Marching to the Fault Line

by David Hencke

  Of course the government had never been keen on a colliery review procedure, but felt it necessary to keep NACODS members at work. Thatcher made the best of a bad job, insisting that the government had always wanted to keep a colliery review procedure and would always have looked at future coal production afresh because of the losses caused by the dispute. She concluded with a rhetorical question to Kinnock: ‘Please will you now confirm that in your view there is nothing to stand in the way of a settlement of this dispute in line with the ACAS formula?’

  It was a shrewd tactical blow in the battle for public opinion, a battle that was not going entirely the government’s way, despite the barrage of media attacks on the NUM and especially its President. The day before Thatcher wrote to Kinnock, NACODS General Secretary Peter McNestry had written in Thatcher’s most loyal paper, the Daily Mail, a scathing attack on her coal chairman Ian MacGregor. ‘He has treated us with total contempt,’ he wrote. At the ACAS talks, ‘Mr MacGregor just sat there and said, “Nope.” We tried and tried but he just kept saying, “Nope.” Then, when ACAS decided to end the talks he said: “Good, now we can all go home.”’

  McNestry went on: ‘It is his whole attitude – the way he treats people, proud people with a responsible attitude to their jobs. Every time he opens his mouth he puts his foot in it. He is not the man for the job ... I am now certain Mr MacGregor wants to break trade unions, even unions like mine which in the past has only been involved in negotiations about such things as safety underground.’

  Criticism in the Guardian might be ignored but the fact that the Daily Mail published such a furiously critical article forced a radical rethink of the NCB’s public relations. Walker made it clear to MacGregor that his public performance would not do, and his evident failure to understand the unions was a growing problem. Too many people shared McNestry’s perception. He was becoming a public relations liability.

  So two days after the Daily Mail article, on 20 October, Michael Eaton was appointed as the NCB’s chief spokesman, to deal not just with public relations but also negotiations. Eaton was in charge of the important North Yorkshire division of the NCB and had therefore had considerable dealings with Scargill. His appointment was MacGregor’s response to Walker’s criticism, but MacGregor did not feel it necessary to consult Walker. Walker apparently felt he ought to have been consulted, an indication of how much this had become the government’s battle, not the NCB’s.

  MacGregor’s Deputy Chairman, Jim Cowan, was even more furious than Walker, and threatened to resign if Eaton was at the talks at ACAS. So Eaton was removed from them, even though his knowledge of the NUM and Scargill personally was one of the main reasons for his appointment.11

  By 25 October the NACODS deal was done. It was a good deal for the small managers’ union, eloquent testimony to the government’s and the NCB’s conviction that NACODS had the power to deliver something like victory to the miners unless it was appeased. This was one of many moments during the strike when Scargill, if he had acknowledged the reality of his situation, might have grabbed a settlement. Of course, it would not have been a victory – the review body was established, but it never saved a single pit that the Board wanted to close – but it could have been dressed up as a partial victory, and a negotiator like Bill Keys in Scargill’s position would have done just that, in order to save his union.

  There was never the smallest chance of Scargill doing that. Nor was there any chance of McNestry – accurately described by Paul Routledge as ‘a talkative and sympathetic Geordie well to the left of the average pit overseer’12– being able to persuade his members to turn down such a deal. McNestry knew his members would want him to accept, and he did. McNestry, says John Monks, ‘wanted to help Arthur out of a hole’ but could not do so.

  Scargill, predictably perhaps, did not see it like that. According to Monks, he ‘saw NACODS as a lot of Quislings. He underestimated and undervalued it.’ After the strike Scargill confided to a journalist from the WRP paper Newsline that he could never understand why the big vote in favour of a NACODS strike had not been implemented. He thought there had been dirty work somewhere. A quarter of a century later Scargill was still sure that this, his moment of victory, was snatched away from him by the treachery of the leaders of NACODS. He told his supporters in London: ‘I know from a former Tory minister that Thatcher was ready to concede when NACODS let us down.’ His close friend Ken Capstick believes that NACODS could have delivered victory to the NUM, and its rank-and-file members would have been prepared to do so; they were let down by their leaders.

  But Scargill and Capstick on one hand, and Monks on the other, agree that this was a crucial moment. ‘Margaret Thatcher did not give up on negotiations until the NACODS strike was called off,’ says Monks. He adds that the TUC did its best to stop NACODS from settling. ‘We could see that with the help of NACODS we could get a review procedure. NACODS could close down Nottinghamshire, where it had great loyalty.’ But ‘Pat Lowry [of ACAS] and Ken Sampey [the NACODS President, who was not as left-wing as McNestry] told us to get lost.’

  The NCB knew what was going on. An internal message to Ian MacGregor reads:

  Tim Bell called.

  His informant at the TUC has confirmed what you said, i.e.

  1. They are trying to stop NACODS from settling.

  2. They are trying to rewrite the peace formula to accommodate Scargill.

  The ACAS talks ground to a halt after four days. Scargill’s account of them to Kinnock, as summarized by Kinnock’s office, was: ‘Following four days of discussion at ACAS HQ during which the NUM actually met the NCB for less than 1 hour, the Coal Board has broken off talks, destroying hopes of an early end to the dispute . . . One document accepted by NUM, other by NCB, 3rd accepted by NUM and NCB went away to think about it for the weekend. It is now obvious that their consideration involved consultation, and that, once again, the govt has intervened to prevent an early settlement.’13

  Stan Orme tried again to get something moving on 1 November with a further exchange of correspondence with Peter Walker. He raised the issue of a report that a new hit list existed for pit closures in the North East. In asking specific questions, the man who rightly said he had ‘done everything possible to enable a negotiated settlement to be reached’ tried to get talks going. But Walker, replying the next day with his confidence reinforced by the NACODS decision to call off their strike, was having none of it. He told Orme, rather smugly: ‘I know you would like this dispute settled and know that the Labour Party is deeply embarrassed at being closely associated with the methods and objectives of Mr Scargill. But I must repeat I think he succeeds in taking you and your party for a ride on frequent occasions.’

  His long letter was designed mostly to score points and embarrass Orme politically, and it ended like this: ‘Please let us have three answers publicly declared. Then the country can judge whether you and the Labour Party are in favour of the two unions – NACODS and BACM [British Association of Colliery Managers]– who have conducted their procedures in the best traditions of the trade union movement, and the third of the NUM’s members who balloted and acted in accordance with the view of the majority, or whether you and the Labour Party are in favour of Arthur Scargill. If this is the latter I must say that you will be in pretty unpleasant company both at home and abroad.’

  The tone suggests a minister who no longer thinks he needs Orme’s help, nor is interested in any formula Orme may have to offer. Orme wrote back: ‘I was shocked and disheartened by the frivolous response to my letter. I hope you will acknowledge from the very outset of the dispute I (in my capacity as Energy Spokesman for the Labour Party) have done everything possible to enable a negotiated settlement to be reached. My activities were those that should have been pursued by yourself and your colleagues. Instead of answering my letter seriously you have replied in a way that is neither constructive nor helpful. We in the official Opposition appear to be the only ones who are tackling the issues in this dispute in a
responsible manner.’

  Orme must have sensed that the government was now out for absolute victory, especially after MacGregor, too, rebuffed him, just two weeks after Walker had done so. Orme had been to see MacGregor and had left some proposals with him. MacGregor wrote on 16 November to say that to consider the documents would be to negotiate, and he did not think it appropriate to negotiate with Orme. The Labour Party’s peace initiative had failed.14

  On the same day that McNestry did his deal with MacGregor, the NUM dug itself so deeply into a legal quagmire that there was no longer any real chance of it emerging without being crippled.

  Two weeks earlier, when Scargill had been ordered to appear in court, he declined to turn up, and his union was fined £200,000, with a £10,000 fine personally for Scargill. Scargill’s fine was paid anonymously, but he refused to allow the union’s fine to be paid, so on 25 October Mr Justice Nicholls sequestrated - took away - the entire assets of the union, which had been listed at £10.7m in money and property before the strike began. How was the strike to be paid for now?

  Scargill hoped that one source of money would be the Soviet Union. In 1926, the Soviet Union gave money to miners’ hardship funds, and some mining communities were saved from starvation by Soviet money. In the mid-1980s, talk of‘Moscow gold’ still had the power to chill the blood of readers of tabloid newspapers.

  The NUM leadership was asking the Soviet Union for money almost from day one of the strike, and with growing urgency after the NUM funds were sequestrated. This was not Soviet government money but money raised by Soviet mineworkers who donated a day’s pay (which they could ill afford, on their miserable wages) and gave it to the Soviet miners’ union for passing on to the NUM. But the Soviet miners’ union needed government permission to get hard currency out of the country.

  Scargill and NUM chief executive Roger Windsor offered the Soviets several methods of giving money clandestinely, in an effort to prevent it from being seized by the Receiver or known about by the British government. But nerves in Moscow meant that by the time Scargill went to the Brighton TUC at the start of October, nothing had happened.

  In Brighton during TUC week he met two well-placed Soviet Union diplomats, and they set up a meeting on 8 October at the headquarters of the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) headquarters in Montreuil, near Paris, with Soviet diplomats, together with the leaders of the CGT miners’ section, including General Secretary Alain Simon, a former miner.

  The French do not have one trade union centre, as the UK has the TUC: they have three main ones and two smaller ones, and what divides them is politics. The CGT was the biggest in several industries, including mining, and politically close to the Communist Party. Simon was also a key figure in the eastern bloc miners’ international, MTUI, and an ally of Scargill in opposition to the western bloc international, which both men considered an agent of American imperialism. They had prepared the ground by lobbying key Soviet political figures on the NUM’s behalf.

  Four days later the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee secretly decided to allocate to the British NUM one million roubles – about $1.4m – in hard currency from the funds of the Soviet TUC. Authorization for the transfer was signed by Mikhail Gorbachev, then number two in the Soviet hierarchy.

  They tried to put the money into an NUM account in Zurich, apparently unaware that all NUM accounts had been frozen. The bank returned it, while alerting the Receiver to the existence of the account. Then they hesitated, fearful both of the money falling into the hands of the British government and of the diplomatic consequences should the Thatcher government discover their intentions.15

  They were right to be worried. Articles by the Sunday Times Insight team on 18 November and the Morning Star the following day alerted Sir Geoffrey Howe, the Foreign Secretary, to serious problems for relations between Mrs Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev, who was soon to pay an official visit to Britain. Support from the Soviet Union rang alarm bells in Downing Street, the Foreign Office and the Treasury.

  On 20 November Colin Budd, private secretary to Sir Geoffrey, wrote to Charles (now Lord) Powell, Thatcher’s foreign affairs adviser at Number Ten, commenting that the Insight article which quoted Scargill ‘appears to confirm, for the first time since reports of Soviet miners’ assistance were received in September, contributions in cash as opposed to food and clothing have been received.’ The confidential letter16 said Sir Geoffrey viewed such a move as (in Whitehall language) ‘a matter of some concern’. So it was proposed that Norman Lamont, then minister of state for industry, should take the Soviet ambassador to task at a private lunch on the same day.

  At the same time the Foreign Office was expressing alarm that a Donetsk coal-pit foreman, a Mr Strelchenko, who would be accompanying Gorbachev, was planning to go and address striking miners. The letter warned that if he did ‘there would be a serious political row’ and the Russians should be informally warned of the possible controversy. The letter added that if the Soviet miners were giving cash to striking miners, ‘it would be most unlikely that the Soviet miners’ unions could have been given access to convertible roubles without express Soviet official permission ... the Soviet Government has, to some extent, been involved.’

  But it went on: ‘At this end, we doubt whether the Russians could have committed any irregularities. Legally, they could have passed the money through a Soviet bank (and the Moscow Narodny have a branch in London) direct to a TUC or regional NUM account and without, so far as our lawyers can see at first glance, there being any risk of sequestration.’ So at the beginning the cash was deemed legal. All the more reason to stop it.

  After the lunch Edmund Hosker, Lamont’s private secretary, wrote to Charles Powell with the outcome. It was pretty bad.17 Lamont raised the issue of £1m in Soviet miners’ aid only to be told by the ambassador: ‘The Russians recognize that the UK is a democratic country; the UK must recognize that the USSR is a democratic country.’ Pressed by Lamont on the fact that the Russian government must be involved in allowing the transactions, ‘the Ambassador maintained that citizens could transfer money for some purposes, and emphasized the importance and independence of Soviet trade unions ... Refusal to allow their rights to be exercised would have constituted unwarranted interference by the Soviet Government in the Soviet miners’ union’s own affairs.’

  A handwritten note from Charles Powell to Sir Robert Armstrong, the Cabinet Secretary, on the top of the letter said: ‘Mr Lamont got an entirely predictable response.’ ‘Entirely so’ is Sir Robert’s handwritten comment.

  On 23 November Colin Budd wrote again to Charles Powell. This time the FO had made much stronger representations to the Soviet Embassy, with the agreement of Thatcher. He was able to assure Powell that the Soviets did not want to interfere in British domestic politics, and that Gorbachev had been advised not to visit any mining communities. As for Mr Strelchenko, the FO had a line, should the press get too interested. They intended to say that he had been invited on a parliamentary visit and, as far as events organized by the Government were concerned, would be received in his parliamentary capacity. He would be expected to watch his step, and not to do anything that could be interpreted as interfering in Britain’s internal affairs.18

  Meanwhile Oleg Gordievsky, who worked undercover for the KGB in the Soviet Embassy in London and was a double agent working for MI6, warned his Moscow superiors that it would be ‘undesirable and counterproductive for the Soviet Union to help the striking miners’. His warnings were echoed by the labour attaché in London, Yuri Mazur, who looked after relations with both the trade unions and the British Communist Party. He thought any help would leak out, and would damage both relations with the Thatcher government and the electoral prospects of the Labour Party.

  On the other side, senior figures in the Prague-based trade union international, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), wanted to help the miners. But by the end of November, nothing had been received, and Thatcher was due to meet Gorba
chev the next month. (Theoretically Gorbachev was only heir apparent to Konstantin Chernenko, but Chernenko was already very ill.) The Thatcher-Gorbachev meeting was to have a crucial impact, as we shall see in the next chapter.

  Miners’ unions in Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria secretly handed over money, in used notes, to NUM emissaries to deliver to the NUM’s Sheffield headquarters. In one instance they stuffed a plastic bag containing $96,000 in cash into the hands of a surprised Peter Heathfield. Heathfield did not know what it contained, and forgot about it for a few days, while it languished in the boot of his car.19 But nothing like enough was coming in, the strike was in a desperate state, and by the end of November nothing had been received from the Soviet Union.

  Where else was money to be had? Scargill had what seemed to him a very bright idea, and what seemed to Mick McGahey, when he heard about it after the event, an amazingly stupid one. On the day of the sequestration, Roger Windsor, whom Scargill had personally appointed to be NUM chief executive, was in Libya. Only Scargill knew of Windsor’s mission. Yet Windsor appeared on Libyan television embracing Gaddafi in his tent, and Gaddafi, according to British newspaper reports of the event on 27 October, ‘expressed sympathy with the striking miners who suffer from abuse and exploitation’.

  Just six months earlier, on 17 April, WPC Yvonne Fletcher had been shot dead from inside the Libyan Embassy as police surrounded the building, and Gaddafi was seen in Britain as the worst sort of international pariah. It was as though in 2003, shortly before the Iraq war, a trade union leader had gone to Iraq to plead for money from Saddam Hussein.

  ‘Cannot Arthur see’, wrote Bill Keys in his diary, the day the Sunday Times revealed the story of Roger Windsor’s trip to Libya, ‘that this type of activity is going to drive an even greater wedge between the unions and the public ... How can one get through to Arthur, that he cannot win this dispute on his own . . .’20 It is the one thing for which Mick McGahey, who remained, right up to his death, publicly loyal to Scargill, was prepared openly to criticize his President. ‘We made a mistake sending Windsor to Libya. I blew my top. I was never consulted,’ he told Paul Routledge.21