THE crude attempt by the fuel demonstrators to try and portray

themselves as modern day Jarrow Crusaders is an insult to the men and women who marched from Jarrow in 1936 to save their livelihoods.

The leaders of these fuel demonstrations care nothing about hardship -- borne out by the fact that many of the hauliers gladly smashed the miners' blockades in 1984. What little they cared for the hardship of miners then.

These protestors are not a patch on the members of the Jarrow crusade.

The Jarrow marchers left a town blighted by 80 per cent unemployment, whereas evidence of the fuel protesters prosperity can be seen in BMWs, Volvos and Mercedes parked outside their meetings.

Protest leaders include Nigel Kime, spokesman for British Hauliers Unite and owner of a £2 million haulage firm; Derek Mead, protest co-ordinator in Somerset, who owns a 1,600 acre dairy farm; Derek Lynch who owns a Kent haulage business and Richard Haddock, who owns an 800 acre farm.

In Scotland, among companies that took part in the blockades was the haulage firm Yuill and Dodds which played a prominent role in breaking miners' picket lines.

These protestors are no Jarrow Crusaders, but instead a bunch of wealthy businessmen intent on restoring a Conservative Government by militant means and prepared to damage Britain and British families in pursuit of this cause.

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