Thank Scargill for helping Thatcher break the miners

The radical NUM leader was the author of the union movement's downfall, and we should be grateful, says Minette Marrin

LAST UPDATED 2:03 PM, MARCH 6, 2009

When in the early 1970s I tried to get a job in London journalism, I found it impossible because the journalists' union operated a closed shop to keep people out, no matter how well qualified. After a few years' working abroad, I went into TV, which had looser rules, only to find that part of my salary went automatically to the Labour party, which I did not support.

Union meetings and union representatives were so intimidating that I did not dare take up my right to opt out. Meantime, the greedy and corrupt "Spanish practices" of fellow Fleet Street unionists were notorious, just as they were in television: I regularly had to sign chits for work that technicians had not done.

Even so I was still shocked when the National Union of Miners' leader, Arthur Scargill, notoriously approached Colonel Gaddafi for money during the miners' strike of 1984 - that same Gaddafi whose fellow countrymen had just shot a young policewoman in London.

It is rare to live through an immensely important change, and recognise it

It was miserable to be in the power of such overmighty and overbearing unions, and strangely enough it was Arthur Scargill himself who, to an important degree, helped free us all from them. But until I read an intriguing just-published book (Marching to the Fault Line, by Francis Beckett and David Hencke, Constable £18.99) I had not quite appreciated what a debt of gratitude I owe to this alarming man.

It is rare, at least in this country, to live through an immensely important political change, and to recognise it at the time. That is what happened during the miners' strike of 1984. It was a great turning point, and many people were acutely aware of it.

More a civil war than an industrial dispute, this bitter conflict radically changed the balance of political power in this country, as it had from the first been intended to, both by Margaret Thatcher's government and by the coalminers' leaders.

The outcome was that trades unionism and the mighty power of the trades unions were all but destroyed. They are history. That was a tragedy for some, or a hugely welcome relief to others, but it is precisely what was at issue. "Who governs this country?", people used to ask. As it turned out, it was not, fortunately to be Arthur Scargill and the hard left of the union movement.

To see the dreaded King Arthur so shrivelled in this book by the harsh light of hindsight is sobering and fascinating. Back in 1984 he was a figure of enormous power. It is probably hard for those too young to remember that time to believe that revolutionary socialism and communism were ideas that some people still took seriously. The Communist party was still influential in the union movement - in fact during the 1984 strike the Soviet Union sent "Russian gold" to relieve the hardship among British miners' families.

Scargill and many other important union leaders believed passionately that the unions were a force for revolutionary change and that trades unionists had a duty to struggle for it permanently; the union movement could and should fight to bring about a socialist society, battle against the forces of privilege and reaction and bring down governments where necessary. Even the young John Prescott used to talk like that, on occasion.

This revolutionary socialist view was not shared by all Scargill's fellow citizens, or indeed by all his fellow unionists, and it was loathed and feared by many such as me, not to mention Margaret Thatcher. Many miners did not want to strike and tried to go on working: they became the victims of Scargill's highly organised flying pickets, bussed around the country in thousands to harass the so-called 'scabs' and the police brought in to protect them as they went to work.

It is hard to forget the scenes on television of armed and mounted police menacing unarmed protesters on foot, or the terrible suffering of the strikers' families. There was a lot of public sympathy, and contrary to what this book suggests, I remember a huge amount of sympathy in the media too - it is not right to say that the government had in the traditional manner managed to square both the middle classes and the press. In the BBC, where I was working at the time, it was socially embarrassing to say a word against the miners or their cause.

But it was important to notice, and it is important to remember, that the men on the picket lines were violent themselves, deliberately provoking trouble and attacking policemen at times. It's also important to remember that many miners were against

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>> ... the folly and the strangely blinkered obstinacy of Arthur Scargill. Proof of his almost pathological aversion to inconvenient fact is his remarkable failure, to this very day, to acknowledge that he lost the strike; he lives in isolation, estranged from almost all his friends and family, in a limbo of denial.

Posted by William Hogarth at 10:47am on March 9, 2009

Are we now witnessing a rerun of history? Who, today, is averse to inconvenient fact? Who, today, cannot accept responsibility for the disaster he created? Who, today, is heading for retirement with the loathing of the majority of the British people?

Posted by William Hogarth at 6:42pm on March 9, 2009

Yes, Scargill and the NUM lost the strike but everything that Scargill predicted would happen in consequence did happen. His tactics failed but the cause he fought for was worthwhile. The unfettered dominance of Thatcherist policies lead directly to the mess we are in now. The selfish people, the destroyed communities, the feral youth, and the ruined economy all follow from the defeat of the miners and the retreat from socialist principles that allowed after 1985.

Posted by Alan Dawes at 1:31pm on March 10, 2009

Alan Dawes, Thatcher's only failure during her time as PM was not to apply the same principles to the unions to that greater leviathan; the civil service. Her efforts here were exemplary but in the long run futile; public service expenditure merely faltered with her in power, and the individuals responsible for directing this money directed it in such a way as to cause as much damage to reforms that are still necessary today, but which are almost unthinkable for any politician to engage in today - cutting the civil service down to a manageable, efficient size. Now we see areas of the North where employment in public services make up nearly 70% of the local populace, taxation stands at over 50% and the abject failure that is this Labour government is now resorting to more profoundly totalitarian methods at keeping power - not to mention the wholesale handover of power to a foreign body, the EU. We are still reaping the whirlwind of socialist principles not dealt with effectively.

Posted by Thom at 9:05am on March 11, 2009

So glad an article like this has been wrote, On local news is being constantly bombarded with how Arthur was right etc, but truth be known he caused more pits to shut due to them becoming on fire and stopping safety people putting them out. Arthur wanted power, he wanted to pull the government down and lost, which everyone today pays the price with no union with any power anymore to protect workers. i felt sorry for the poor miners who were starving and were not allowed back to work by other miners, bet Arthur didnt have to go to the soup kitchens! Hope this side of the coin is shown on news soon

Posted by matthew morgan at 8:21pm on March 11, 2009

A debt of gratitude to Thatcher, really? The miners didn't choose the fight, nor did Scargill, it was Thatcher who set out to destroy them, and as a result low wages and instant dismissals are now the norm. Welcome to the brave new world, which now, after a century of trade union progress is back to the labour relations of the 19th century, and immigrants being imported at slave wages to undercut British workers. But that's not going to bother Marin and her comfortable middle class friends is it? The reviewer's statement 'members of the public like me, who truly feared and loathed the unions and their power at the time and longed for their defeat - not from a position of privilege or power, but for strong personal reasons' is revealing. The devastated mining communities that have never recovered and are now awash with drugs and despair must look on it somewhat differently to the privileged Marin and her well off friends. What blatant self interest. The book is likely to be rubbish too. Thatcher didn't just destroy communities with her hate-filled right wing war against the working class, she destroyed the concept of community and is more responsible than anyone for the state of our country today.

Posted by foolonthehill at 10:43am on March 12, 2009

What a load of subjective drivel: "when in the early 1970s I tried to get a job in London journalism, I found it impossible because the journalists' union operated a closed shop to keep people out, no matter how well qualified." The closed shop existed to keep out freeloaders who enjoyed benefits provided by union negotiations without being a member. Otherwise known as spongers. By the late 70's over half the working population e.g. 13 million were union members so over half of the public or their families were part of unions. The individualistic consumer rights oriented reviewer does not realise this obviously and saw these elected organisations as scary which is a bit pathetic really. This wonderful new book courtesy of outsider journos is riddled with research errors e.g. no such thing as Manver Colliery, photos from 1992 apparently being from 1984 etc. There will no doubt be more as I read on. The supposedly evil mob who harrased the rightly labelled scabs represented 70+% of the union and were obviously angry with a selfish minority who signed all their employment death warrants. How strange to the Chablois set that they should be violent. No they did not attack police except in retaliation or revenge. Men in t-shirts did not turn up to picket lines and attack armed and trained Police. I think watching from a distance is a term that describes the book and this irritating review.

Posted by Dennis at 11:03pm on March 14, 2009

From across the pond. let me say that your problem then is the same as ours now here in the USA.. not so much the power of Unionism.. but the power of the MEDIA.. in your case the BBC, to support any and all radical ideas and movements. Do you relaize that we now have, here in the USA, a bill that will KILL secret ballots in UNION elections?

Posted by ROBERT SCHWALBAUM at 6:18pm on March 16, 2009