There can be few better times to examine the legacy of Martin Luther King than the inauguration of the 43rd president of the United States. For the mixture of ethnic diversity and political conservatism in Bush's administration brings into sharp focus so much of what King said but which was rarely heard.

As the miners returned to work the despondency of having attached myself to a lost and noble cause set in. Advising against despair, older activists convinced me that this was little more than the periodic bump and grind of the class struggle. We were now moving into a "downturn", they explained, when the right would make ideological headway and the left would be on the defensive. But as sure as the sun would rise in the east, they insisted, things would improve. Confidence to resist attacks on living standards, working conditions, discrimination, low pay and no pay would return. There would, they asserted confidently, be an "upturn".