1984 Strike: Big Sister is Watching!
By 1984 the reserves of coal were dwindling in Britain, so far underground that they were difficult and expensive to get at, and the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher was anyway looking at other means of producing electricity, including nuclear power. Only a tenth of the collieries working before the war were now in operation, and mechanisation, seen as essential in mining what coal was left to be mined, was putting men out of work. Wages dropped as a result, since supply exceeded demand in terms of labour.
A Cunning Plan: Ridley and the War against the Unions
One man who had no time for the unions, or the miners, was right-wing MP Nicholas Ridley, who drew up a report in 1977 in the aftermath of the strike of 1974 and its – for the Conservatives – catastrophic results, a plan which bore his name and which was aimed at essentially smashing the power of the unions more effectively even than striker-breakers smashed heads in the previous century when such action was threatened. His plan was almost a declaration of war upon the working man, and consisted of eight main points.
The government should if possible choose the field of battle.
Industries were grouped by the likelihood of winning a strike; the coal industry was in the 'middle' of three groups of industries mentioned.
Coal stocks should be built up at power stations.
Plans should be made to import coal from non-union foreign ports.
Non-union lorry drivers to be recruited by haulage companies.
Dual coal-oil firing generators to be installed, at extra cost.
Cut off the money supply to the strikers and make the union finance them'.
Train and equip a large, mobile squad of police, ready to employ riot tactics in order to uphold the law against violent picketing.
The language used here - “field of battle”, “uphold the law”, “Violent picketing” - show little concern for, or appreciation of the genuine grievances miners, and those in other nationalised industries had against their employers. They are draconian, concerned only with victory at any cost, contain no sense of compromise or mediation between the parties, and read like a challenge to the unions to do their worst, and a snub at the government (Heath's) which allowed itself to be bested by them. No wonder Thatcher loved it. And used it.
Although still around, Mick McGahey would have been too old at this point to have led the fight, but that didn't mean Thatcher would be unopposed. In fact, the Iron Lady met the Man of Coal, and each were pretty well matched in the long and violent struggle which was to come.
Arthur Scargill (1938 - )
One thing you can say about mining men is that they have coal in their blood, sometimes literally, but certainly figuratively. If a man was a miner, then it was a safe bet his father was, and his father too possibly. Arthur Scargill was no different, coming from a mining family that had lived in Yorkshire for generations. He first went “down pit” at the age of nineteen, and was so shocked at the conditions, and at the men who were working because they had no choice, but who should have been retired at their age, that he determined there and then to try to change things. Like McGahey, he got involved with the local communist party and rose through its ranks, also making waves in the NUM from an early age. He joined the Labour Party but became highly critical of the Wilson government's stance on nuclear energy, pointing out that
"I can honestly say that I never heard flannel like we got from the Minister... he said that we have nuclear power stations with us, whether we like it or not. I suggest to this Conference that we have coal mines with us... but they did something about this problem: they closed them down. This was a complete reversal of the policy... that was promised by the Labour Government before it was put into office... this represents a betrayal of the mining industry."
Then he led the unofficial strike of 1969 and was involved heavily in the 1972 strike, organising what became known as “flying pickets”, men who could be bussed to any location which required picketing but did not have enough workers to organise one, in order to have the place shut down, as he did most famously at the Battle of Saltley Gate. His reputation was boosted, and tensions were again heightened between the NCB and the miners, by the disaster at Lofthouse Collery, in which a poorly -researched mine shaft flooded and seven men lost their lives. Scargill spent six days on site, helping in the attempted rescue (which turned into a retrieval of bodies, only one of which was ever recovered) and vilified the NCB for not bothering to do proper checks which would have averted the disaster.
In 1981 Scargill became president of the NUM, having been elected president of the Yorkshire branch the previous year, and while he was popular with the workers and the public for the stance he took against Margaret Thatcher's repressive and uncaring attitude towards his members, he was not beloved by all. Seen as something of a tyrant by his office staff when they refused to relocate from London to Sheffield, he also lost some of his left-wing support when he refused to condemn the actions against Solidarity in Poland and the shooting down by Russia of a Korean Airlines jet. But his Waterloo was coming fast.
In March of 1983 Scargill commented, correctly as it turned out, that
"The policies of this government are clear – to destroy the coal industry and the NUM" He had no time for Thatcher's government, which concentrated on making the rich richer and sneered at the poor for being unable to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”, despite the fact that it's a little hard to do that when your boots have no straps. He was not impressed with the rise to head of the NCB of Ian McGregor, direly prophesying the death of the industry at the hands of this man, assisted willingly by Thatcher's Conservative government.
"Waiting in the wings, wishing to chop us to pieces, is Yankee steel butcher MacGregor. This 70-year-old multi-millionaire import, who massacred half the steel workforce in less than three years, is almost certainly brought in to wield the axe on pits. It's now or never for Britain's mineworkers. This is the final chance – while we still have the strength – to save our industry" He also had no issue comparing the Tories to Nazis:
"My attitude would be the same as the attitude of the working class in Germany when the Nazis came to power. It does not mean that because at some stage you elect a government that you tolerate its existence. You oppose it".
Seems to have escaped his notice that this was a terrible analogy, as the amount of organised resistance against the Nazis in Germany was negligible: you either approved or you kept your head down and said nothing. Not so sure what he was trying to say here, but his message, for me, was lost in a totally inaccurate and frankly ludicrous comparison.
Sir Ian McGregor (1912 – 1998)
Born in Scotland, McGregor came from a line of industrialists and strike-breakers. His brothers had helped defeat the 1926 General Strike by running trams in defiance of the pickets, and he himself faced down the unions when he went to work at William Beardmore & Co. Forge, driving cranes himself when the operators went on strike. During the war he was moved to America, and remained there for over thirty years, his confrontational policies landing him on the wrong side of the Mafia and earning him the enmity of unions and workingmen. In 1977 he was brought back to Britain to manage British Leyland, where he dismissed the miitant communist trade union leader, and then British Steel, which he turned around from a loss-making to a profitable business in a matter of years.
Of course, as is usually the way, profits and sustainability were gained at the expense of layoffs, redunancies and wage cuts, and McGregor gained a reputation as a man who cared little about the ordinary folk as long as the shareholders were happy. A real Thatcherite, in other words. The Iron Bitch, sorry Lady (no I was right the first time) certainly knew what she was doing when she appointed him to the head of the board of the NCB in 1983, Arthur Scargill's reaction above telling you all you need to know about how the NUM felt about that. McGregor had about as much respect for miners as he had had for crane drivers or steel workers, comparing them disparagingly with women miners from the nineteenth century. This constant sniping, accusing and baiting, on both sides, played right into the hands of the Prime Minister.