Now we see what was really at stake in the miners' strike by Seamus Milne

[David Guyatt]

The Thatcher government's war on the miners her chancellor Nigel Lawson described preparations for the strike as "like re-arming to face the threat of Hitler" wasn't just about class revenge for the Tories' humiliating defeats at the hands of the miners in the early 1970s. It was about using the battering ram of state power to break the single greatest obstacle to the transformation of the economy in the interests of corporate privilege and wealth that Margaret Thatcher was determined to carry out. The offensive ushered in the full-blown neoliberal model that has failed to deliver for the majority, generated inequality and insecurity on a huge scale, and imploded with such disastrous consequences five-and-a-half years ago.

A good time to remember how Thatcher was brought to power - by a very shadowy American backed European ultra right-wing-cum-nazi power group called Le Cerle

Since the Guardian first reported leaks about security service operations against the miners in the 1990s, much more has emerged and been confirmed by former officials. MI5's "counter-subversion" role has been largely transferred to a string of notorious undercover police units, now the subject of an official inquiry; global blanket surveillance by GCHQ and the NSA is on another scale entirely from their then unprecedented operations against the miners' strike; while state collusion with mass corporate blacklisting of trade unionists has continued, despite the enfeebled state of the labour movement.

Lovely self congratulating back-slapping by the Guardian, but has it ever spoken once about the role played by the aforesaid Le Cercle in shifting British life to right? No.