Marching to the Fault Line

by David Hencke

To complete the Prime Minister’s satisfaction, her political opponents were in complete disarray. The strike had rendered the Opposition entirely ineffective, by reopening all the divisions in the Labour Party. The Tony Benn circle took the Scargill line that if only Labour Party and TUC chiefs had supported the miners, they would have been victorious. Neil Kinnock, having struggled since he became leader in 1983 to unify his party around a set of policies on which it stood a chance of being elected to government, found himself further from his objective than he had ever been.

  Kinnock topped the Scargill demonology, the blacklist of traitors to the miners’ cause. So he was surprised and very touched when, a few weeks after the strike, he had an invitation from Mick McGahey to speak at the Scottish miners’ gala in Edinburgh. He knew McGahey would be furiously condemned by the NUM President for issuing it. For Kinnock, it was an invitation he could not refuse: ‘If it had been my daughter’s wedding I’d have had to go to that meeting.’

  So he went, and over a quiet drink in his hotel bar afterwards McGahey confided that he had been effectively marginalized during the strike. Real control, he said, rested with Scargill and a few of Scargill’s personal staff. (He meant, presumably, Nell Myers, Roger Windsor and Maurice Jones.) He was especially critical of Scargill’s handling of money matters. He could not have said so publicly, he told Kinnock, because it would have made no difference to the result; it would simply have enabled his President to escape the blame, and to say his tactics would have been successful without McGahey’s betrayal.

  His President, meanwhile, was buying a fine new house. It might perhaps have eased the nagging pain of a defeat he has never acknowledged, but it probably did not, for that purchase, like so much else that looked hopeful for him, brought him grief. Seven months after the strike ended, he bought Treelands, a large detached house on the border of Worsborough. He paid for it with money loaned to him by the International Miners’ Organization, of which he was President and his close friend Alain Simon was General Secretary. The purchase was in the name of his son-in-law, who transferred it to Scargill the following year, apparently to avoid publicity; Scargill felt, no doubt rightly, that miners who were close to the breadline might resent it.

  Repayments were made to the IMO, apparently in cash. When Gavin Lightman QC was conducting his enquiry into NUM affairs, he was not able to find proof that they were made at all, though he thought they probably had been. ‘That this doubt exists’, wrote Lightman, ‘is part of the price Mr Scargill must pay for borrowing money in cash from a trust fund and generally conducting his affairs and the affairs of the NUM and the IMO in the unbusinesslike manner in which they have been conducted.’ Lightman applied the same criticisms to Heathfield’s loans from the IMO for home improvements.

  The next year, 1986, Scargill at last took up the seat on the TUC General Council which had always belonged to the NUM President until Scargill’s day. When he was first elected, he spurned it as one of the trappings of office, taking him to a place where he might be contaminated by the compromising habits of the TUC. Now he was glad enough to have it, but it did not last. He stayed on the General Council for only two years, because the NUM declined so cat-astrophically that after that its numbers no longer entitled it to an automatic seat.

  In January 1986 Margaret Thatcher suffered her first major cabinet crisis. Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine backed a European consortium’s rescue package for a company called Westland Helicopters, while the Prime Minister favoured an alternative deal proposed by the American Sikorski Fiat group. Heseltine, finding himself isolated and ignored in the Cabinet over a matter concerning his own department, dramatically walked out. Thatcher was attacked for allowing the US Air Force to use British bases to launch bombing raids on Libya.

  Later that year came the worst nuclear accident ever, at the Chernobyl nuclear power station near Kiev: a devastating blow for those who had argued against coal on the grounds that nuclear energy was clean and safe. The case for nuclear against coal had yet to be made.

  Ian MacGregor did not get his wish to stay at the NCB, now renamed British Coal. MacGregor, in ways that neither man would ever acknowledge, was rather like Scargill. Scargill left, in John Monks’ words, no space for those on the other side of the table to operate in; neither did MacGregor. Just as Scargill was convinced that his way was the herald of a better world, MacGregor was an early exponent of the view, so common among businessmen of the 1980s, that management must be free to do whatever it liked, business people were the saviours of humanity, and market forces were the only way forward for a civilized society. For him, as for Scargill, his beliefs were absolute, and the smallest deviation was betrayal. He enjoyed boasting about taking the miners’ leaders to the Ritz Hotel. He would not have understood anyone who questioned the moral worth of material success.

  Like Scargill, he was arrogant, fond of calling himself‘Big Mac’. But unlike Scargill, he was a big-picture man, uninterested in detail, which is why ministers were forced to hotfoot it to his flat towards the end of the strike to stop him signing a document presented to him by the wily and underestimated Norman Willis, which, though MacGregor had failed to notice the fact, gave much more ground to the NUM than the union’s parlous negotiating position justified.

  MacGregor, unlike Scargill, was saved from his own incompetence during the strike by good staff work and the support of ministers who were much brighter than he was. By the end of the strike, those ministers had seen through him. He felt insulted that in 1986 the government drew his contract to an end. David Hunt was instructed to seek out Robert Haslam and persuade him to take the job of running British Coal. Walker thought this emollient man would get on better with the miners once the strike was finished. MacGregor was touted for several jobs, including head of the National Health Service, but nothing came of any of it. Knighted in 1986, he devoted his energies to chairing Religion in American Life, famous for its slogan ‘the family that prays together, stays together’. He died on 13 April 1998, aged eighty-six.

  One of Haslam’s first communications was a request from Arthur Scargill for a one-to-one meeting. Haslam agreed with some misgivings, wondering what it was about; he feared the NUM President might be going to try a dramatic initiative about one of the many problems in the industry. He was wrong. Scargill simply wanted to tell him that he was having some difficulty selling his old house in Barnsley in order to move into Treelands. Might British Coal be interested in buying it? No, they wouldn’t, said the astonished Haslam, and the meeting came to an end.4

  MacGregor had, however, played a crucial part in destroying what was left of the NUM’s power and influence. It was under him that the NCB became a willing, secret partner to help create a breakaway union in Nottinghamshire and other moderate areas. Files now held at the National Archives show how MacGregor and other top officials aided and guided the new organization.

  Backing MacGregor was the helpful and detailed legal advice from lawyers in Fountain Court, where the role of a young, ambitious barrister became crucial to the enterprise. Working alongside Conrad Dehn throughout the strike and its aftermath was Charlie Falconer, former flatmate and close friend of PM-to-be Tony Blair, later to become Lord Chancellor under Blair’s patronage. The brief for the UDM was Igor Judge, now Lord Judge, the Lord Chief justice

  Falconer’s advice – given either jointly with Dehn or sometimes solely to the NCB’s legal department - played a crucial role in the creation of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM), which was to become a running sore to the NUM for the rest of the century, until most of the membership of both organizations was snuffed out in the 1990s by a further wave of closures. For Falconer the work was particularly lucrative as he went on to advise the privatized British Coal before joining the Blair government in 1997.

  The story of the UDM began with the threat of expulsion for the Nottinghamshire area of the NUM after it refused to adopt new rules in January 1985 when miners were still on strike. The new rules were designed to gi
ve greater authority to the President and National Executive. On 10 January 1985 an executive meeting of the NUM decided to call a special conference for 29 January to expel Nottinghamshire from 1 February.

  The opportunity to create weakness and division was not lost on the NCB. Four days later Ned Smith prepared a secret memo5 to Jim Cowan, the NCB Deputy Chairman, outlining what the NCB should do in the event of a request for recognition from a new breakaway union in Notts. He told Cowan that the NCB legal department had already stated that it might be legally advisable to grant recognition to the new union – and, of course, it would help greatly in the main task of weakening the NUM. Recognizing the UDM might be in breach of national agreements with the NUM, but the agreements would not be legally enforceable by the NUM.

  The new organization, Smith wrote, was expected to represent North and South Nottinghamshire and Bolsover but could extend to South Derbyshire and Leicestershire. His report recommended limited recognition in Nottinghamshire. However, he warned that no official announcement should be made before 29 January, when the NUM conference took its decision on Nottinghamshire, so that the NCB should not be seen to be interfering in union affairs. He did, however, toy with the idea of discreetly making the Board’s intention known to moderate delegates in advance, in the hope of encouraging them to defy the NUM. He wanted to make it clear to the Nottinghamshire moderates that recognition was a technical possibility.

  The NUM did not expel the Nottinghamshire miners in January, but expulsion was still likely when, on 18 March, Roy Lynk, leader of the dissident Nottinghamshire miners, officially representing NUM Nottinghamshire and calling himself Acting General Secretary, met the directors of North and South Nottinghamshire NCB to ask for the NCB to implement its promised 5.2 per cent wage rise in return for a lifting of the overtime ban.

  None of this had been agreed by the NUM executive, and for Lynk to go to the employers with a deal was a massive breach of union discipline, of the sort that would have been unthinkable a few months earlier. Lynk compounded his sin by asking the NCB for help to stop intimidation of working miners by returning strikers; he also wanted the NCB to curtail weekend working so that moderate members could attend NUM branch meetings in Notts, and vote against continuing the strike.

  The NCB legal department privately suggested that only by breaking away from the NUM could Nottinghamshire secure the 5.2 per cent rise officially, though payments might be made on account.6

  On 8 July, with the strike well over and the NCB in vindictive mood, Roy Lynk formally applied to the Nottingham Coal Board to have negotiating rights, having severed Nottinghamshire’s connection with the NUM nationally on 6 July. By then the NUM executive had voted narrowly to fire Lynk.

  NACODS asked the Coal Board to delay, and the NUM General Secretary, Peter Heathfield, objected in the strongest terms to Lynk being given what he asked for. Lynk received advice from Hopkins, his Mansfield solicitors, that the NUM could not undermine him by forcing entire local Nottinghamshire branches to rejoin en bloc. His solicitors described any decision by the NUM to force branches to rejoin en bloc as ‘rather like the Government of Taiwan passing laws which are said to affect the whole of China, but which are in fact only valid in Taiwan.’

  But the NUM decided against using such tactics. Instead it took the breakaway group to the courts. An in camera hearing was held on 10 July in London, and effectively the NUM won. Roy Lynk had not balloted his own members properly to change the rules and privately admitted he had been ‘precipitate’ in breaking away from the NUM. A private note from the NCB lawyer to MacGregor warned: ‘In reality, [the judgement] does mean that the question of whether Notts have yet broken away is very much in doubt and also, probably sub judice.’

  The court case left the NCB in a mess. It could not do as it wished and start negotiations with the breakaway union. A memo of a meeting held by the Board’s legal department and its legal advisers, Dehn and Falconer, shows that, on the same day as the court hearing, action to recognize the breakaway miners was secretly being prepared. But the Board did not dare to be seen to do it. The memo concluded: ‘Counsel both stressed that it was absolutely fundamental that the Lynk Union was not seen as a Board creation. They considered that the ultimate risk was an action by the National Union against the Board. That being so, it was even more imperative that, if there was any doubt as to whether the Nottingham Union was still part of the National Union, the board should not be seen to be negotiating with it at the moment.’

  But the NCB was not going to give up. What happened next was that the NCB drew up a plan to create a legal entity for the future UDM in secret, while pretending to have no official contact with it. The secret instructions prepared by Dehn and Falconer included advice on what consultations the board could have with NUM (Notts) before the creation of a separate organization, and whether the breakaway group should merge with another union like the small Colliery Trades and Allied Workers Association (CTAWA) or become an independent organization.

  Their advice was that the board should write to Lynk to clarify the situation; and that it should avoid formal consultations at that stage, because these consultations could become public, and ‘would give the impression . . . that the Board was either actually advising Mr Lynk, or the Executive Committee was planning a joint strategy with them’ – which is, of course, what was going on, but they did not want the public to know about it. However, there was no harm in having informal talks with Lynk, with the aim of setting up formal consultations once Lynk’s organization had seceded from the NUM and become a separate body. That would save time later, because informal talks can cover exactly the same ground as formal talks. Dehn and Falconer suggested ‘an off the record informal discussion on a counsel-to-counsel basis with counsel instructed by the board’. They added: ‘The surest and most effective course to pursue for those members of the union who are dissatisfied with the NUM, would be to resign from the NUM and form a new trade union, which, if its membership was sufficient, the Board could proceed to consult.’

  On 22 July a secret memo from Marilyn Stanley of the NCB’s legal department to MacGregor7 shows that Dehn and Falconer were helping to draft the exact words of a letter to Lynk. Mrs Stanley, who had been brought in by MacGregor to take charge of the legal department’s handling of the dispute, noted: ‘I advised Counsel [Dehn and Falconer] that Mr Lynk was anxious not to receive a letter from the Board which appeared to cast doubt on what he was doing. Counsel have revised the draft letter to take some account of this . . .’

  On 29 July Dehn and Falconer explained how to secede from the NUM with the greatest safety. They warned that if the Notts NUM was to amalgamate with anybody else without first changing its rules, the NUM had a good chance of winning a High Court action against them. But if they changed their rules before amalgamation, ‘the Notts union would probably be able to fight off successfully any challenge to the validity of such an amalgamation’. The NCB helpfully showed this advice to the leaders of the Notts NUM. So the breakaway organization, which theoretically had nothing at all to do with the NCB, was secretly privy to the Board’s confidential legal advice.

  Meanwhile the NUM failed to capitalize on its victory. On 7 August it lost a court case to the Notts NUM when Mr Justice Tudor-Price declined to restore the old NUM leadership in Nottinghamshire. A month later the rebel leaders, with secret legal help from the NCB, put their plan into action. On 16 September Lynk sought negotiating rights in the next pay round, due to start on 15 October, to get representation for Notts members.

  The next day Falconer advised getting a resolution before the Board by 4 October, in advance of any decision by Notts, to enable them to negotiate with any new unions that could be set up. Between then and 2 October there was enormous activity at the NCB, preparing draft letters to go to Lynk, a draft press statement and a letter to be sent to other unions recognizing the new union for wage talks. It included lengthy advice from Dehn and Falconer8 on how to justify negotiations with the breakawa
y union, including asking Lynk to write a letter requesting one-off negotiations. The advice also raised the question whether Notts could be given favourable treatment during negotiations to encourage the union through incentive schemes. It concluded that the Board must be very careful not to refer to the legal relationship between Notts and the NCB in any statement. The line should be that the Board is taking this step for‘urgent practical reasons’.

  If the NUM had known all this, they could have derailed the proceedings, because Falconer and Dehn knew they were finding a way to get round the rules in order to start negotiations with the UDM before a proper legal ballot was held. If Scargill or Heathfield had used a loyalist NUM member to bring a case against the NCB they could have won. But MacGregor was willing to take that risk. On 3 October he took the momentous decision to recognize the breakaway Notts area NUM – what was to become the UDM – in pay negotiations due to begin on 15 October.9

  He was typically forthright in his internal letter to Kevan Hunt: ‘For avoidance of doubt, I hereby authorize you to conduct with Mr Wheeler on behalf of the Board the wage round for the coming year for the Notts Area in the terms of his proposed letter to Mr Lynk should the board, having considered any reply received from the National Union, wish to commence negotiations.’

  The letter from Wheeler to Lynk, sent the same day, contained all the key advice from both internal and outside lawyers. The key phrase read: ‘In the light of this current position, the Board are minded to commence negotiations in the current wage round with the present leadership of the Notts area separately from the National Union and I would like to make it clear that there is no question of any Notts miner ending up as a result with terms less favourable than those that may be agreed with the National Union.

  ‘The decision is without prejudice to the present conciliation machinery and to what is to happen when your Union has completed its formal separation from the National Union or amalgamated with other groups. I am not expressing any view on the legal issues involved.’10