Diplome,
as I've said before, I think you have a good perspective on this dispute.
One comment that I would make, though, (and I made it many pages ago), you have to have been in a major/nasty dispute as a participant to realise how one's perspective becomes very, very altered by the dynamics of the dispute itself. Holley et al might well believe in everything they say/do.
The fact that the rest of the world thinks that they are extremely peculiar is irrelevant to them during the dispute. They honestly believe that they are doing the right thing. It's the same syndrome that had perfectly normal and reasonable Germans manning concentration camps. Going back further, the Brits in S Africa manned concentration camps where many, many people died. The "abnormal" becomes "normal".
Thus, people that you and I might well want to lock up due to their apparent lack of connection with the world around them become "respected and very well loved".
Of course, Thatcher and Scargill, and the Brits in S Africa, were "respected and very well loved".