By the last week of March the situation was fairly clear. The strike was unlikely to be over quickly. At the majority of pits Mr Scargill and his colleagues had a tight grip, which it would not be easy to break. But in our planning over the previous two years we had not allowed ourselves to assume that any coal would be mined during a strike, whereas in fact a substantial section of the industry was still working. If we could move this coal to the power stations then the prospects for endurance would be transformed. This calculation had an enormous impact on our strategy. We had to act so that at any one time we did not unite against us all the unions involved in the use and distribution of coal. This consideration meant that we all had to be very careful when and where the civil law was used and the NCB suspended — though it did not withdraw — its civil action.
Although Mr Scargill had been very anxious to avoid a ballot before the strike began, it was clear to us that he wanted to keep the possibility open. Indeed the following month an NUM Special Delegate Conference voted to reduce the majority required for a strike from 55 per cent to 50 per cent. Also at the beginning of the strike we had hopes that moderates on the NUM executive might succeed in forcing a ballot. This made it even more important to keep the balance of opinion among miners favourable to our cause because it seemed that much of the opposition to the strike came from miners angry not to have been allowed to vote. Would a ballot held during a strike, with emotions raised, produce a majority for or against Mr Scargill? I was not entirely sure.
The NUM leadership was desperate to prevent the movement of coal by rail, by road or by sea. Although at times during the dispute there were problems in the docks and they had some limited success in slowing rail traffic, the lorry drivers refused to be intimidated by the dockers or anyone else. Increasingly, and to a degree that we had not anticipated, road haulage firms were able to keep coal moving to the power stations and other main industrial customers. The steel workers had endured their own long and damaging strike and they were not keen to see plant destroyed and jobs lost in their own industry simply in order to demonstrate sympathy with the NUM — a union which had earlier shown remarkably little sympathy towards them. However, it was the power workers whose attitude was most crucial. If they struck, or acted in sympathy with the miners to prevent us moving to maximum oilburn, we would have had great difficulties. But their attitude was simply that they were not a party to the strike and that their job was to see that the people of Britain had light and power. Nor were their leaders prepared to be browbeaten by other trade union bosses into doing what they regarded as fundamentally wrong.
Everything turned on maximizing endurance. I received weekly reports from the Department of Energy setting out the position and I read them very carefully indeed. Early in the strike the power stations were consuming coal at the rate of about 1.7 million tons a week, though the net reduction in stocks was smaller because some deliveries were getting through. The CEGB estimated endurance at about six months but this assumed a build-up to maximum oilburn — that is, using oil-fired stations at full capacity — which had not yet begun. We had to judge when this should be set in train because it would certainly be described as provocative by the NUM leadership. We held off while there seemed a prospect that NUM moderates might force a ballot. However, I decided on Monday 26 March that this nettle must now be grasped.
Industrial stocks were, of course, much lower than those at the power stations: the cement industry was particularly vulnerable and important. But it was BSC whose problems were most immediate. Their integrated steel plants at Redcar and Scunthorpe would have to close in the next fortnight if supplies of coke and coal were not delivered and unloaded. Port Talbot, Ravenscraig and Llanwern had stocks sufficient for no more than three to five weeks. Not surprisingly, BSC was extremely concerned as the position changed from day to day.
This was the state of uncertainty as we ended the first month of the strike. Perhaps the only thing one could be sure of was Mr Scargill’s intentions. He wrote in the Morning Star on 28 March that ‘the NUM is engaged in a social and industrial Battle of Britain… what is urgently needed is the rapid and total mobilization of the Trade Union and Labour movement.’ It was still unclear whether he would get it.
The stalemate continued during April. There still seemed the possibility of a ballot for a national strike whose result no one could guess. In spite of continuing heavy picketing, there were some signs of a drift back to work, particularly in Lancashire — though it was only a drift. The leaders of the rail unions and the seamen promised to support the miners in their struggle: there were many declarations of this kind during the strike, but their members were less enthusiastic. The first court cases against the NUM began: two coke hauliers began legal action against the South Wales NUM picketing of Port Talbot steelworks.
From early in the dispute we were worried that the NCB was failing to put across its case, both to its own employees and to the general public. This was not something that government could do for them, though later (as will be seen) we pressed them to improve their presentation. But on the question of upholding the law it was our role to speak, and we did so vigorously. When I was interviewed on Panorama by Sir Robin Day on Monday 9 April I strongly defended the police handling of the dispute:
The police are upholding the law. They are not upholding the Government. This is not a dispute between miners and government. This is a dispute between miners and miners… it is the police who are in charge of upholding the law… [they] have been wonderful.
A few days later, the police were on a different front line. On 17 April WPC Yvonne Fletcher was killed by machine-gun fire from the Libyan Embassy in St James’s Square while policing a peaceful demonstration. The whole country was shocked. In spite of which, Mr Scargill was to open contacts with Libyan officials, and an NUM official even met Colonel Gaddafi in the hope of raising money to continue the strike. It was as if there was a preternatural alliance between these different forces of disorder.
A LONG SLOG
In May there were brief but revealing contacts between the NCB and the NUM leadership — the first since the strike began. The talks took place on Wednesday 23 May; I had a full report the next day. Mr Scargill would allow no one to speak for the NUM side but himself: the other members of his executive had clearly been told to keep quiet. The NCB had given two presentations, one on the marketing prospects of the coal industry and another on the physical condition of the pits, some of which were now in danger of becoming unworkable because of the strike. At the end of each presentation the NUM representatives declined to comment or to ask questions. Mr Scargill then made a prepared statement. He insisted that there could be no discussion of pit closures on grounds other than exhaustion — certainly no question of closing pits on economic grounds. Ian MacGregor made some brief remarks to the effect that he saw no purpose in continuing the meeting in the light of this, but nevertheless he suggested further talks between two senior members of the NCB and two senior representatives of the NUM. Mr Scargill again insisted that the withdrawal of all closure plans was a precondition for any talks. There the meeting ended. But at that point the NUM sprung a trap. They asked to be allowed to stay in the room in which the meeting had just taken place for a discussion among themselves. Ian MacGregor saw this as a perfectly innocent request and readily agreed. The NCB representatives left the room. But later we discovered that the NUM had managed to persuade the press that this was a ‘walkout’ by the NCB. Many people seized on the episode as evidence that Ian MacGregor was unwilling to talk. It was a classic example of the dangers of negotiating with people like Mr Scargill.
Week by week the strike grew more bitter. There was evidence that many miners were losing their early enthusiasm for it and questioning Mr Scargill’s forecasts of limited power station endurance. The NUM leadership responded by increasing the allowances they paid to pickets — they paid nothing at all to strikers who did not turn out to picket — recruiting non-miners to the task. There wa
s a general escalation of the level of violence. Their tactic evidently was to achieve maximum surprise by concentrating large numbers of pickets at a particular pit at the shortest possible notice. Perhaps the most shocking scenes of violence were those which took place outside Orgreave Coke Works in an attempt to prevent coke convoys reaching the Scunthorpe steelworks. On Tuesday 29 May over 5,000 pickets engaged in violent clashes with the police. The police were pelted with all kinds of missiles, including bricks and darts, and sixty-nine people were injured. Thank goodness they at least had proper protective riot gear, I thought, as, like so many millions of others, I watched the terrible scenes on television.
Speaking in Banbury the next day I said:
You saw the scenes… on television last night. I must tell you that what we have got is an attempt to substitute the rule of the mob for the rule of the law, and it must not succeed. There are those who are using violence and intimidation to impose their will on others who do not want it. They are failing because of two things. First, because of the magnificent police force, well trained for carrying out their duties bravely and impartially. And secondly, because the overwhelming majority of people in this country are honourable, decent and law-abiding and want the law to be upheld and will not be intimidated. I pay tribute to the courage of those who have gone into work through these picket lines… the rule of law must prevail over the rule of the mob.
Over the next three weeks there were further violent clashes at Orgreave, but the pickets never succeeded in halting the road convoys. The battles at Orgreave had an enormous impact and did a great deal to turn public opinion against the miners.
It was at about this time that we had the first clear evidence of large-scale intimidation in the mining villages. This problem grew steadily worse as th strike went on. Working miners were not the only targets: their wives and children were also at risk. The sheer viciousness of what was done provides a useful antidote to some of the more romantic talk about the spirit of the mining communities. In its very nature intimidation is extremely difficult for the police to combat, though as time went on officers in uniform and teams in plain clothes were specially deployed to tackle it.
There was a good deal of public criticism of the failure of the nationalized industries to use the civil remedies which our trade union laws had provided. As the violence continued and the problems of BSC in particular increased, the ministerial group frequently discussed whether to encourage the use of the civil law against the NUM and other unions involved in secondary action. Failure to take civil action against the unions and their funds put all the pressure on to the criminal law and onto the police whose duty it was to uphold it. It was also pointed out that, if successful, legal action against union funds would restrict their ability to finance mass pickets and to engage in unlawful action. People were saying openly that our trade union reforms were being discredited by the failure of the nationalized industries involved to use the legal remedies. Instinctively, I had a good deal of sympathy with this view, as did my advisers.
However, Peter Walker persuaded us that use of the civil law might alienate the support we had among working miners or moderate trade unionists. The chairmen of the BSC, NCB, BR and CEGB agreed with him, at least for the present: they met towards the end of June and decided that in all the circumstances this was not the time to apply for an injunction. Nor were the police convinced that civil action would make their job on the picket lines any easier. Of course, that did not prevent others — whether businessmen or working miners — making use of the new laws. The fact was that throughout this dispute there was much to be said for emphasizing the point that it was the basic criminal law of the country which was being flouted by the pickets and their leaders, rather than ‘Thatcher’s laws’.
Peter Walker’s argument won the day, and the NCB went on to win the strike. In a sense, therefore, the outcome justified the tactic. But could the same result have been achieved earlier through civil action leading, by way of the NUM’s defiance, to sequestration of union funds? Such ‘might-have-beens’ are always impossible to resolve. Looking back, however, we might reasonably have urged the nationalized industries to take action against the NUM and at an earlier stage. When the working miners actually did so on their own initiative — the best possible outcome but not something on which we should have relied — this put enormous pressure on Mr Scargill and severely circumscribed the ability of the NUM to keep the strike going. Since then, however, the use of ‘Thatcher’s laws’ has become standard in Britain’s industrial relations and the number of strikes and industrial disputes has plummetted.
Meanwhile, we kept a very close watch on the number of pits reopening and men working. In July and August many pits close to take their annual holidays and we had some hopes that there would be a large-scale return to work when the holiday period ended, though there were fears too that pits that had been working before the holidays would fail to reopen due to renewed efforts by the pickets. The cost of being on strike to miners and their families was one consideration in estimating what would happen. But perhaps psychology was more important. A really large return to work after the holiday might create its own momentum. For his part, Mr Scargill would try to persuade his troops that with autumn approaching there was hope of the NCB being forced to back down by a government unwilling to impose winter power cuts.
It was clearly very important that the NCB should do everything possible to get its case over to those tempted to give up the strike and return to work. On my recommendation, Tim Bell, who had given me so much good advice on presentation in the past, had begun to advise Ian MacGregor. There was certainly a powerful positive case to deploy: massive new investment was available for the pits under existing plans, though this was now being held up, and if work resumed there was the promised pay rise for miners to look forward to. There was also the negative side: pits might never reopen because of deterioration which occurred while the strike continued. Customers were being lost, probably permanently: no one in industry tempted by our subsidies to change from other fuels to coal was likely to have much faith in the reliability of coal supplies from now on. It would also have been possible to go ahead with pit closures on economic grounds while the strike was still on, and we debated this. But on balance the risk of alienating moderate miners was too great. We also had to consider whether to encourage more miners to take the uniquely generous redundancy terms on offer. There were two problems with respect to redundancy: first, even if large numbers of miners took up the offer, there was no guarantee that they would be from the pits we needed to close. And the savings lay in closing uneconomic pits. Second, there was a real risk that it was the moderate miners, sickened by the violence and intimidation, who would find redundancy most attractive, leaving the hardliners in a majority in particular areas or even nationally. So again we held fire.
July proved to be one of the most difficult months of the strike. On Monday 9 July almost out of the blue the TGWU called a national dock strike over a supposed breach of the National Dock Labour Scheme (NDLS). The NDLS had been established by the Attlee Government with the aim of eliminating casual labour in the docks. Based on statute, it operated in the majority of British ports, establishing a closed shop and giving the union extraordinary powers. The occasion for the strike was BSC’s use of contract labour to move iron ore by road from stockpiles in the docks at Immingham to the Scunthorpe steelworks. In fact, BSC were satisfied that neither the scheme nor local agreements had been breached. Under the scheme’s absurd provisions ‘shadow’ labour consisting of registered dock workers was required to stand and watch the work as it was being done by contractors. This had been complied with in the ‘normal way’. We hoped that the National Dock Labour Board, which included union representatives, would give an early ruling to this effect. But the TGWU leadership was strongly committed to supporting Mr Scargill and plainly welcomed the opportunity to call a strike.
We had already made an extensive study of the implications of
a national dock strike in 1982. It seemed likely that the strike — which would probably only seriously affect those ports which were part of the NDLS — would have little direct impact on the outcome of the coal strike. We were not importing coal for the power stations, because it would have risked losing us the support of working miners. But a dock strike would have serious implications for BSC by disrupting its imports of coal and iron ore. Indeed, it looked as if a major motive for the strike had been the desire of the left-wing TGWU leadership to assist the miners by tightening their grip on the major steel plants, counteracting BSC’s success in by-passing secondary action on the railways by organizing road deliveries. The general effect on trade would be very serious — particularly on imports of food — though about a third of non-bulk cargo was carried by roll-on — roll-off ships (known as ‘RO-RO’), much of which was driver-accompanied and passed through ‘non-scheme’ ports such as Dover and Felixstowe. Everything would depend on how well the strike was supported and whether it was confined to the NDLS ports.
The Downing Street Years, 1979-1990 Page 46