The Downing Street Years

by Margaret Thatcher

  Walter Marshall confirmed that importing coal for the power stations would be a mistake. This would annoy even the Nottinghamshire miners. It would be better to dedicate imports to industry and avoid getting the CEGB embroiled in the argument. Looking to the longer term, he also set out his programme for increasing endurance to at least twelve months rather than the six months provided for in the current plans. We never forgot the possibility of a second strike after the present one was finished.

  The combination of Walter Marshall’s natural ebullience, his mastery of detail and the determination he showed to avoid power cuts raised my spirits enormously. Over the next couple of days I spoke individually to Norman Tebbit and several other colleagues to give them the message. We were all able to take our holidays in a better frame of mind than we would otherwise have done.

  On Tuesday 31 July I spoke in a debate in the House of Commons on a Censure Motion which the Labour Party had been ill-advised enough to put down. The debate went far wider than the coal strike. But the strike was on everyone’s minds and inevitably it was the exchanges on this matter which caught the public attention. I did not mince my words:

  The Labour Party is the party which supports every strike, no matter what its pretext, no matter how damaging. But, above all, it is the Labour Party’s support for the striking miners against the working miners which totally destroys all credibility for its claim to represent the true interests of working people in this country.

  I went on to deal with Neil Kinnock:

  The Leader of the Opposition went silent on the question of a ballot until the NUM changed its rules to reduce the required majority. Then he told the House that a national ballot of the NUM was a clearer and closer prospect. That was on 12 April — the last time that we heard from him on the subject of a ballot. But on 14 July he appeared at an NUM rally and said, ‘there is no alternative but to fight: all other roads are shut off.’ What happened to the ballot?

  Answer came there none.

  Neil Kinnock had succeeded Michael Foot as Leader of the Labour Party in October 1983. I faced him across the despatch box of the House of Commons for seven years. Like Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock was a gifted orator; but unlike Mr Foot he was no parliamentarian. His Commons performances were marred by verbosity, a failure to master facts and technical arguments and, above all, a lack of intellectual clarity. This last drawback reflected something deeper. Mr Kinnock was entirely a product of the modern Labour Party — left-wing, close to the unions, skilful at party management and political manipulation, basically convinced that Labour’s past defeats resulted from weaknesses of presentation rather than errors of policy. He regarded words — whether speeches or the texts of manifestos and policy documents — as a means of concealing his and the Labour Party’s socialism rather than of converting others to it. So he forcefully — and on occasion courageously — denounced Trotskyists and other left-wing troublemakers, not for their brutal tactics or their extreme revolutionary objectives but because they were an embarrassment to his and Labour’s ambitions. Being Leader of the Opposition, as I well remembered, is not an easy assignment. Leading the Labour Party in Opposition must be a nightmare. But I found it difficult to sympathize with Mr Kinnock. He was involved in what seemed to me a fundamentally discreditable enterprise, that of making himself and his party appear what they were not. The House of Commons and the electorate found him out. As Opposition Leader he was out of his depth. As Prime Minister he would have been sunk.

  As we entered August we had some reason to hope that the worst of the strike was behind us. Arthur Scargill and the militants were becoming increasingly isolated and frustrated. The dock strike had collapsed. The Government’s attitude and the NCB’s stance were now generally perceived in a more sympathetic light. The Labour Party was in disarray. Although the return to work remained a trickle — about 500 during July — there was no sign of any weakening of determination at the working pits. Finally, on Tuesday 7 August two Yorkshire miners began a High Court action against the Yorkshire NUM for striking without a ballot. This proved to be a vital case and led eventually to the sequestration of the whole of the NUM’s assets.

  One sign of the militants’ frustration was an increase in violence against working miners and their families. The situation appeared to be under control in Nottinghamshire, but things were getting worse in Derbyshire, partly because it was more deeply divided and also because it was closer to the Yorkshire coal fields from which the flying pickets largely came. Ian MacGregor was in touch with us in No. 10 and with the Home Office. He feared that such intimidation, appalling in itself, might also slow the return to work and could frighten miners currently working into staying away. The police thought that there might have been a change of tactics on the part of the NUM: frustrated by the failure of mass picketing, perhaps they were taking to guerilla warfare based on the intimidation of individuals and companies. The police stepped up their measures to protect the Derbyshire miners: ‘freephone’ lines to police stations were installed; detective squads set out to counter intimidation; and uniformed policemen patrolled the villages.

  There was also the threat of another dock strike. A tense situation had developed at Hunterston, the deep-water port in Scotland which supplied BSC’s Ravenscraig plant. An important cargo of coal, of the kind necessary for Ravenscraig’s coke ovens, was aboard the bulk carrier Ostia, presently moored in Belfast Lough. BSC told us that if it were not landed quickly they would have to start to run down Ravenscraig. Steel furnaces cannot be shut down fully without irreversible damage and there was every likelihood that the whole plant would have to close for good if coal supplies were halted. As with the earlier dock strike, absurd restrictive practices were the pretext for the strike threat. The normal operation at Hunterston for BSC-destined cargo was divided between work done aboard ship by TGWU registered dockers and work done on-shore by members of the steel union, the ISTC. But 90 per cent of the cargo could be unloaded even without ‘trimming’. BSC wanted to use its employees to unload this coal, but the TGWU was likely to claim that such action was contrary to the National Dock Labour Board agreement in order to provoke a new docks dispute. BSC told us that they were prepared to go to court if the cargo could not be unloaded.

  This was a very delicate question and Norman Tebbit stayed in close contact with BSC. The National Dock Labour Board was asked to offer a ruling but delayed and, finally, funked the issue altogether. BSC began the rundown of Ravenscraig on 17 August; they told us that unless the coal was landed by 23 — 4 August, their furnaces would have to be ‘banked’ on 28 — 9 August — that is, kept running at a minimum level, without production. Total closure would follow if coal supplies did not resume.

  In the end, after putting off the decision as long as possible, BSC had its employees start unloading the Ostia on the morning of Thursday 23 August. Although BSC acted in conformity with a local port agreement of 1984, TGWU dockers immediately walked out and the union called a second national dock strike.

  But in Scotland public opinion was strongly opposed to any action that threatened the future of Ravenscraig. So we had doubts whether the union could sustain a strike across the whole of Scotland, let alone in the United Kingdom as a whole. And we were right. This strike was to cause us much less worry than the first. Though to begin with the strike received considerable support from registered dockers, a majority of ports remained open. Finally, the TGWU called it off on 18 September.

  On holiday in Switzerland and Austria between 9 and 27 August I followed the story of the Ostia by telex. In my absence, Peter Walker took effective charge of day-to-day policy in the coal strike. But a prime minister is never really on holiday. I found myself accompanied by the local ambassador, who had previously been one of my private secretaries, five ‘Garden Room girls’ on duty round the clock, a technician to superintend communications with Downing Street and the usual roster of detectives. Red boxes came through the ‘diplomatic bag’. The telex chattered constantly. At lea
st one important decision was demanded of me by Willie Whitelaw over the telephone. Clarissa Eden once said that she sometimes felt that the Suez Canal flowed through her dining-room at No. 10. I sometimes thought at the end of the day that I would look out of the window and see a couple of Yorkshire miners striding down the Swiss slopes. And somehow neither the beautiful mountain scenery nor even my favourite reading — thrillers by Frederick Forsyth and John Le Carré — provided a distraction.

  On my return I found the situation much as I had left it, though with one — as it was to turn out — fateful exception. There was a good deal of violence and intimidation still going on. By now 5,897 arrests had been made in the course of the dispute; there had been 1,039 convictions, the most severe sentence being nine months’ imprisonment. Stipendiary magistrates would sit for the first time in early September at Rotherham and Doncaster. Others were ready elsewhere. Labour’s Energy spokesman, Stan Orme, was trying to mediate in the coal strike, which served perhaps more to minimize Labour embarrassment than to bring the end of the dispute any closer. Robert Maxwell was also trying to muscle in. He announced in early September that he was holding himself ready to mediate, but the whole thing collapsed in recrimination before the two sides had even met. The NUM blamed the Government.

  FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY?

  The most serious development, however, had been a circular issued on 15 August by the NCB to members of the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS). By law coal could only be mined in the presence of suitably qualified safety personnel — the great majority of whom were members of NACODS. In April, NACODS members voted to strike, but the margin was less than the two-thirds required by union rules. Up to mid-August the NCB had varied in its policy towards NACODS: in some areas members were being allowed to stay away from striking pits where no work was being done, in others they were being required to cross picket lines. The NCB circular now generalized the latter policy, threatening to withhold pay from NACODS members who refused to comply.

  The NCB circular played into the hands of those leaders of NACODS, particularly its president, who were strongly sympathetic to the NUM. Here at last was an issue on which they could persuade their members to strike. It was easy to understand why the NCB acted as they did. But it was a major error, subsequently compounded by their failure to perceive the swing in favour of a strike among NACODS members, and it almost precipitated disaster.

  September and October were always likely to be difficult months. The miners would be looking forward to the winter when demand for electricity was at its highest and power cuts most likely. At the TUC Conference in early September a majority of trade unions — strongly opposed by the electricity and power workers — pledged support for the miners, though in most cases they had no intention of giving it. When the forthright electricians’ leader Eric Hammond made a powerful speech pointing this out, he was heavily barracked for his pains. Neil Kinnock also spoke at the conference, coming as near as he ever did to outright condemnation of picket line violence, but without taking any action to expel from his party those who supported it. Meanwhile, Mr Scargill reaffirmed his view that there was no such thing as an uneconomic pit, only pits which had been starved of the necessary investment.

  Negotiations between the NCB and the NUM were resumed on 9 September. As arguments continued about forms of words, it was difficult for the general public to work out precisely what separated the two parties. I was always concerned that Ian MacGregor and the NCB team would unwittingly give away basic principles for which the strike was being fought. In the July talks he had already moved from the principle of closing ‘uneconomic’ pits to the much more dubious concept of closing pits which could not be ‘beneficially developed’. Thankfully, Mr Scargill had not been prepared to adopt this ambiguous objective. Peter Walker and I felt throughout that Ian MacGregor did not fully comprehend the devious ruthlessness of the NUM leaders he was arguing with. He was a businessman, not a politician, and thought in terms of reasonableness and reaching a deal. I suspect that Mr MacGregor’s view was that once he got the miners back to work he would be able to restructure the industry as he wished, whatever the precise terms on which a settlement had been reached. The rest of us, from long experience, understood that Arthur Scargill and his friends would exploit a fudged formula and that we should be back where we started. It was crucial for the future of the industry and for the future of the country itself that the NUM’s claim that uneconomic pits should never be closed should be defeated, and be seen to be defeated, and the use of strikes for political purposes discredited once and for all.

  It was also in September that I first met in person members of the ‘Miners’ Wives Back to Work Campaign’, whose representatives came to see me at 10 Downing Street. I was moved by the courage of these women, whose families were subject to the abuse and intimidation. They told me a great deal and confirmed some of my suspicions about the NCB’s handling of the strike. They said that the majority of miners still did not understand the full extent of the NCB’s pay offer and plans for investment: more needed to be done to put across the NCB’s case to striking miners, many of whom relied on the NUM for their information. They confirmed that while talks between the NCB and the NUM were going on, or were in prospect, it was extremely difficult to persuade men to return to work. They explained to me how small shops in the coalfields were being blackmailed into supplying food and goods for striking miners and withholding them from working miners. But perhaps the most shocking thing they had to say was that local NCB management in some areas were not anxious to promote a return to work and in one particular area were actively siding with the NUM to discourage it. In this overunionized industry I found that all too likely.

  Of course, the vital thing for these women was that the NCB should do everything it could to protect miners who had led the return to work, if necessary transferring them to pits where there were fewer militants and giving them priority in applications for redundancies. I said that we would not let them down, and I think I kept my word. The whole country was in their debt.

  One working miner’s wife, Mrs McGibbon from Kent, spoke at the Conservative Party Conference, describing the harrowing experiences which she and her family had undergone. The vile tactics of the strikers knew no limit. Even her small children were targets: they were told that their parents were going to be killed. Shortly after she had spoken the Morning Star published her address. A week later her home was attacked.

  On 11 September the National Working Miners’ Committee was formed. This was an important development in the history of the working miners’ movement. I heard a good deal informally about what was happening on the ground through David Hart, a friend who was making great efforts to help the working miners. I was eager to learn everything I could.

  On Wednesday 26 September I went to York. I visited the Minster, which had recently been struck by lightning and badly damaged in the fire which followed — divine punishment, some suggested, for the wayward theology of leading Anglican clerics. I also discussed with the Yorkshire police and local people the damage the strike was doing to the local community. At lunch with Conservative Party activists, some of those from Barnsley confirmed the impression that we had received throughout the strike: that the NCB’s publicity of its case was truly dreadful. There were, too, the accounts of intimidation with which I had become all too familiar. Nor could one doubt the economic hardship which Mr Scargill’s obduracy was imposing on his own supporters. I was told that miners were digging up rootcrops from the fields to feed themselves and their families.

  One positive result of the visit was my meeting with Michael Eaton, Director of the NCB’s North Yorkshire area and the man who had developed the new pit at Selby.

  I heard again in York, as I had from advisers previously, how effective he was. He has a wonderful soft Yorkshire voice and a good way of explaining things, so I suggested his appointment as a national spokesman to help improve NCB’s presentation.
Mr Eaton did a fine job, though unfortunately his position was made difficult as a result of jealousy and obstruction elsewhere in the NCB’s ranks.

  Meanwhile the threat from NACODS crept up on us. The leadership of NACODS was now clearly intent on a strike and announced that a strike ballot was to be held on 28 September. An agreement on the outstanding issues seemed within reach at one point but was repudiated by the union president on his return from holiday. At first the NCB was optimistic about the result of the ballot, but ominously as the days went by their assessments grew less and less hopeful. I had a meeting with Ian MacGregor and Peter Walker at Chequers on Sunday 23 September and we discussed what would happen if the two-thirds majority required for a strike was obtained. It was possible that NACODS might just use the result to put pressure on the NCB management to resolve their grievances. Alternatively, they might call a strike. We thought that in that event NACODS men in areas where the mines were working would themselves remain at work. But there was little chance of this happening in borderline areas like Derbyshire and it was clear that a NACODS strike would make it even more difficult to bring about a return to work by miners in the more militant areas. NACODS men were not the only NCB employees with the necessary safety qualifications. Many members of the British Association of Colliery Managers (BACM) were also qualified, but it would be difficult to persuade them to go underground and perform these tasks in the face of NACODS hostility. And while there were some NUM members who had passed the requisite examinations and were awaiting promotion to safety work grades, they too could provide only limited cover.