THE 130th Big Meeting taking place in Durham today holds a special significance.

It is 30 years since the great miners’ strike of 1984-5, the defeat of which plunged Britain into a long Thatcherite night of neoliberal economic madness, spiralling inequality and industrial decline.

Thatcher’s government and its successors removed regulation of the City of London in the so-called Big Bang, directly causing the reckless speculation that prompted the financial crash of 2008 — which in turn inspired the new class war on Britain’s working people we now know as the era of “austerity.”