of every minute, every hour of every day
The babblers work at building Babel, listen to what they say
Reading the news and feeding their views to the minds of a captive nation
Blending fact and fantasy - the official interpretation

Every night in a billion rooms a billion minds are fed
On a diet of pre-digested pulp prepared by talking heads
Opinion-makers, phonies and fakers, talking to earn their pay
Gazing out of their plastic world and talking our lives away

Every time that a working man or woman demand their rights
The talking machine works overtime to prove that black is white
Strikers are traitors, paid agitators, miners are surly brutes
But don't let the viewers see the coppers teaching them with their boots

Every day the smooth-faced pundits forecast on the box
The miners' strike is lost, they say, and Scargill's on the rocks
Lies, defamation, misinformation, this is the testing time
He kept faith with the men who elected him, and that is a major crime

Every time there's a strikin' poll the lads of the BBC
And the Thatcher mob weep crocodile tears - hurrah for democracy
The 'Sun' and the 'Mail' both joyfully hail the Poles' 'Solidarity'
Let British workers go on strike they sing in a different key

   For solidarity's good for Poles - but not for you and me

[1989:] The miners' strike [of 1984/85] lasted 358 days, and [...] cost fourteen deaths (one of them officially a murder), nearly 10,000 arrests, thousands of injuries to both miners and police, and over £7 billion of taxpayers' money. It was a dispute about pit closures and the future of mining communities that was seen by much of the media and the public in more simple terms, as a show of strength between a hard-line left-winger, Arthur Scargill, the miners' leader, and an apostle of market forces, Margaret Thatcher. The media, for the most part, reflected public opinion in their hostility towards the miners, particularly as the bitterness and violence grew. (Denselow, Music 212)