Marching to the Fault Line Read online

  Naturally, while all this was going on, there were very few pickets in Nottinghamshire, and production continued there.

  At Orgreave, all the loathing that had developed between striking miners and the police came to the surface. Bernard Jackson is only one of many witnesses to the way in which the police taunted striking miners with their huge overtime payments, while strikers and their families were starving. The story he tells is repeated by far too many other people for there to be any doubt of its truth:

  We’d had our noses rubbed in it before by police holding up £10 and £20 notes to the windows of their transits as they drove past. We knew the overtime they were earning and they knew we had nothing and this was just a nasty little bit of psychological warfare. But in the motorway service stations the real difference in our situations was brought home to us . . . As we scraped around between us for the price of a cup of tea and perhaps a sandwich, a seemingly endless line of blue uniforms filed past the serving area ordering double breakfasts, mountains of toast and mugs of tea. The last man paid the bill – often between £200 and £300.34

  The police won the Battle of Orgreave for MacGregor. Not that it mattered – MacGregor did not care much if they lost – but it was a blow to the miners’ morale that the vastly better equipped (and better fed) police ground them down, chasing proud miners who had fled for their lives up hill and down dale, until they hid from their tormentors.

  To the Socialist Workers Party, then an important element of the left which had put great store on the Battle of Orgreave, the defeat was yet another sign that trade union leaders had betrayed the miners and the working class. Their analysis is that if only the TUC had had the courage to instruct every trade union member in the country to come to Orgreave, then the workers united would have been victorious.

  They believed, and still believe, that those who let down the struggle include not just TUC leaders but also Yorkshire miners’ leaders, notably President Jack Taylor, who did not carry within them the pure Scargillite flame. If they had, more men, both miners and non-miners, would have gone to Orgreave and the Battle of Orgreave would have been won.35 This view is not widely shared, but it matters because the SWP cite Scargill as supporting it, and it seems almost certain that he did, and still does.

  Orgreave knocked the stuffing out of mass picketing, and perhaps out of the whole dispute. It gave the police a psychological advantage which lasted for the rest of the strike. Increasingly miners were only able to picket their own pits, and they were penned in and peremptorily ordered about by the police. As the picket lines retreated out of Nottinghamshire and into Yorkshire, the police followed them, very much like a victorious army.

  Orgreave served another tactical purpose for Thatcher. It tightened the noose round the neck of the Labour leadership, as Neil Kinnock balanced precariously between the media waiting for him to condemn the Orgreave pickets, and his party demanding that he condemn the police and turn up at the scene to show solidarity.

  There were two postscripts to Orgreave. A month later, on 16 July, an internal Home Office memo revealed that the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire was involved in a move to prosecute Arthur Scargill for conspiracy, over his speeches urging pickets to join the dispute at Orgreave. If Scargill had known, which is highly unlikely, he would have relished every minute of it; it could have easily made him a martyr and created a new rallying point in the dispute. Margaret Thatcher, Leon Brittan and Peter Walker were informed but legal minds at the DPP were wiser and more cautious.

  The memo, released under FOI, reveals police thinking. It says: ‘Apart from the minor public order prosecution (obstruction of the highway) against him, which will not be heard for some time, the main possibility which the police were examining was in respect of his actions and remarks at Orgreave. The police have been thinking in terms of offences such as conspiracy and incitement to cause a breach of the peace.’ It goes on: ‘The papers were put to the DPP, who has directed that there is insufficient evidence for a prosecution, and that particular case is not being proceeded with although the evidence remains on file and could conceivably be useful in relation to a future case by indicating a continual and deliberate pattern of conduct on his part.’

  The memo went on to reveal that the police decided to monitor Scargill’s speeches for the rest of the dispute. ‘The police are well aware of the co-ordinating hand of Mr Scargill in organizing disorder at particular places, and the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire has detailed a chief superintendent to keep an eye on Scargill’s activities in order to continually assess the available information with a view to a possible prosecution. This latter procedure has so far been confined to South Yorkshire. Mr Wright (South Yorkshire Chief Constable) and Mr Hall (President of ACPO) are well aware of the sensitivity of it. But have concluded that they need to look at the information from other forces too.’

  Nothing was to come of it, but it shows the police mindset following the battle of Orgreave.

  The other consequence was immediate. Orgreave and the scale of mass picketing did leave one unexpected headache for Thatcher. The courts could not cope with the number of miners arrested. Soon it became a matter of considerable concern in Number Ten. Twice Thatcher commissioned a report from one of her most venerable and longstanding allies, Lord Hailsham, the Lord Chancellor, on the progress of prosecutions. It made grim reading.

  A confidential letter from Lord Hailsham to the PM on 21 June, three days after the Battle of Orgreave, explained that by pleading not guilty, the striking miners clogged up the judicial system. In Nottingham there were 114 cases outstanding, 42 in Newark, 113 in the outer suburbs of the county town, 252 in Worksop, and 518 in Mansfield. In Derbyshire, there were 200 outstanding cases in Chesterfield; in South Yorkshire there were 251 outstanding cases in Rotherham. Only in Sheffield and Staffordshire was progress made, with just under half of 118 cases concluded in Sheffield and 155 out of 187 in Staffordshire.

  Hailsham had to consider emergency measures, such as appointing acting stipendiary magistrates and bringing in private solicitors to prosecute people, to cope. They did cope, just. Hailsham records that, after all that, many of the cases ended up being dismissed. Arresting hundreds of innocent men and almost bringing the courts to a halt was one very small part of the price of this almost worthless victory. The price was also heavy in terms of social cohesion and the welfare of thousands of families. But that was not a price Ian MacGregor had to pay.

  CHAPTER 5

  THATCHER AND THE ENEMY WITHIN, SCARGILL AND GENERAL WINTER

  21 JUNE to 2 OCTOBER

  The dramatic defeat of the miners at Orgreave demonstrated to the Labour Party and TUC leadership that there was only one avenue open for the miners: to start negotiations with the NCB on how the strike could be ended. The government’s official line, however absurd it might look, was still that they had nothing to do with the dispute and it was a matter that had to be resolved by the NUM and the NCB.

  Ministers were still privately hoping that it might be resolved, as the secret memos written by Peter Gregson to the PM reveal. So no negotiating initiative could be expected from the government, even though they were fearful of the coming of winter, with the huge energy drain it would certainly bring. Like Scargill, they thought General Winter might thrust victory into the NUM’s hands.

  As for the NCB, Ian MacGregor sounded like a man who thought he only had to sit back and wait for victory. On the final day of the Battle of Orgreave, 21 July, he wrote triumphantly to all the members of the NUM saying that they could never win, and predicting that, if they stayed out, the strike could drag on until 1985.

  How could Labour politicians help? Was any attempt doomed to be crushed between the iron egos of Arthur Scargill and Margaret Thatcher, and by the distrust that had built up between Labour’s leadership and Scargill?

  Neil Kinnock began having regular Saturday morning breakfasts with the South Wales miners’ research officer Kim Howells, once an NUM militant and Scargill supp
orter who now believed the President was leading the union to disaster. ‘He was telling me what was going on on the inside; we wanted to try to save something,’ says Kinnock. Labour leaders were thinking hard about how to minimize the damage and get the miners out of the hole they believed Scargill had dug for his members. Kinnock now regrets that he did not try to set up a direct line with Mick McGahey as well. ‘We got on well for years, a great guy, I wish I’d had the sense to say, “Mick, this is my home phone number, we may never use it but just in case.”’ He is sure McGahey felt the same regret.

  Meanwhile Kinnock encouraged his industry spokesman, Stan Orme, to see if he could do some freelance mediation. Orme’s initiative, however, was sparked in the end by a parliamentary exchange. Across the dispatch box, Energy Minister Peter Walker said to his Labour shadow: ‘Why don’t you intervene?’ For Walker it was simply one of many ways of reminding voters than the Labour Party had close links with the NUM. But Orme was one of those Labour MPs who had come up through the unions, in his case the engineers’ union. He knew his way round labour disputes. He recorded in his diary: ‘I found this extraordinary, coming from the Secretary of State for Energy. However, that evening I went home, slept on the challenge, and early next morning rang Arthur Scargill at the NUM HQ in Sheffield and suggested we had a meeting.’ Scargill agreed to one. Orme told Scargill that he would also contact MacGregor.

  Orme was an unusual sort of politician. Short and stout, with a high voice, a throwaway style of speaking, and crumpled suits, he did not have any of the charisma often considered vital for political success. But he was honest and thoughtful, and about as good a potential mediator as the political world could supply. And he had some sort of rapport with Scargill, which is more than could be said for either Kinnock or TUC General Secretary Len Murray.

  The idea initially seemed to bear fruit. Orme provided the first links between the NUM and ACAS, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. Pat Lowry, then Chairman of ACAS, organized the first private meeting between the NUM and ACAS at a hotel near Northampton in July. But neither Peter Walker for the government nor Ian MacGregor at the NCB had any real interest in an intervention from ACAS. The NCB would not even meet ACAS; the board was not interested in an ‘outside intervention’ at this time.

  Orme had more success with his attempt to get MacGregor and Scargill together. MacGregor and Orme seemed to warm to each other, despite the vast ideological gulf between them, and by the end of June the relationship, now on first-name terms, led to a proposal for a private meeting at MacGregor’s Scottish cottage. The NCB Chairman called Orme to say the NUM should ‘bring their toothbrushes and pyjamas’ to Scotland ‘and we should stick it out until we got a solution.’1

  This prepared the way for talks between the NUM and the NCB at the Rubens Hotel in London in July. But a lot was to happen before these talks could take place, much of it weakening the NUM position.

  The steelworkers, under their General Secretary Bill Sirs, agreed to accept coal from any source to keep plants going so they could avoid layoffs. A twenty-four-hour NUR strike had had limited impact. In Nottinghamshire, working miners had taken over the executive on 2 July, a move that was to have lasting effects. The same day, Walker met MacGregor to discuss the situation, and the next day both of them had a private meeting with Thatcher.

  By then MacGregor had seen the latest of the regular, detailed reports on opinion among the miners from Opinion Research and Communications (ORC), delivered the same day, 2 July. The NCB was providing itself with all the information it needed to fight a war. Such data was a very great deal more useful than what the NUM leadership had to guide them about the mood among the men, which essentially was Scargill’s gut instincts as he stood in front of cheering meetings.

  The practical difference between the leaders was that the NCB was willing to be told unpleasant truths. And ORC had unpleasant truths to give them. On 2 July Tommy Thompson of ORC told his client that almost no miner his team had interviewed thought the NCB would win, and many thought the NUM would win. Many of them believed the strike would achieve a lot. ‘Six out often Durham miners and 49 per cent of Northumberland miners thought that they themselves would benefit from the strike,’ wrote Thompson. And in both these areas, eight out of ten miners said they were certain not to go back to work in the next few weeks. ‘These are the attitudes which have to be changed if the strike is to crumble in the north east,’ wrote Thompson.2

  The government’s thinking at that time is revealed in a remarkably frank memo3 written by Peter Gregson to Mrs Thatcher on the eve of the 3 July meeting with Walker and MacGregor. It contained a rare and revealing piece of advice from a mandarin to Mrs Thatcher on how to handle the American coal boss: ‘When you see Mr MacGregor, I suggest that it will be very desirable to try and get him to do as much talking as possible at the beginning. As he is so laconic, it is all too easy to put words into his mouth and it would be much better for you to hear from him at the outset how he thinks the battle is going and how it can best be brought to a satisfactory conclusion.’ No one ever found a more tactful way of telling Mrs Thatcher not to talk too much.

  The six-page memo began with a description of the meeting between Walker and MacGregor that morning. It warned the Prime Minister that, although some miners had gone back to work, no consistent pattern had emerged, and none would emerge until the end of the holidays in August. It provided an insight into how co-ordinated ministers were in ensuring that the police were especially diligent in enforcing the right of miners to defy the strike unimpeded. ‘Protection from intimidation is the main contribution which the government can make,’ wrote Gregson. Where MacGregor was not satisfied with the police performance, he could secure immediate action from ministers.

  The memo singled out North Derbyshire, where MacGregor had apparently found ‘long standing difficulties with the left-wing police authority resulting in the recent suspension of the Chief Constable’. Gregson assured Thatcher that Walker was contacting Leon Brittan, the Home Secretary, to make ‘police effort in that area more effective’.

  Gregson revealed MacGregor’s take on the NUM delegate conference that was due on 11–12 July. He warned, ‘The militants will be in control,’ but added: ‘There is just the possibility that Scargill might seek agreement at the conference for a snap ballot.’ MacGregor thought that Scargill would strengthen his central authority and ‘stifle dissent’ and the government must be ready to counter him. He recorded MacGregor as saying: ‘It will be necessary to exploit this fully in the media in the hope of alienating Scargill from the rank and file miners and from public sympathy generally.’

  The memo reveals that, contrary to what they said at the time and for years afterwards, Walker and Thatcher knew about, and were interested in, the moves to set up a breakaway union, which became the Union of Democratic Miners. Gregson wrote: ‘The NCB’s attitude is that it cannot be seen to be assisting or encouraging such moves.’ In fact we now know that the NCB took advice from top lawyers, including the future Lord Falconer, to advise them how to do precisely that, legally and secretly. But at this stage the advantage of the breakaway union was seen as marginal – a negotiating ploy with the NUM, should talks start.

  The secret memo shows that MacGregor already knew that fifty-five pits were requiring continual observation for geological reasons. But the NCB did not think it could exploit this. Gregson thought the NUM, who were well informed locally, would always be able to argue that production could be resumed, if enough money was spent. Anyway, many of the pits where problems could arise were ones that the NCB wanted to keep open.

  The NCB had already received applications for redundancy from miners, wrote Gregson, but from the wrong people: those with skills it still desperately needed. Nevertheless MacGregor was working on plans to close some pits while the strike was in full swing. This idea seems to have come from Walker and Thatcher. ‘The advantage of doing so would be to demonstrate that the closure programme, which the dispu
te is all about, can be and is being achieved by consent and without hardship,’ Gregson recorded. He cited MacGregor as saying: ‘The NUM would no doubt argue even so that that the miners involved were traitors in selling the jobs of their grandchildren.’ And there was a danger of losing miners who might vote against a strike should there be a ballot. There was, he wrote, a ‘substantial downside’ to going along that path.

  The memo shows that at first MacGregor saw some hope in Stan Orme’s initiative, but Scargill had dashed it in a speech in Rotherham by reviving his pre-condition that the closure programme must be withdrawn. ‘The NCB must therefore tread the difficult path of being willing to resume talks, without actively seeking them,’ wrote Gregson. But ‘unless the NUM position is crumbling fast, the prospect of winter will give Scargill a major psychological advantage.’

  The government had no magic bullet, said Gregson, but there were three things it could do. First, it must do everything in its power to get more miners back to work. Second, the public relations battle must be fought intelligently and inexorably: showing the government was reasonable, ‘drawing attention relentlessly to Scargill as an antidemocratic bully with ulterior motives’, making it clear that the issues at stake were so vital that a few easy concessions would not solve the problem. Third, ‘taking discreet steps to prolong endurance into 1985’. If this was not producing results by September, Gregson thought they would have to take radical measures, like going ahead with closures and trying to get imported coal into the power stations.

  Finally Gregson told the PM that the NCB aimed to increase coal deliveries to power stations from 420,000 tonnes a week to 570,000 tonnes during July – without giving ‘Scargill and his friends in the rail and transport unions a new rallying point’. ‘The main trial of strength’ was at Llanwern and Ravenscraig, ‘where pickets are blocking coal deliveries. Victory there would be a major boost for Scargill; failure a substantial but not a decisive blow against him.’