The Open Golf at Royal Portrush is underway. Golf is a more working class sport in Ireland and Scotland than England but that still didn’t impress the miners leader & Communist Mick McGahey who died in 1999.
I can testify that golf is seen as a people’s game by bosses, even when the people are not always so sure. In the 1980s the union which I’m a long standing activist in had a Field Office in Victoria St, Central London. The building was a series of offices. It was not uncommon to bump into Denis Thatcher at lunchtime carrying his golf clubs and off to play a round well out of sight of Margaret Thatcher at No.10
In his Chesterfield constituency on 7th July 1984 at the height of the miners strike Tony Benn met miners leader Peter Heathfield. Heathfield told Benn about a recent negotiating meeting with Coal Board boss Ian MacGregor. MacGregor had invited fellow union leader Mick McGahey for a game of golf. McGahey had responded ‘I’ve never played golf in my life, it’s a total waste of time
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