There is No Alternative

by Claire Berlinski

  You owe it to yourself to try. As a writer myself I appreciate that only too well.

  Sometimes, if the gatekeeper is lazy, going to lunch and leaving the key in the lock, you can creep on tiptoe and softly turn it, pushing the door wide, inch by inch, until you can slip through into the hallowed hall and surprise the dragon sleeping in his lair, or working hard at his desk, as the case may be. This time it didn’t work. No hard feelings.

  The unvarnished truth about Thatcher is that generally Thatcher has had a free hand as far as the US media and therefore the American audience is concerned. She is held to be the best prime minister since Churchill and because of strong publicity from, for example, Murdoch,145 this has never been challenged. She is far from well now which is not surprising. When one lives one’s life on a narrow path, without compassion and understanding for the deeper issues in life, when temporal power is taken away, one invariably falls into a spiritual abyss of self-doubt and loneliness. Some people call it karma. As you give so you receive.

  It has been nice to talk with you Claire.

  Good luck.

  Best wishes

  Linda

  Right, then. From now on, Scargill will communicate with us through Linda, his spirit medium.

  If Peter Walker concluded that Scargill was a committed Marxist, this is because no other conclusion is possible. “Capitalism is an obscene system which deserves to be overthrown,” Scargill declared forthrightly.146 Scargill left the Communist Party in 1961 not because he objected in any way to Stalin’s excesses—in fact, he approved of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary and mourned the removal of Stalin’s body from the Red Square mausoleum147—but because he had decided that the British Communist Party wasn’t powerful enough. “I gradually began to be interested in the unions themselves,” he told the New Left Review in 1975,because it appeared to me that, irrespective of what I did in . . . the Labour or Communist Party or any other political organization, the real power—and I say that in the best possible sense—the real power lay either with the working classes or with the ruling classes.148

  In the same interview, he proposed as soon as possible to “take into common ownership everything in Britain.” The first measure would be “the immediate nationalization of the means of production, distribution and exchange. I can’t compromise on this.” There could be no middle way: “I do not believe compromise with the capitalist system of society will achieve anything.” Immediately upon taking power, he stressed, he would bring all organs of the press under state control.

  Not only was Scargill a Marxist, there is much evidence for the case that he was a Stalinist, in particular. Stalin briskly dismissed the notion that workers in advanced capitalist nations, whom he denounced as a labor aristocracy, would spontaneously bring about the Revolution; they had drunk too deeply of the wine of bourgeois ideology; they swam in a soporific miasma of false consciousness. 149 Scargill shared this sentiment. “I disagree totally with the concept of workers’ control,” Scargill told Marxism Today:It is only by politicizing our membership that we will ever bring about the irreversible shift towards a socialist system in society. Therefore I don’t agree that we ought to be putting workers on the boards . . . I am against the whole concept of participation which only serves to perpetuate the capitalist system.150

  On the radical Left, the word “irreversible” is a common euphemism. It means no more elections.

  Like Stalin, Scargill sought to foster a personality cult; activists were encouraged to chant his name and pledge their loyalty to him, rather than to the union or a political party. “Arthur Scargill Walks on Water,” sung to the tune of “Deck the Halls,” and “There’s only one Arthur Scargill,” sung to the tune of “Guantanamera,” were classics of the genre.

  In 2000, Scargill just came out with it. At a meeting of the British Stalin Society in London (yes, there is such a thing), Scargill declared himself “sick and tired of listening to the so-called ‘experts’ today who still criticize the Soviet Union and, in particular, Stalin.” The meeting was organized by the Committee to Celebrate the October Revolution. The remarks of Comrade Scargill—as he is termed in the minutes—warrant quotation at length, for there are still many who see Thatcher, not Scargill, as the dangerous provocateur in this conflict. “Tonight’s event,” Scargill declared,must be a celebration and not merely a commemoration of that earth-shattering event, and it should be an evening when we pay tribute to those who created the Soviet Union—a Socialist society which not only defeated poverty, ignorance, injustice and inequality but also defeated the mightiest fascist war machine ever seen on the face of the earth . . . it was the Soviets who first put a man into space. They did so without the obscenities of the market economy, including Coca Cola plants and McDonald’s fast-food chains, or what some misguided souls believe is ‘freedom and democracy.’ Following the death of Stalin in 1953, new forces seized control in the Soviet Union, and a so-called ‘new realism’ began to take the place of Socialist planning. Khruschev, Brezhnev, later Andropov, Chernenko, but, above all, Gorbachev did what the might of the Nazi army had failed to do—they ripped the heart out of the Soviet Union and destroyed its Socialist system.151

  Despite the Great Betrayal, Scargill remained throughout his union career on exceedingly cozy terms with the Kremlin, making numerous trips to Moscow and Cuba on the Red dime as he worked his way up the union ranks. He airmailed copies of the Yorkshire Miner to Castro every month. He denounced the counter-revolutionary Solidarity movement in Poland and refused to condemn the Soviet Union when in 1983 it downed a South Korean passenger plane.

  During the strike, Scargill visited the Soviet embassy in London regularly. The Soviets donated a million-odd pounds’ worth of cash, food, and clothing to the miners’ union.152 As the strike wore on, miners and their families vacationed on the Black Sea; the USSR picked up the tab. When the details of this Soviet largesse were reported in the news, Scargill didn’t deny it: He declared insouciantly that Soviet miners had taken up a collection for their comrades. “And he got away with it, really,” Walker marvels. “The public said, ‘Ah, you know, that’s very nice of these Russian miners—.’”

  Walker claims that the Soviet Union delivered cash to a pub in Yorkshire in cases of ten-pound notes. Scargill has been accused of pocketing a great deal of Russian money for his own use. Many column inches have been devoted to the latter charge and to Scargill’s denials, but in the end the question is not particularly important. What is important—and a matter of indisputable public record—are Scargill’s declared economic and political objectives. During the strike, when asked by a parliamentary committee just how much of a financial loss a pit must run to warrant closure, Scargill replied, “As far as I can see, the loss is without limits.” No pit, he argued, should ever be closed because it wasn’t making enough money. It should be closed only when there was no coal left in it, even if you had to tunnel to the center of the earth to get it. There could be no compromise.

  Bernard Ingham was characteristically expansive when he recalled Scargill’s declaration:I mean, it’s the economics of the madhouse! But he believed that the nation owed the miners a living, and that the miners did not need to perform economically, all they needed to do was occasionally dig out coal so that we might occasionally have some electricity. Oh yes, the man was a menace, a total menace.

  Likewise, Scargill made no secret of his desire to bring down the Thatcher government, by any means necessary. “Direct action,” he declared in 1981 to a union rally—on the hard Left, “direct action” is another important euphemism; it means “violence”—“is the only language the government will listen to.”153 The forthcoming battle, he stressed, “will not be won in the House of Commons. It will be won on the streets of Britain.” After the 1974 miners’ strike, he had explained the strategy of dispatching flying pickets to the scene of the conflict thus: Trade union members “had a contractual obligation with the working class, and if they didn’t honor [it] we’d
make sure, physically, that they did.”154

  The outcome of the 1983 general election, Thatcher writes in her memoirs, was a devastating rebuke to socialism. She is justified in saying this. As she put it, fairly, the Labour Party had campaigned “on a manifesto that was the most candid statement of socialist aims ever made in this country.”155 The voters had made their opinions perfectly clear: They didn’t want what the Labour Party was offering. Thatcher won a landslide victory. Within a month of the election, however, Scargill announced that he did not “accept that we are landed for the next four years with this government.”156

  In other words, to hell with the voters.

  Since Scargill refused to meet me, I cannot say what he is like in person. I have heard that he is funny and sharp-witted—although no one has recounted to me a story about his wit that actually made me laugh157—and I have heard that he is a powerful, passionate orator. Like Thatcher, he has a reputation for extraordinary industry and personal discipline. Like Thatcher, he is said to have needed little sleep. Photographs of the epoch show a man with a weak chin, thinning red hair, a comb-over, and last-days-of-disco sideburns.

  Peter Walker describes him to me as a man who knew how to have a good time: “He loved living the capitalist life, I mean, his suits were made in Savile Row, several thousand pounds at a time. He always had a chauffeur-driven car, and he dined and wined well, so he loved the joys of a wealthy standard of living himself.” This, I suspect, is a bit of an exaggeration, perhaps even one of those famous Tory smears. It is true that Scargill had a driver, and others to whom I spoke agreed that the man enjoyed his food, but I have looked at hundreds of photographs of Scargill and can say with confidence that if he paid a thousand pounds for those suits, he was had.

  Scargill and Neil Kinnock loathed each other. Kinnock first met Scargill in the late 1960s. “Did you take an instant dislike to him?” I ask.

  “Immédiatement.”

  “Why, what was he like?”

  “Poseur. Arrogant. Kind of guy that you knew, if anybody would let him, he would bully them.”

  “Is there anything specific, anything that he said that made you feel, ‘This guy, I just don’t like him?’”

  “No, you only have to look at him walking to hate him.”

  “How did he walk?”

  “Well, he’s a strutter. He struts. He struts. And you can take a visceral dislike to someone simply on the basis of that, or the color of their tie, or the way they part their hair.” I am not sure whether he meant that he did take a dislike to Scargill based on the way he parted his hair, but if so, it would have been understandable. “But the whole character of Scargill extruded, you know, I felt, ‘Christ, I don’t like this guy.’ And quite a lot of the fellows I was mixing with among those South Wales miners—including communists—thought that Scargill was, quote, ‘too big for his bloody boots.’ That kind of attitude.”

  “Right.”

  “And quite a few of these were guys whose judgment I valued, because they were gutsy men with a lot of wisdom, whose basic motivation was to try to help people. I mean, they would have liked to have overthrown the existing order, but the main reason they’d taken on responsibilities in the union or in politics or both was that they wanted to help people.”

  I am struck by the way Kinnock casually dismisses the eagerness of these men to overthrow the existing order. Such an ambition is, he seems to be suggesting, just a harmless political folly, like an obsession with wind farms. This is one reason he never became prime minister. Too many people wondered about his judgment. They just couldn’t be sure that Thatcher was dead wrong about his crypto-communism.

  “How did Scargill manage to rise so high?” I ask him.

  “Well, he is a clever man—”

  I am not so sure of that. The strike began on March 12. Calling a coal strike with summer coming is like invading Russia as winter approaches. “How clever could he have been to call a coal strike in the spring?”

  “Oh no,” says Kinnock, “that was idiotic and stupid. And treacherous. I’m not saying that—I’m not saying that clever people can’t be stupid.”

  “So when you heard that he’d been elected to the presidency of the NUM, what was your reaction? Did you say to yourself, ‘We’re on a collision course,’ or did you think there was some way it could be finessed?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you the funny thing. I was talking to the leading officials of the miners in Durham, who were fairly, sort of, by Labour movement standards, on the right wing. I mean, people outside the movement wouldn’t think of them like that, but you know, they were moderates. And they’d never voted for the Left candidate in any miners’ election. Not since the 1930s. So I was chatting to them, and taking it for granted that they hadn’t voted for Scargill. And when they said they had, I said, ‘What in the bloody hell did you do that for?’”

  Kinnock mimics Pitmatic as perfectly as he does Margaret Thatcher.158 “Oh, he’s a canny lad!” they said to him.

  “Canny? The man’s bloody crazy! He’s mad as a hatter!” Kinnock replied.

  “Well, yer know, we need a bit o’ push.”

  “Yeah, I know, but he will push the miners to destruction.”

  They tried to reassure him: “Well, when he goes down to London he’ll cool down. He’ll get more mature.”

  Kinnock said, “Hey, wait a minute. You’re not telling me that you’re relying on this guy going to the fleshpots of London to make him a suitable union leader?”

  “No, well it’s not like that,” they mumbled sheepishly.

  “That’s exactly what you’re saying! Well, I hope you don’t live to weep over this.”

  Kinnock’s voice returns to the present. “And they did live to weep over it. I mean, the last coal mine in that coal field was closed in the wake of the 1984 strike. Every single pit.”

  I offered Scargill the chance to reply to Kinnock’s characterization of him, but he didn’t take me up on it. Linda Sheridan, however, held forth with gusto.

  Dear Claire

  I am glad your researching trip went well.

  Neil Kinnock (known as the Welsh windbag) rose to his position on the votes of the working class and when he got there sold out to the establishment and accepted a title which he once asserted he never would. He has worked hard obtaining lucrative jobs for himself (with massive pension) and for his family in the EU. Neil Kinnock sucks. The Welsh can be treacherous bastards. I know, my father was a Welshman. He won’t have a good word to say for Arthur.

  Arthur once said to me in a conversation that the relentless pressure on him during the strike coupled with vicious attacks from the media and the untrue allegations of embezzlement of funds made him, in retrospect, wonder how he had survived mentally intact. He did so primarily because of his absolute integrity and because of his faith in socialism. As he constantly says, “I became a socialist at fifteen and I will never stop fighting for socialism until the day I die.” . . . And he will not. You won’t find Arthur Scargill doing what other union leaders have done, jettisoning principles, accepting a knighthood, and kissing arse at celebrity cocktail parties not EVER. And that’s for sure.

  I still receive rant e-mails, read letters in the press and meet gullible people who have bought a lifetime lease into the lies, slanders and libels perpetrated at the time of the strike. The press only stopped short of saying he ate babies for breakfast. But Arthur has Irish ancestry and the Irish are resilient fighters. The English have always despised the Irish. Maybe, the so-English Maggie Thatcher, the provincial grocer’s daughter who used to help her father count the takings in the evenings when the shop was closed, saw in Arthur Scargill something that she recognized and hated. I say “saw” but as I hope you are aware, they never met. . . .

  Scratch the skin and you will find Thatcher had many ordinary middle-class prejudices. On the other hand, Arthur Scargill is no ordinary man. Whatever Thatcher and others may say, he had her running scared, so scared that she had to dredge up e
very dirty underhand trick in the book in order to defeat the miners. Had he not been up against impossible odds, as outlined in “The Enemy Within,”159 and had the countries’ trade union leaders had the backbone to support their own class and to come out in support of the miners, the strike would have been won.

  And as for what people say about Arthur, he’s heard it all before and won’t lose any sleep over it. His enemies will say what they always say and his friends and sympathizers will say what they usually say. No surprises there.

  It’s been nice talking to you Claire but I have no further comments to make.

  Take care.

  Regards,

  Linda160

  From the eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, the world ran on coal, as George Orwell remarked in The Road to Wigan Pier: Our civilization, pace Chesterton, is founded on coal, more completely than one realizes until one stops to think about it. The machines that keep us alive, and the machines that make machines, are all directly or indirectly dependent upon coal. In the metabolism of the Western world the coal-miner is second in importance only to the man who ploughs the soil. He is a sort of caryatid upon whose shoulders nearly everything that is not grimy is supported.161

  Deep shaft mining expanded rapidly in Britain throughout the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. The industrializing world’s hunger for coal was voracious, so much so that the miners, secure that their labor was irreplaceable, formed the vanguard of the British trade union movement. The Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, later to become the National Union of Mineworkers, was founded in 1889. The imperative of ensuring secure energy supplies during the two world wars ensured there could be no serious challenge to the miners’ growing political power. South Yorkshire and its environs were during this era the economic and strategic equivalent of the contemporary Persian Gulf. The miners, to continue this analogy, were something like OPEC.