Tuesday 10 June 2014

Lars, the Real Girl and Me: Reflections on Mental Health, Community and Stigma

I was recently asked to give a talk on mental health and community as part of the Cardiff sciSCREEN initiative.  following a showing of the film “Lars and the Real Girl”. This is a charming little film which recounts the tale of a social misfit in small town North American town who appears to compensate for his loneliness and social ineptitude by forming the delusion that he is in a “Girlfriend Experience” with a life like sex doll, which he names Bianca. As a story and as a modern morality tale this is a film that will take you through the whole gamut of emotions, and purely for its entertainment value I would thoroughly recommend you give it a watch.

I had been asked to give this talk after the screening in light of the fact that I have quite a long history of working in poor communities in the South Wales valleys that suffer severe health issues both of the physical and psychological nature.  I started the talk by recounting a recent conversation I had had with a physician who had worked with the late great Archie Cochrane. One of Archie’s most famous pieces of work consisted of a study of the Rhondda Fach conducted in the 1950s. During this conversation the physician recounted how, at that time, the main health problems communities faced concerned pneumoconiosis, TB  and other respiratory diseases related to the mining industry and smoking. “Of course” he said “I am sure if we were doing the study today we would find mental health issues would be the main problem”. I had to agree whole heartedly.  The experience gained from working in the area for over 10 years has meant I know only too well that following the demise of the heavy industries, that had once been not only the raison d’etre of these communities but also the cause of the respiratory illnesses that blighted them, has left an emptiness and anomie where mental health issues have impacted on the lives of many.

Although in many ways this film is certainly a feel good one, the way that Lars’ family respond to his delusion is typical of the way many families react when one of their relatives is affected by mental health issues. Denial, blame, guilt, trying to talk “sense” to the individual, a sense of powerlessness are all common responses to something that understandably people find very distressing when it impacts on a loved one. Often the treatment or care that is available in such areas, particularly for people suffering quite low level psychological problems such as mild depression, is poor and may even appear to exacerbate the situation. The high levels of medication prescribed in the community does little to address the underlying problems and provides no real solution and can be seen as contributing to developing a population dependent on such “happy pills”. 

Mental health, unlike many other health conditions is often associated with stigma. If you recount to friends you are unable to attend a function or go to work because you have a migraine it does not have anywhere near the same connotations as if you say it is because you have depression for which you are receiving treatment. One of the central features of the plot of Lars and the Real Girl is how the community react to and, ultimately, accept Lars and his delusion. Here I think is a very useful message in relation to how we view mental illness and its treatment.  Early on when Lars’ family take him to the local doctor to be “cured” of his delusion, the doctor asks the family “Is he functional, can he wash himself, dress himself and get himself to work?” To which the family reply that he can.  “Well then” the doctor replies “let’s just go with it”. As the doctor also points out Lars is not in any distress nor is he a danger to himself or others. As was explored in the discussion that followed the screening this would probably not be considered acceptable practice by a healthcare professional under the current models of treatment.

Mental health issues are a reality for many people and many communities.  A statistic often quoted in the media is that one in three of us will experience some sort of mental health issue in our lifetime. Although the veracity of that statistic is somewhat questionable there is no doubt that mental health is a very real concern for many individuals and society in general. How should society and community deal with such an issue? Should we stigmatise it, pathologise it and medicate it as we currently appear to do with little affect? Mental illness can and does lead to great distress and pain, not just for those who experience it but also for their families and the wider community, and at times like that people certainly do need help.  It is also probably true however we all, in one way or another, delude ourselves at times to make life more tolerable. It could be, as we see in the conclusion to the film, that accepting a certain amount of oddness or delusion, particularly if it is harming no one, is no bad thing for both the individual and the wider community.   

Tuesday 8 April 2014

Reflections after a night of remembering the miners’ strike 30 years on: What lessons are to be learned for contemporary protest. 26th March 2014

This event originated when a few, and I mean a few, of us at Cardiff University wanted to do something to remember what some see as that great nadir of the post war trade unionism movement, the 1984 -85 miners’ strike.  I for one had been very active during the strike.  Although from a mining area of South Wales and from a mining family, where both of my grandfathers had been miners, at the time of the strike, and for some five years previously, I had been living in Sheffield South Yorkshire.  Of course Sheffield was in the centre of the Yorkshire mining area and was also the location of the HQ of the national union of mineworkers the NUM.   Sheffield was a hub of activity for demonstrations at other activities during the strike many of which I was involved in and of course I still had strong family connections in South Wales, so the events of that time are deeply ingrained in to my memory.

At the end of the dispute I was deeply disappointed that the miners had not been successful in their aim of protecting their industry, their jobs and their communities.  Although I felt a strong antipathy to Thatcher and her other Tory cronies at the time that was nothing new.  I was and still am a proud product of the community that created me where the values of socialism, mutualism and working class solidarity provided a firm bases for meaningful community cohesion. No, what give me a deep and gnawing disappointment, to the extent that I sometimes had difficulty getting up to face the day after the strike, was the way that people who should have supported the strike were often very mealy mouthed in that support or outrightly collaborated with the Tory press and Government in their strategy of portraying the miners as mindless militant thugs intent on bringing down the government through violence and intimidation; the so called “Enemy Within” as the Tory government successfully marketed it as. You had the high profile turncoats and naysayers like Neil Kinnock and Kim Howells but I also had members of my own family and people who prior to the strike I would have considered radical and intelligent individuals but who quickly subsumed to the mindless manta of the time “I cannot condone the violence”.  Have a look at this news report from the time from 7.35 on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTbBr4qIT6A .  I was at a number of these demonstrations which many people who had made their mind up through watching events in the comfort of their living room had not.  Kinnock in that news excerpt talks about the “missile throwers and the battering ram carriers” I wonder how many of those demonstrations he had been at the frontline on.
No redemption: Arthur Scargill makes a televised appearance
There was violence, of that nobody can deny but the picture of miners going in to demonstrations hell bent on throwing missiles and engaging in violent activity is not one I recognise. I would say that nearly all, if not all the violence I witnessed during that strike that came from the miners’ side was in retaliation to violence and provocation from the police.  I have recounted my experiences from Orgreave elsewhere where increasingly it is being recognised that rather than being the pitched “Battle of Orgreave” as it is referred to it was an outright ambush staged by the police from beginning to end.  The image that the police provided at the time of the air being blac with missiles coming in their direction simply did not happen as they were later forced to admit.
Orgreave was but one and not an isolated incident of what can ol be described as what felt at the time an out an out attack on the organised working classes. For example prior to Orgreave a rally had been held outside the Memorial Hall Sheffield followed by a march to Weston Park I and a number of Welsh miners, who were intending to set off in their coaches to return to Wales, stayed near the hall after the main body of marchers  had left to go to the park.  Without warning and with no provocation and to our total surprise a number of police vans came speeding in to the square area and just started assaulting and dragging off for arrest some of the miners. I tried to intervene myself only to be pinned to the wall by a particularly burly copper and told “don’t even think about it”.  Some of the miners fought back valiantly particularly as they were taken by complete surprise and were then punched and beaten with truncheons.  These were proud strong working men; would you really expect them to meekly take a beating for no reason?
No redemption: 24 August 1984

One of the things I remember from that day and that still pains me to this; I think it was a Saturday afternoon in central Sheffield that this happened so it was very busy; there were plenty of people about.  Members of the public could see what was happening, it was obvious.  Now I am not expecting people to intervene directly but I remember imploring passers-by to look at what was happening but I also remember, with anguish, the look on their faces.  They didn’t want to look, they didn’t want to see, they preferred not to know.  If ever there was a time in my life when I truly understood the meaning of  the saying “all  that it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing” it was then.
No redemption: Police clash with Easington residents
As I said at the beginning of this piece the outcome of the miners’ strike did leave me disheartened and disillusioned and not least with my fellow human beings and generally with the society around me.  However, it is true time is a great healer.  The miners’ strike was a battle that we lost and to be honest I wonder if we could ever have won it as Thatcher had primed herself well, but still we had to fight, just rolling over and capitulating was not an option.  The  loss of a battle though does not mean you have lost the war and you are only ever truly defeated when you stop trying.  The way I look at it know is the experiences of the miners’ strike are all part of the learning process and what is important is that we learn from and build on those experiences.  People don’t want to know about the inequalities and injustices that go on around them because if they did they might feel that they should try to do something about them and that would make the feel uncomfortable and who would want that?? There is poverty and injustice in this world where there shouldn't and it is important that we shout about it from the roof tops (and on Twitter as well ;-)) so that people find it difficult to walk on by and ignore it.


Photos form 1984-5 Miners’ Strike Keith Pattison 

Monday 10 March 2014

Academics: Don't be Social Media Twits

I first joined Twitter some two and a half years ago following a course I attended on research leadership. (Crucible Cymru if you are interested @welshcrucible )  One of the sessions was on academic use of social media.  I had used Facebook previously and although I had never really engaged with the platform I had found it useful for research purposes, particularly for staying in contact with research participants. During the presentation on Twitter one of the other course attendees turned to me and said “Twitter is for idiots who just like the sound of their own voice and have got nothing to say” and that made me think it was probably a well suited medium for academics.

When I first started using Twitter I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, particularly when it came to Tweeting myself.  I really didn’t know what to say or how to say it, 140 characters is quiet alien to the academic school of writing which valorises wordiness over brevity.  My intention when I first signed up was to use it mainly for academic interests, finding out about other research and publicising my own, as reflected by my use of Twitter name @DrNostromo.  

It didn’t take me long however to find out that Twitter was a very powerful tool for engagement and engagement with various audiences.  As I have built up my followers I have been lucky enough to link with some leading academics in my field such as Graham Scambler (@GrahamScambler) and Peter Beresford (@BeresfordPeter ) and at the click of a button I can interact with them if there might be some issue I want to discuss.  On the other hand I can just as easily interact with other “ordinary” people whose opinion and take on events I also value, such as  @devine__ a young woman living in the north of England who works as a waitress and in childcare and @EastAnglear who works as a volunteer in a Citizens Advice Bureau and daily deals with the impact of recent government policies on the lives of everyday people.  Twitter is a great leveller in this respect, unlike journals or other forms of publishing all you need to get your voice heard on Twitter is access to a mobile phone or a computer.


I can just imagine that there are some of my academic colleagues reading this huffing and puffing and rolling their eyes and thinking to themselves  “ well why should I possibly want to engage with such people, what use would it be to my research, what use would it be to my career?” I’ve got no real answer to that question but when I was asked to write this short piece I asked my Twitter followers what they felt I should say and what was their opinion of academic Tweeters. One of the best observations came from @ItstartswithBee who tweeted “many an academic speaks excellent academia but poor layman and humanity.” For many a layman the world of academia is a remote and mysterious one and in relation to day to day activity is more often than not an irrelevance.  I don’t  think academia is an irrelevance or should be thought of as one but unless academics engage as academics in the growing social media discourse through the likes of Twitter and Blogging I fear that they will increasingly be viewed as such.  

March 2014

Thursday 20 February 2014

Understanding Life, Death and Ill Health on Benefits Street

The health of the people in economically disadvantaged (poor) communities in south Wales as elsewhere is relatively poor, and inequalities in health between the most and least disadvantaged are wide and getting wider.  This issue has been the focus of considerable academic debate since the 1980s and inequality, including health inequality, is now regarded more widely as the issue that the UK is facing. Health inequalities are some of the most basic inequalities, there is probably no starker inequality than being alive or dead. The consequences of this poor health are, as I have said, premature death but also long-term disability, and exclusion from economy and society. An example of these health inequalities in South Wales can be seen in the example  of the Cwm Taf health board area, which includes the former iron town of Merthyr Tydfil and the former coal producing area of Rhondda Cynon Taf (RCT).  These two areas rank as worst overall in Wales for poor health, as measured by life expectancy, healthy life-expectancy and disability-free life expectancy. 

The term ‘deprivation’ disguises many different realities and conceals the strengths and assets which many of these communities contain.  Such communities therefore represent considerable and different challenges for social and economic development and health and welfare policy.  The greatest determinant of health is socio-economic inequalities which further contributes to the further widening of those inequalities. People find themselves unable to work, or able to work only at considerably reduced levels because of long-term ill-health and disability; and their wider participation in society is restricted.   In parts of the Cwm Taf area, situated within a classic well over 30 per cent of the population are living in poverty, on official definitions, and, as of 2009-10, 19 per cent of the population of RCT and almost 23 percent of the population of Merthyr Tydfil were claiming employment-related benefits.
   
A Message From Merthyr

As a case study of some of the issues faced by these communities on the northern outskirts of Merthyr Tydfil there is an area of known as the ‘Gurnos’.  The Gurnos was initially constructed during the late 1950s and early 1960s to re-house those displaced by ‘slum clearance’ of dwellings around the former iron works and was seen as a symbol of renewal and regeneration.  The estate continued to expand until the late 1970s but the loss of industrial production and rising levels of unemployment were followed by corresponding increases in social problems, such as crime, educational underachievement and substance misuse. Currently the estate comprises more than 2,500 council built properties.  Owner occupation is relatively low at 27.5 per cent and Gurnos is one of the most deprived electoral wards within an already deprived area of Wales.

Gurnos symbolises many of the issues facing communities where the traditional heavy industries that gave a sense of identity and pride have been replaced by low skilled, low wage often transient factory work. This has created a sense of inequality and injustice, exacerbated by the proximity of economically buoyant Cardiff, and other affluent areas along the M4 corridor. The social reality of the area is informed by a certain notoriety well beyond the immediate locality and residents are only too conscious of this as it can compound the difficulties many of them face.  This has engendered suspicion and cynicism, presenting difficulties for the development of research or health improvement projects led by people from outside the area.

While many of the big levers for health improvement lie outside Wales, in policies for the UK or Europe, at the level of locality, community cohesion can off-set some of the disadvantages created by inequalities in the wider economy and society . The complexity of problems in some of these communities is not easily understood and the problem with much community-targeted health initiatives is not that the communities are apathetic or worse seen as feckless but often community members are treated as if they are laboratory samples that need to have interventions done to them rather than conscious interpreters of their own situations who are rationally responding to the situations that they find themselves in.


It is important that any initiative which seeks to successfully address health inequalities in any poor areas understands and engages with the issues and barriers that people who belong to that community actually face.  As an example, a healthy eating initiative that simply tells community members that the need to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day has little chance of success unless it engages with an understanding of the barriers that may prevent community members achieving this, be they psychological, cultural or logistic.  


Friday 24 January 2014

The “Battle” of Orgreave: the Peterloo of our times.

It started like any other June day and who was I to know that it would end with the death my hopes and aspirations for an organised working class for at least the next ten years.


At the time of the great miners dispute of 1984- 85 I was living in Sheffield.  I was there as a refugee from the worst effects of the early 80s recession in South Wales.  The miner’s strike had started and escalated around the March time of 1984 and already I had been involved in organising a number of benefit and support activities.  Coming from the mining area of South Wales and having two grandfathers who were miners I felt a strong sense of solidarity with the NUM, their members and the dispute.  I had also seen what the Thatcher Government had done to the steelworkers of Sheffield in 1980. I was under no doubt that the Tories being Tories were intent on ending the problem, as they saw it, of organised labour.
As I said the day started as any other June day.  My girlfriend at the time was working in Worksop which was in the Nottinghamshire coalfield area.  The news had gone round, god knows how in those pre internet, mobile phone and social media days, that there was to be a mass picket at the Orgreave plant on the outskirts of Sheffield on that day. I knew that a number of my colleagues from work were intending to attend the demonstration and that there were coach loads of miners coming from all over the country were coming as well. My intention was to drop my girlfriend off at work and then go to the demonstration.  At this point Nottinghamshire had not been turned into the fortress that it would later become with police road blocks on every road in and out of the county. Therefore the journey to Worksop was straightforward. As I was returning and nearing Sheffield  and the M1 I could see coaches of miners  pulling off the motorway  on to The Parkway road that led to Orgreave. At the time I had a blue Transit van that I used for my work.  I followed some distance behind the coaches toward the turn off for Orgreave. As the coaches took the turning in to Orgreave there was a strong police presence and as the coaches past by, the police moved like some blackened scaled lizard across to block the road.  As I tried to follow the coaches I was stopped by the police line.  I told them that I wanted to join the demonstration but was told in no uncertain terms to continue down the Parkway and that if I didn’t I would be arrested.

 I knew the area well and I thought as it is pointless trying to argue with the police to get through the police road block  I could take some of the back roads I knew around Catcliffe and get to Orgreave on foot across the fields.   However, when I got there it was obvious that the police had thought of that as well.  There were police everywhere and many with dogs and no matter which way I tried to get across the fields there were police there to turn me back.  From what I could see though there were police everywhere  with the pickets vastly outnumbered.  From what I saw that day the so called “Battle of Orgreave” was no battle at all but a straight forward planned ambush by the police on the miners with the distinct impression of teaching them a lesson.   I was still a tad young and naïve in those days and had been shocked in the first instance that the police had prevented me attending a demonstration. I was still stupid enough to believe that we lived in a free country where we were allowed to protest. Also that day I witnessed, and not for the last time during that year, what could only be described as wanton police violence toward the protestors.  From what I could tell these were not just the local South Yorkshire constabulary but police that had been drawn in from all over the country and with what looked like instructions to do a very specific job which they carried out with gusto.
I could see no purpose in me running around the Catcliffe fields so I returned to my van to drive home. As I drove home the heat of the summer’s day started to kick in.  I was confused, angry and shocked by what I had seen.  I remember pulling in to a lay by on the way home as my head was swimming with the emotions I had running through my head.  I had been stopped from attending what was a lawful and planned demonstration and threatened with arrest.  From what I had seen the miners arrived in good spirits but were then just led into a trap by the police where they were corralled, surrounded, charged with horses and then just beaten up.  Again not for the last time during this dispute I was torn apart by the deep injustice of what I had just seen. In my stupid naïve mind I was convinced that when the people of Britain found out about what had happened this day there would be a national outcry and the police would be disciplined for their behaviour, what a schmuck I was!!!

That evening in my flat I eagerly awaited the six o’clock news fully expecting the fair and trustworthy BBC to recount the horrors that I had seen that day.  I looked on in disgust and dismay as the news reports painted a picture of rioting out of control miners attacking the police who valiantly fought back in order to restore law and order to this mindless rabble.  The news reports left you in no doubt that if you had any sympathy for this bunch of mindless vandals led by that raving loon Scargill you too must be part of this “enemy within”.  Later it emerged that these news reports had run some of the footage in reverse, “inadvertently” as the BBC later claimed.  The worst thing was over the coming weeks and months so many people bought it.  Many people who maybe didn’t particularly think of themselves as Tory supporters but just “right thinking” or “sensible” just bought in to the lie, hook, line and sinker that these militant miners were out of control and that sensible Maggie was being reasonable. Not the reality that this vanguard of the working class were fighting for their jobs, their families and their communities and the right of ordinary working people to have some say in the way that this country is run.

Following that fateful day at Orgreave ninety-five picketers were charged with riot, unlawful assembly and similar offences. A number of these were put on trial in 1987, therefore having to  endure two years of stress and uncertainty, but the trials collapsed, all charges were dropped and a number of lawsuits were brought against the police for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. South Yorkshire Police later agreed to pay £425,000 compensation and £100,000 in legal costs to 39 pickets in an out of court settlement. Nevertheless, no officers have ever been disciplined for misconduct. Michael Mansfield the noted QC described the evidence given by South Yorkshire Police as "the biggest frame-up ever".    
   
Some of the younger readers of this might say ah well this was in the past this would never happen now.  Move on old man the world is very different now.  I would love to say that were the case but beware the arrogance of youth. Working class history is never taught in our schools.  We are always told what great states people Churchill and Thatcher were, but the real great people of this country  are ordinary working people, they are the ones who really make this nation. Peterloo in Manchester in 1819  http://bit.ly/1e0ZFES  is an example of how this is not the first time working people have been charged by horses for standing up for their rights.  There are also lessons for us today to be learned from what happened that day in Orgreave.  A couple of years ago I was in London when the UK Uncut group peacefully occupied Fortnum and Masons and as if to prove that old adage “history repeats itself, first time as tragedy second time as farce” the police went in heavy handed and arrested a load of mainly youngsters for what appeared to be no other purpose than to intimidate them  and “teach them a lesson” about protesting in the future.  I was inspired by those young people  and again angry at the injustice that they suffered just for wanting to protest at injustice in the UK and to have their voices heard, is that so much to ask for??.  Those who were attacked at Orgreave are still awaiting truth and justice and  we should all continue to seek it.  Both Orgreave and Fortnum and Masons have lessons for us all.  As I said at the beginning of this piece for me the hope for an organised working class died that June day in Orgreave, but then, as has happened so often in my life, I was wrong.  It did take me a long time to recover my hwyl (look it up) but I did get it back eventually but as the inspiration I took from the occupation of Fortnum and Masons showed me we are never really defeated until we get to the point where we stop trying.

Don’t believe what I saw with my own eyes?  Looks like other people saw the same as well. http://bit.ly/1jJa5tW

This is my truth, tell me yours.


Tuesday 21 January 2014

"Newspeak" 1984: The Miner's Dispute and me


I remember New Year’s Day 1984 very well.  At the time I was working at the Leadmill in Sheffield http://bit.ly/1dIwckq which was a mixture of a community / arts centre and a live music venue.  Many of us who were involved in the place were part of the “alternative” activist scene as it were.  Among the milieu that used to hang round the place there was a certain Jarvis Cocker, Richard Hawley with his band Treebound Story and Henry Normal all of whom would go on to have illustrious careers in the entertainment industry and all of us would later collaborate in establishing the Dolebusters Music Festival in Weston Park Sheffield  http://bit.ly/1aDtEhw    as our way of protesting at the worst excesses of Thatcherism.  But I digress and the tale of Dolebusters might be for another blog entry.  On New Year’s eve of that year we had had an George Orwell 1984 themed party at the Leadmill along with our very own room 101; how were we to know at the time that this theme of our worst nightmares was about to come true as the year unfolded.

I had already been living in Sheffield for some five years then.  I had relocated there from South Wales in the late 1970s.  When I had left Wales coal mining was still a dominant industry.  Many of my school friends had taken apprenticeships in the pits when they had left school and both my grandfathers had been colliers working in local pits around the Merthyr Tydfil area.  I was aspirational though, not for me staying in The Valleys and going down pit.  From when I had been a kid I was determined to get out one way or another. Pneumoconiosis, or dust, had killed my one grandfather before I was born and a persistent memory of my childhood was of elderly ex coalminers stooped puffing , wheezing  and wrestling for every piece of breath as they paused clutching their chests and hanging on to the hand-rails on Twyn hill for support. http://bit.ly/1jmtEZ6  Also I had grown up just outside Aberfan http://bit.ly/17buxSr  and the day of the disaster and its aftermath were seared deeply into who I was and who I wanted to be and part of that was leaving the coal mines and the valleys far behind me. 
     
Although keen to get out of the valleys I was still proud to be a product of the land that had made me. Earlier in my life I had encountered the late great historian Gwyn “Alf” Williams who the following year was to take part in that ground-breaking documentary on Welsh History “The Dragon Has Two Tongues”.  He  had inspired me to be proud of a heritage that consisted of the Merthyr uprising,  the Tonypandy Miners and the legacy of Keir Hardy, a legacy of co-operation, socialism and radicalism.  The triumph of Thatcher in 1979 and the communal jingoistic madness that had besieged the country in 1982 during the Falklands War just reinforced my view that this model of a xenophobic, isolationist, individualistic and materially greedy British society was not a good one and certainly not one that I wanted to buy into.

Time plays tricks on memory  but looking back on it now it was obvious the show down was coming. It had only been ten years previously that a miner’s strike had brought down the Tory Government of Edward Heath something that evidently irked Thatcher.  In 1981 she had backed down from a confrontation with the miners but by 1984 buoyed up by her victory in the Falklands and having had time to make her preparations and formulate her strategy she was ready to do battle with the one last great leviathan of the organised working class, the NUM.  Prior to the dispute already the media were playing their insidious game of portraying Arthur Scargill as an untrustworthy loon.  Recent revelations have shown that everything that Scargill was saying was true even though at the time Ian MacGregor the head of British Coal wrote to every miner in the UK to discredit what Scargill was saying in relation to pit closures http://on.fb.me/LMshrh .  When you see that the truth has finally come out about the MacGregor hit list and the lies that were spread by Roger Windsor if any man deserves an apology from the UK  It is Arthur Scargill.  He fought for what he believed in and for his members’ best interests and for that he was vilified, arrested and harassed.  Think about the case of Arthur Scargill and how the truth is finally coming out after thirty years when you try to make your mind up about events that are currently in the public eye.  If a democracy is to operate as a democracy then it is necessary for citizens to have access to information so they can make informed decisions when they are voting, but as the miner’s strike of 1984 – 85 illustrated Orwell predictions of “Newspeak” came true and most terrifyingly in a way that most people, even to this day, are not even aware of.