The Downing Street Years (60 page)

The Government’s relationship with the police and the courts was an even more sensitive issue during the strike. Britain had no national police force: the police were organized into fifty-two local forces, each headed by a Chief Constable who had operational control. Authority was divided between the Home Secretary, local police authorities (made up of local councillors and magistrates) and Chief Constables. Inevitably during the miners’ strike this tripartite system of policing was put under considerable strain: challenges to the rule of law posed by violence on the scale that took place during this strike clearly needed to be dealt with, swiftly and efficiently, at national level. Accordingly, the National Reporting Centre (NRC) — originally set up in 1972 — was activated in Scotland Yard, allowing the police to pool intelligence and to co-ordinate assistance from one force to another under the ‘mutual aid’ provisions of the 1964 Police Act. However, the tripartite system survived a good deal better than the Labour Party’s hysterical denunciations might have suggested. Problems did
arise in financing the extra police costs under this system, but these were resolved by steadily taking more and more of the burden on to the Exchequer.

Mob violence can only be defeated if the police have the complete moral and practical support of government. We made it clear that the politicians would not let them down. We had already given them the equipment and the training they would need, learning the lessons of the 1981 inner-city riots. More recently the police had shown themselves skilled in tackling violence masquerading as picketing when pickets from the National Graphical Association (NGA) had tried to close down Eddie Shah’s newspaper in Warrington in November 1983. On that occasion the police had made it clear that force of numbers would not be allowed to prevent people from going to work if they wished to do so. They had also for the first time made effective use of powers to prevent a breach of the peace by turning back pickets before they arrived at their destination.

Another prerequisite of effective policing is that the law should be clear. Early in the strike Michael Havers made a lucid statement in a written answer to the Commons, setting out the scope of police powers to deal with mass picketing, including the power (mentioned above) to turn back pickets on their way to the picket line when there are reasonable grounds to expect a breach of the peace. These common law powers long predated our trade union legislation, and were matters of criminal rather that civil law. In the second week of the strike the Kent NUM challenged those powers in court, but they lost the case. The prevention of large numbers of pickets assembling to intimidate those who wished to work would be vital to the outcome of the dispute.

The relationship between government and the courts was, if anything, more sensitive still. It is right that people should have been vigilant on this question. The independence of the judiciary is a matter of constitutional principle, though the administration of the courts falls properly within the sphere of government responsibilities. As the incidents of violence accumulated it became a real concern to us that so few of those charged had been brought to court and convicted. It is vital if the rule of law is to prevail that criminal actions as visible as those during the strike be punished quickly: people need to see that the law is working. A backlog of cases built up, stemming partly from the delaying tactics of offenders and their solicitors, partly from the obstruction of some magistrates in areas where there was sympathy with the strikers’ cause. The sheer number of cases also imposed a sudden strain on the system. In time we made available more buildings and professional stipendiary magistrates and the backlog began to be
cleared. Stipendiary magistrates get through many more cases than their lay counterparts, but the Lord Chancellor could only respond to requests for help and had no power to make appointments unasked. Another problem was that policemen trying to defend themselves against hails of missiles and other assaults have little time to assemble detailed evidence. Cases were difficult to sustain. In the end all too many of the men of violence went unpunished.

By the last week of March the situation was fairly clear. The strike was unlikely to be over quickly. At the majority of pits Mr Scargill and his colleagues had a tight grip, which it would not be easy to break. But in our planning over the previous two years we had not allowed ourselves to assume that any coal would be mined during a strike, whereas in fact a substantial section of the industry was still working. If we could move this coal to the power stations then the prospects for endurance would be transformed. This calculation had an enormous impact on our strategy. We had to act so that at any one time we did not unite against us all the unions involved in the use and distribution of coal. This consideration meant that we all had to be very careful when and where the civil law was used and the NCB suspended — though it did not withdraw — its civil action.

Although Mr Scargill had been very anxious to avoid a ballot before the strike began, it was clear to us that he wanted to keep the possibility open. Indeed the following month an NUM Special Delegate Conference voted to reduce the majority required for a strike from 55 per cent to 50 per cent. Also at the beginning of the strike we had hopes that moderates on the NUM executive might succeed in forcing a ballot. This made it even more important to keep the balance of opinion among miners favourable to our cause because it seemed that much of the opposition to the strike came from miners angry not to have been allowed to vote. Would a ballot held during a strike, with emotions raised, produce a majority for or against Mr Scargill? I was not entirely sure.

The NUM leadership was desperate to prevent the movement of coal by rail, by road or by sea. Although at times during the dispute there were problems in the docks and they had some limited success in slowing rail traffic, the lorry drivers refused to be intimidated by the dockers or anyone else. Increasingly, and to a degree that we had not anticipated, road haulage firms were able to keep coal moving to the power stations and other main industrial customers. The steel workers had endured their own long and damaging strike and they were not keen to see plant destroyed and jobs lost in their own industry simply in order to demonstrate sympathy with the NUM — a union
which had earlier shown remarkably little sympathy towards them. However, it was the power workers whose attitude was most crucial. If they struck, or acted in sympathy with the miners to prevent us moving to maximum oilburn, we would have had great difficulties. But their attitude was simply that they were not a party to the strike and that their job was to see that the people of Britain had light and power. Nor were their leaders prepared to be browbeaten by other trade union bosses into doing what they regarded as fundamentally wrong.

Everything turned on maximizing endurance. I received weekly reports from the Department of Energy setting out the position and I read them very carefully indeed. Early in the strike the power stations were consuming coal at the rate of about 1.7 million tons a week, though the net reduction in stocks was smaller because some deliveries were getting through. The CEGB estimated endurance at about six months but this assumed a build-up to maximum oilburn — that is, using oil-fired stations at full capacity — which had not yet begun. We had to judge when this should be set in train because it would certainly be described as provocative by the NUM leadership. We held off while there seemed a prospect that NUM moderates might force a ballot. However, I decided on Monday 26 March that this nettle must now be grasped.

Industrial stocks were, of course, much lower than those at the power stations: the cement industry was particularly vulnerable and important. But it was BSC whose problems were most immediate. Their integrated steel plants at Redcar and Scunthorpe would have to close in the next fortnight if supplies of coke and coal were not delivered and unloaded. Port Talbot, Ravenscraig and Llanwern had stocks sufficient for no more than three to five weeks. Not surprisingly, BSC was extremely concerned as the position changed from day to day.

This was the state of uncertainty as we ended the first month of the strike. Perhaps the only thing one could be sure of was Mr Scargill’s intentions. He wrote in the
Morning Star
on 28 March that ‘the NUM is engaged in a social and industrial Battle of Britain … what is urgently needed is the rapid and total mobilization of the Trade Union and Labour movement.’ It was still unclear whether he would get it.

The stalemate continued during April. There still seemed the possibility of a ballot for a national strike whose result no one could guess. In spite of continuing heavy picketing, there were some signs of a drift back to work, particularly in Lancashire — though it was only a drift. The leaders of the rail unions and the seamen promised to support
the miners in their struggle: there were many declarations of this kind during the strike, but their members were less enthusiastic. The first court cases against the NUM began: two coke hauliers began legal action against the South Wales NUM picketing of Port Talbot steelworks.

From early in the dispute we were worried that the NCB was failing to put across its case, both to its own employees and to the general public. This was not something that government could do for them, though later (as will be seen) we pressed them to improve their presentation. But on the question of upholding the law it was our role to speak, and we did so vigorously. When I was interviewed on
Panorama
by Sir Robin Day on Monday 9 April I strongly defended the police handling of the dispute:

A few days later, the police were on a different front line. On 17 April WPC Yvonne Fletcher was killed by machine-gun fire from the Libyan Embassy in St James’s Square while policing a peaceful demonstration. The whole country was shocked. In spite of which, Mr Scargill was to open contacts with Libyan officials, and an NUM official even met Colonel Gaddafi in the hope of raising money to continue the strike. It was as if there was a preternatural alliance between these different forces of disorder.

In May there were brief but revealing contacts between the NCB and the NUM leadership — the first since the strike began. The talks took place on Wednesday 23 May; I had a full report the next day. Mr Scargill would allow no one to speak for the NUM side but himself: the other members of his executive had clearly been told to keep quiet. The NCB had given two presentations, one on the marketing prospects of the coal industry and another on the physical condition of the pits, some of which were now in danger of becoming unworkable because of the strike. At the end of each presentation the NUM representatives
declined to comment or to ask questions. Mr Scargill then made a prepared statement. He insisted that there could be no discussion of pit closures on grounds other than exhaustion — certainly no question of closing pits on economic grounds. Ian MacGregor made some brief remarks to the effect that he saw no purpose in continuing the meeting in the light of this, but nevertheless he suggested further talks between two senior members of the NCB and two senior representatives of the NUM. Mr Scargill again insisted that the withdrawal of all closure plans was a precondition for any talks. There the meeting ended. But at that point the NUM sprung a trap. They asked to be allowed to stay in the room in which the meeting had just taken place for a discussion among themselves. Ian MacGregor saw this as a perfectly innocent request and readily agreed. The NCB representatives left the room. But later we discovered that the NUM had managed to persuade the press that this was a ‘walkout’ by the NCB. Many people seized on the episode as evidence that Ian MacGregor was unwilling to talk. It was a classic example of the dangers of negotiating with people like Mr Scargill.

Week by week the strike grew more bitter. There was evidence that many miners were losing their early enthusiasm for it and questioning Mr Scargill’s forecasts of limited power station endurance. The NUM leadership responded by increasing the allowances they paid to pickets — they paid nothing at all to strikers who did not turn out to picket — recruiting non-miners to the task. There was a general escalation of the level of violence. Their tactic evidently was to achieve maximum surprise by concentrating large numbers of pickets at a particular pit at the shortest possible notice. Perhaps the most shocking scenes of violence were those which took place outside Orgreave Coke Works in an attempt to prevent coke convoys reaching the Scunthorpe steelworks. On Tuesday 29 May over 5,000 pickets engaged in violent clashes with the police. The police were pelted with all kinds of missiles, including bricks and darts, and sixty-nine people were injured. Thank goodness they at least had proper protective riot gear, I thought, as, like so many millions of others, I watched the terrible scenes on television.

Speaking in Banbury the next day I said:

Over the next three weeks there were further violent clashes at Orgreave, but the pickets never succeeded in halting the road convoys. The battles at Orgreave had an enormous impact and did a great deal to turn public opinion against the miners.