On Tuesday 25 September Peter Walker told the ministerial group on coal that it now looked likely that NACODS would vote for a strike. He was right: when the result came through on Friday we discovered that 82.5 per cent had voted in favour.
This was very bad news. Throughout the coal strike events swung unpredictably in one direction then another — suddenly things would move our way, then equally suddenly move against us — and I could never let myself feel confident about the final outcome.
Apart from the initial few days of the strike in March, this was the time when we felt most concern. Some in Whitehall feared that a bandwaggon might begin to roll in Mr Scargill’s favour. We could not know what effect the TUC resolution of support for the NUM would have. We were now approaching the autumn and the militants might gain new heart. And there was the threatened NACODS strike.
It was suggested to us that most members of NACODS had voted for a strike in order to strengthen their leadership’s negotiating hand and that the vote did not mean that a strike would inevitably take place. After the ballot the NACODS executive had announced a nine-day delay before industrial action would actually begin, lending some plausibility to this interpretation. But for most of the leadership itself the original dispute about crossing picket lines was a secondary matter; their real aim was to secure an end to the miners’ strike on the NUM’s terms. Our best chance of avoiding a strike by NACODS — or of minimizing its effects if one could not be avoided — would be to drive a wedge between the union leaders and their members. It was therefore vital that the NCB should be as conciliatory as possible on the points of substance.
The NCB and NACODS held talks on Monday 1 October. Agreement was reached on pay and on guidelines as regards crossing picket lines, the NCB withdrawing its circular of 15 August. The following day there were discussions on machinery for the review of pit closures and the possibility of some form of arbitration in cases of disagreement. This was to remain the most difficult question. No matter how elaborate the process of consultation, the NCB could not concede to a third party the right of ultimate decision over pit closures. This, although generally understood, was best not set out too starkly.
All this time we were faced with hostile outside comment and pressure. The Labour Party Conference wholeheartedly backed the NUM and condemned the police. Worst of all, perhaps, was Neil Kinnock’s speech in which, under pressure from the left wing and trade unions, he retreated from the tougher line he had taken at the TUC Conference. He took refuge in a general condemnation of violence which made no distinction between the use of violence with the aim of breaking the law and the use of force to uphold it. He even contrived to equate violence and intimidation with the social ills from which he claimed Britain was suffering: ‘the violence of despair … of long-term unemployment … loneliness, decay and ugliness’. No wonder that the Labour Party lost so much support in Nottinghamshire, where miners and their families knew what violence really was, even if the Leader of the Labour Party did not.
As always, the Conservative Party Conference followed straight on from Labour’s. Much of my time at Brighton was spent following as best I could the course of negotiations between the NUM and the NCB at the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS). A delegation from NACODS was also present at ACAS, though not directly involved in the negotiations. It was clear that NACODS was trying to win terms for the NUM which would have allowed Mr Scargill to claim victory. NACODS leaders were making threats with this in mind, claiming that their members could not be restrained much longer from beginning their strike and so on. Tactics became at this stage of the greatest importance. The NCB tabled a paper which accepted an independent review body on pit closures and they committed themselves to give proper consideration to its views, though obviously they would retain the right to take management decisions. ACAS then put forward a variation on this which the NCB immediately accepted and the NUM promptly rejected. We were still not to know how NACODS would react. But for once the NCB had obtained an important tactical advantage in negotiations.
These discussions spanned our Party Conference. Leon Brittan and Peter Walker both delivered powerful defences of our position during it. But the event which dominated our thoughts at that time was the IRA bomb at the Grand Hotel which killed five of our friends and came near to killing me, members of the Cabinet and many others.*
Among the messages I received afterwards was one from Mrs Gandhi, whom I knew well and admired. Within three weeks she was the victim of a brutal assassination by two of her own bodyguards.
THE TIDE TURNS
Towards the end of October the situation changed sharply once again. Three events within a week were particularly hopeful for us and must have come as hammerblows to Mr Scargill. First, on Tuesday 24 October the NACODS executive agreed not to strike after all. Precisely what happened is unclear. In all probability the moderates on the executive convinced the hardliners that their members simply would not act as stooges for Mr Scargill.
Second, it was at this point that the civil law at last began to bite. I have already mentioned a case which had been brought against the NUM by two Yorkshire miners: the High Court had ruled in the two miners’ favour that the strike in Yorkshire could not be described as ‘official’. The NUM had ignored the ruling and as a result a writ had been served on an astonished Mr Scargill actually on the floor of the Labour Party Conference. On 10 October both he and the union had been found in contempt of court and fined £1,000 and £200,000 respectively. Mr Scargill’s fine was paid anonymously, but the NUM refused to pay and the High Court ordered its assets to be sequestrated. It soon became evident that the NUM had prepared for this event, but the financial pressure on the union was now intense and its ability to organize was greatly hampered.
Finally, on Sunday 28 October — only three days after the sequestration order — the Sunday Times revealed that an official of the NUM had visited Libya and made a personal appeal to Colonel Gaddafi for his support. This was astonishing news and even Mr Scargill’s friends were dismayed. At the beginning of October, Mr Scargill (travelling under an alias as ‘Mr Smith’) had visited Paris with his colleague Mr Roger Windsor to meet representatives of the French communist trade union, the CGT. Present at the meeting was a Libyan whom Mr Scargill later claimed to be a representative of Libyan trade unionists — a rare breed, in fact, since Colonel Gaddafi had dissolved all trade unions when he came to power in 1969. It seems likely that Colonel Gaddafi made a donation to the NUM, though the amount is uncertain. The sum of £150,000 has been suggested. Mr Windsor’s visit to Libya was a follow-up to the Paris meeting.
A further sum was certainly received from an equally unlikely source: the nonexistent ‘trade unions’ of Soviet-controlled Afghanistan. And in September reports had begun to surface that the NUM was receiving assistance from Soviet miners — a group whose members would have looked with envy on the freedoms, incomes and working conditions of their British equivalents. There was further confirmation in November. It was quite clear that these initiatives had the support of the Soviet Government. Otherwise the Soviet miners would not have had access to convertible currency. Our displeasure at this was made very clear to the Soviet Ambassador and I raised the matter with Mr Gorbachev when he visited Britain for the first time in December, who claimed to be unaware of it.*
All this did the NUM’s cause great harm, not least with other trade unionists. The British people have plenty of sympathy for someone fighting for his job, but very little for anyone who seeks help from foreign powers out to destroy his country’s freedom.
In November the ground continued to slip from under the NUM leadership. The NCB seized the moment to launch a drive to encourage the return to work. It was announced that miners who were back at work on Monday 19 November would qualify for a substantial Christmas bonus. The NCB mounted a direct mail campaign to draw the attention of striking miners to the offer. Combined with the growing disillusionment with Mr Scargill, this had an immediate
effect. In the first week after the offer 2,203 miners returned to work, six times more than in the previous week. The most significant return to work was in North Derbyshire. Our strategy was to let this trend continue without trying to take any explicit political credit for it, which could have been counter-productive. I told ministers that the figures should be allowed to speak for themselves, but that we should continue to emphasize just how much was on offer. I was keen to bring it home to the public that, in spite of all Mr Scargill’s efforts, the trend was now firmly in the right direction.
Speaking at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet on Monday 12 November I said:
The Government will hold firm. The Coal Board can go no further. Day by day, responsible men and women are distancing themselves from this strike. Miners are asserting their right to go to their place of work. Those in other unions now see clearly the true nature and purpose of those who are leading this strike.
This has been a tragic strike but good will emerge from it. The courage and loyalty of working miners and their families will never be forgotten. Their example will advance the cause of moderate and reasonable trade unionism everywhere. When the strike ends it will be their victory.
In fact, I remained in touch with representatives of the working miners. I was keen to see them but there appeared to be some rivalry between two groups: to have seen one without the other would have caused resentment and to have seen both together would have been undiplomatic. I accepted Peter Walker’s advice to this effect, but I told my Private Office that when the strike was over I would have representatives of all the working miners and their wives to No. 10 for a reception — which indeed I did. (I met some also at a private buffet hosted by Woodrow Wyatt at the end of March the following year.)
Like many others, I suspect, I had been impelled to reflect a great deal in the course of the strike on the threats to democracy. Back in July I had addressed an eve of recess meeting of the ‘22 Committee on the subject of the ‘enemy within’. The speech had attracted a good deal of hostile comment: critics had tried to distort my meaning by suggesting that the phrase was a reference to the miners at large rather than the minority of Marxist militants, as I had intended. I returned to the theme in the Carlton Lecture, which I delivered in the traditional home of Conservatism — the Carlton Club — on the evening of Monday 26 November. I was the second Carlton lecturer: the first had been Harold Macmillan, who had recently attacked our handling of the miners’ strike in a characteristically elegant maiden speech in the Lords. Of course, in contemplating the threat of anti-democratic extremism I had in mind not only the NUM leadership but also the terrorists, who had demonstrated their murderous intent at the Brighton Grand Hotel just weeks before. I reflected:
There has come into existence a fashionable view, convenient to many special interest groups, that there is no need to accept the verdict of the majority: that the minority should be quite free to bully, even coerce, to get the verdict reversed. Marxists, of course, always had an excuse when they were outvoted: their opponents must have ‘false consciousness’: their views didn’t really count. But the Marxists, as usual, only provide a bogus intellectual top-dressing for groups who seek only their own self-interest.
… Now that democracy has been won, it is not heroic to flout the law of the land as if we still struggled in a quagmire where civilization had yet to be built. The concept of fair play — a British way of saying ‘respect for the rules’ — must not be used to allow the minority to overbear the tolerant majority. Yet these are the very dangers which we face in Britain today. At one end of the spectrum are the terrorist gangs within our borders, and the terrorist states which finance and arm them. At the other are the hard Left operating inside our system, conspiring to use union power and the apparatus of local government to break, defy and subvert the laws.
The return to work continued. But so did the violence. Violence and intimidation well away from the pitheads were more difficult for the police to prevent and required fewer people to perpetrate: consequently it was on such tactics that the militant miners now concentrated. There were many incidents. One that particularly struck me took place on Friday 23 November when Michael Fletcher, a working miner from Pontefract in Yorkshire, was attacked and beaten by a gang of miners in his own home. No fewer than nineteen men were arrested for the crime. Then a week later came one of the most appalling events of the strike: a three-foot concrete post was thrown from a motorway bridge onto a taxi carrying a South Wales miner to work. The driver, David Wilkie, was killed. I wondered whether there was any limit to the savagery of which these people were capable.
With the passing of the 19 November deadline for the Christmas bonus the return to work slowed somewhat. One of the wives of the working miners sent me a message explaining that there were two additional reasons. First, some striking miners who intended to go back to work would only return after Christmas, to avoid intimidation of their families over the holiday. Second, there was news of fresh talks being planned between the NUM and the NCB, and talks always had a negative effect on the movement back to work.
But further talks were difficult to avoid, although Mr Scargill’s intransigence would probably ensure that they went nowhere. Using Robert Maxwell as an intermediary, key figures in the TUC were anxious to find some way of concluding the strike which would allow Mr Scargill and the militants to save face. In fact, of course, it was only by ensuring that they lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people that we could tame the militants. I suspect that some of the union leaders knew this. Certainly, some of them had reason to know it. Norman Willis, General Secretary of the TUC, had pursued a thoroughly honourable line throughout, unlike the leaders of the Labour Party. Earlier that month he had spoken at an NUM rally in South Wales. Attempts were made to shout him down when he condemned violence on the picket line and in a chilling moment, which I and millions of others watched on television, a noose was lowered from the ceiling and suspended just above his head.
David Basnett, General Secretary of the GMWU, and Ray Buckton, General Secretary of ASLEF, had a private meeting with Peter Walker in which they revealed their desire for the TUC to play a role. I considered how we should respond. On the one hand, the last thing I wanted was to bring the TUC into No. 10 in their old capacity as power brokers. On the other hand, a clumsy rebuff could alienate moderate opinion among the unions.
So Peter Walker and Tom King had a lengthy meeting with seven of the main union leaders on the evening of Wednesday 5 December. It was clear that none of the seven really had any idea how to end the strike. I discussed how to deal with the TUC initiative with Peter Walker and officials on the morning of Thursday 13 December at Downing Street. Apparently the TUC were proposing to put to the NUM and the NCB the idea of a return to work followed by discussion of a new Plan for Coal, the talks to have a time limit of perhaps eight to twelve weeks. The TUC wanted to know whether we would endorse this approach. Peter Walker saw some advantages in it. I was more conscious of the difficulties. There were three principles, I said, to which we must adhere. First, any talks on the future of the industry must take place after the return to work. Second, nothing should be agreed which would undercut the position of the working miners. Third, it was essential to prevent the NUM claiming that the programme of pit closures had been withdrawn or even that there would be no pit closures while talks continued. It should be clearly seen that the NCB was free to operate the existing colliery review procedure, as modified by the provisions of the agreement with NACODS. However, I agreed that Peter should meet the TUC on Friday morning to tell them that the Government would go along with their efforts to bring the strike to an end on the basis of a return to work followed by talks on the future of the industry. The colliery review procedure, modified by the NACODS agreement, would remain in place.
Peter and Tom met the TUC delegation the following day. Nothing came of the meeting. The TUC had no authority from Mr Scargill to negotiate and they concluded that no
initiative to end the strike was now possible before Christmas.
As the year ended, our main objective was to encourage a further return to work from 7 January, the first working Monday in the New Year. Though the NCB’s bonus offer had expired, there was still a strong financial incentive for strikers to return to work in the near future because they would pay little, if any, income tax on their wages if they went back before the end of the tax year on 31 March. The great strategic prize would be to get more than 50 per cent of NUM members back to work: if we could secure that, it would be equivalent in practical and presentational terms to a vote in a national ballot to end the strike. This would require the return of a further 15,000 to work, which the NCB were busily preparing a new campaign of letters and press advertising to achieve.
It was also vital that the miners and the public at large should be told that there would be no power cuts that winter, contrary to Mr Scargill’s ever more desperate and incredible predictions. We held off making such an announcement until we could be absolutely certain, but finally on 29 December Peter Walker was able to issue a statement saying that he had been informed by the Chairman of the CEGB that at the level of coal production that had now been achieved there would be no power cuts during the whole of 1985.
THE STRIKE BEGINS TO CRUMBLE
The question now was what the effect of all this would be on the return to work in January. The rate of return was initially affected in some areas by bad weather, which also had some negative effects on the movement of coal. (I had been worried earlier that we would have a cold winter, but fortunately the weather was generally good.) But as January continued the rate of return increased. By the middle of the month there were almost 75,000 NUM members not on strike and the rate of return was running at about 2,500 a week. Plainly the end was near.
The Downing Street Years Page 49