[•As the press began its first real witch-hunt…]

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•As the press began its first real witch-hunt of the new year at Longbridge, the Queen stepped in personally. She had had enough.

There was Woodrow Wyatt and the other renegades from the Labour Party laying into the Longbridge workers in their expensive columns (A sample of their penetrating analysis: "Just the distant prospect that it might be a success has again set off the silly strikers of Longbridge").

There were the news pages pounding out the latest BL claim (We'll drop atomic bomb on Britain if they don't go back") as if it was written on tablets of stone.

There were the cobra faced puppets of television news assuring BL workers that if they did not call off the strike they would throw every worker in Britain out of a job.

(Credit where credit is due. ITN interviewed one of the sacked stewards. The Sunday Business News interviewed two of them. O what generosity! How grateful we should be!)

So who would stand up for these innocent men?

The Queen got her press secretary to make a statement.

"The Queen is finding the intrusion quite intolerable and is more than a little angry over the behaviour."

Earlier she intervened had personally. "I wish you would go away" she shouted angrily at photographers.

Prince Philip, her live-in companion, went one better. He got out his gun... No let us get this straight... a member of a party which included Prince Philip got out one's gun and blasted hell out of the car driven by a reporter from the Sun giving her heart failure and a front page lead story).

Incidentally, when she comlained to police nearby they said they were always getting shot in their panda car by royal shooting parties. They have had to break them up after six days).

So what brought this stirling royal defence of the Longbridge victims. Obviously it was the royal sense of fair play, which is known the world over, especially on polo pitches and in show jumping arenas.

These blue blooded personages are simply not going to stand by while some bloody little South African upstart sacks perfectly innocent workers just so he can show who is boss.

It wasn't behaviour like that that got Britain where she is today. Of course being the Royal Family they had to disguise it a little. Pretend that they worried about some halfwitted offspring falling off his pony-sorry, one of his ponies.

They created diversions by having the Queen's son dress up in nineteenth century clothes and take walks around the ground with women who wear the British ruling classes' equivalent of the veil -the headscarf.

But in reality everyone knew that behind this coded version of events it was the Longbridge workers that the Queen was really defending.

Why should the press be allowed to swing the result of votes by pounding away day. after day accusing the workers of being criminals?

"It has been far worse this the palace spokesman. whey are hanging around the stables (Buckingham Palace rhyming slang for Longbridge), photographing anything that moves"

Asked about the reporter being shot at he replied solidly People who were close at hand were given plenty of warning."

This was obviously the green light for BL workers. The message from the Queen has not been misunderstood. Next time the press gang up on you, don't Grade