The return to work continued. But so did the violence. Violence and intimidation well away from the pit heads were more difficult for the police to prevent and required fewer people to perpetrate: consequently it was on such tactics that the militant miners now concentrated. One incident that particularly struck me took place on Friday 23 November when Michael Fletcher, a working miner from Pontefract in Yorkshire, was attacked and beaten by a gang of miners in his own home. No fewer than nineteen men were arrested for the crime. Then a week later came one of the most appalling events of the strike: a three-foot concrete post was thrown from a motorway bridge onto a taxi carrying a South Wales miner to work. The driver, David Wilkie, was killed. I wondered whether there was any limit to the savagery of which these people were capable.
As the year ended, our main objective was to encourage a further return to work from 7 January, the first working Monday in the New Year. Though the NCB’s bonus offer had expired, there was still a strong financial incentive for strikers to return to work in the near future because they would pay little, if any, income tax on their wages if they went back before the end of the tax year on 31 March. The great strategic prize would be to get more than 50 per cent of NUM members back to work: if we could secure that, it would be equivalent in practical and presentational terms to a vote in a national ballot to end the strike. This would require the return of a further 15,000 to work, which the NCB were busily preparing a new campaign of letters and press advertising to achieve.
It was also vital that the miners and the public at large should be told that there would be no power cuts that winter, contrary to Mr Scargill’s ever more desperate and incredible predictions. We held off making such an announcement until we could be absolutely certain, but finally on 29 December Peter Walker was able to issue a statement saying that he had been informed by the Chairman of the CEGB that at the level of coal production that had now been achieved there would be no power cuts during the whole of 1985.
By the middle of January there were almost 75,000 NUM members not on strike and the rate of return was running at about 2,500 a week.
The one thing which could be relied upon to slow down the progress was further negotiations: and so it proved. When news broke of ‘talks about talks’, which were arranged between the NCB and the NUM on Monday 21 January, the effect was to cut the rate of return to rather less than half that of the previous week.
Meanwhile, public attention increasingly focused on the attempts of the sequestrators to trace and recover NUM funds which had been transferred abroad. In early December further legal action by working miners had led to the removal of the NUM’s trustees and the appointment of an official receiver. These were, of course, principally questions for the courts. However, even with the full armoury of the law, there were such difficulties in tracing the funds that the sequestrators might not even have been able to cover their costs. Accordingly, Michael Havers told the Commons on Tuesday 11 December that the Government would indemnify them against the loss. We were also involved in trying to ensure maximum co-operation from foreign governments – Ireland and Luxemburg – in whose jurisdictions the NUM had lodged its money. Towards the end of January some £5 million was recovered.
The TUC leaders were anxious to save the militants from humiliating defeat. But Mr Scargill had no intention of budging: he had already stated publicly that he would prefer a return to work without an agreement to acceptance of the NCB’s proposals. For its part, the NCB had told the TUC that there was no basis for negotiation on the terms still demanded by the NUM. I recognized that, although their motives were decidedly mixed, the TUC leaders and particularly the General Secretary had been acting in good faith. They must have realized by now that there was no possibility of doing business with Mr Scargill. Consequently, when a delegation from the TUC asked to see me, I agreed.
I met Norman Willis and other union leaders at No. 10 on the morning of Tuesday 19 February. Willie Whitelaw, Peter Walker and Tom King joined me on the Government side. The meeting was good-natured. Norman Willis put as fair a construction on the NUM’s negotiating stance as anyone could. In reply I said that I appreciated the TUC’s efforts. I too wanted to see the strike settled as soon as possible. But this required a clear resolution of the central issues of the dispute. It was in no one’s interest to end the strike with an unclear formula: arguments about interpretation and accusations of bad faith could provide the basis for another dispute. I gave an assurance that the NACODS agreement would be fully honoured and that I saw no difficulties about implementing it. An effective settlement of the dispute required clear understandings about procedures for closure, acknowledgement of the NCB’s right to manage and to make the final decisions, and an acknowledgement that the Board would take the economic performance of pits into account when those decisions were made.
It was now evident to the miners and to the public that the TUC were neither willing nor able to stop events taking their course. Large numbers of miners were going back to work and the rate of return was increasing. On Wednesday 27 February the magic figure was reached: more than half the members of the NUM were now not on strike. On Sunday 3 March an NUM Delegates’ Conference voted for a return to work, against Mr Scargill’s advice, and over the next few days even the most militant areas returned. That Sunday I gave an interview to reporters outside No. 10. I was asked who if anyone had won. I replied:
If anyone has won, it has been the miners who stayed at work, the dockers who stayed at work, the power workers who stayed at work, the lorry drivers who stayed at work, the railwaymen who stayed at work, the managers who stayed at work. In other words, all of those people who kept the wheels of Britain turning and who, in spite of a strike, actually produced a record output in Britain last year. It is the whole working people of Britain who kept Britain going.
And so the strike ended. It had lasted almost exactly a year. Even now we could not be sure that the militants would not find some new excuse to call a strike the following winter. So we took steps to rebuild coal and oil stocks and continued to watch events in the coal industry with the closest attention. I was particularly concerned about the dangers faced by the working miners and their families now that the spotlight had moved away from the pit head villages. In May I met Ian MacGregor to emphasize how vital it was that they should receive the necessary consideration and support.
The strike certainly established the truth that the British coal industry could not remain immune to the economic forces which applied elsewhere in both the public and private sectors. In spite of heavy investment, British coal has proved unable to compete on world markets and as a result the British coal industry has now shrunk far more than any of us thought it would at the time of the strike.
Yet the coal strike was always about far more than uneconomic pits. It was a political strike. And so its outcome had a significance far beyond the economic sphere. From 1972 to 1985 the conventional wisdom was that Britain could only be governed with the consent of the trade unions. Even as we were reforming trade union law and overcoming lesser disputes, such as the steel strike, many on the left and outside it continued to believe that the miners had the ultimate veto and would one day use it. That day had now come and gone. Our determination to resist a strike emboldened the ordinary trade unionist to defy the militants. What the strike’s defeat established was that Britain could not be made ungovernable by the Fascist Left. Marxists wanted to defy the law of the land in order to defy the laws of economics. They failed, and in doing so demonstrated just how mutually dependent the free economy and a free society really are. It is a lesson no one should forget.
* In fact, I have since seen documentary evidence suggesting that he knew full well and was among those who authorized payment.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Shadows of Gunmen
The political and security response to IRA terrorism 1979–1990
AS USUAL, BY THE END OF THE WEEK of our 1984 Party Conference in Brighton I was becoming fra
ntic about my speech. A good Conference speech cannot just be written in advance: you need to get the feel of the Conference in order to achieve the right tone. I spent as much time as I could working on the text with my speech writers on Thursday afternoon and evening, rushed away to look in at the Conservative Agents’ Ball and returned to my suite at the Grand Hotel just after 11 o’clock.
By about 2.40 a.m. the speech – at least from my point of view – was finished. So while the speech writers themselves went to bed, my long-suffering staff typed in what I was (fairly) confident would be the final changes to the text and prepared the Autocue tape. Meanwhile, I got on with some government business.
At 2.54 a.m. a loud thud shook the room. There was a few seconds’ silence and then there was a second slightly different noise, in fact created by falling masonry. I knew immediately that it was a bomb – but at this stage I did not know that the explosion had taken place inside the hotel. Glass from the windows of my sitting room was strewn across the carpet. But I thought that it might be a car bomb outside. (I only realized that the bomb had exploded above us when Penny, John Gummer’s wife, appeared a little later from upstairs, still in her night clothes.) The adjoining bathroom was more severely damaged, though the worst I would have suffered had I been in there were minor cuts. Those who had sought to kill me had placed the bomb in the wrong place.
Apart from the broken glass and a ringing fire alarm, set off by the explosion, there was a strange and, as it turned out, deceptive normality. The lights, thankfully, remained on: the importance of this played on my mind for some time and for months afterwards I always kept a torch by my bed when I was staying the night in a strange house. Denis put his head round the bedroom door, saw that I was all right and went back inside to dress. For some reason neither of us quite understands he took a spare pair of shoes with him, subsequently worn by Charles Price, the American Ambassador, who had lost his in the confusion of leaving the hotel. While Crawfie gathered together my vanity case, blouses and two suits – one for the next day – Robin Butler came in to take charge of the government papers. I went across the landing to the secretaries’ room to see if my staff were all right. One of the girls had received a nasty electric shock from the photocopier. But otherwise all was well. They were as concerned about my still only partly typed-up speech as they were for themselves. ‘It’s all right,’ they assured me, ‘we’ve got the speech.’
By now more and more people were appearing in the secretaries’ room with me – the Gummers, the Howes, David Wolfson, Michael Alison and others, unkempt, anxious but quite calm. While we talked, my detectives had been checking out as best they could our immediate security. There is always a fear of a second device, carefully timed to catch and kill those fleeing from the first explosion. It was also necessary for them to find a way out of the hotel which was both unblocked and safe.
At 3.10 a.m., in groups, we began to leave. It turned out that the first route suggested was impassable and we were turned back. So we went back and waited in the office. Later we were told that it was safe to leave and we went down by the main staircase. It was now that I first saw from the rubble in the entrance and foyer something of the seriousness of the blast. I hoped that the porter had not been injured. The air was full of thick cement dust: it was in my mouth and covered my clothes as I clambered over discarded belongings and broken furniture towards the back entrance of the hotel. It still never occurred to me that anyone would have died.
Ten minutes later Denis, Crawfie and I arrived in a police car at Brighton Police Station. We were given tea in the Chief Constable’s room. Willie Whitelaw came in. So did the Howes, accompanied by their little dog ‘Budget’. But it was Leon Brittan, as Home Secretary, and John Gummer, as Party Chairman, with whom I had most to discuss. At this stage none of us knew whether the Conference could continue. I was already determined that if it was physically possible to do so I would deliver my speech. It was eventually decided that I would spend the rest of the night at Lewes Police College. I changed out of evening dress into a navy suit and, as I left the Police Station with Denis and Crawfie, I made a brief statement to the press.
Whether by chance or arrangement, there was no one staying at the College. I was given a small sitting room with a television and a twin-bedded room with its own bathroom. Denis and the detectives shared rooms further down the corridor. Crawfie and I shared too. We sat on our beds and speculated about what had happened. By now I was convinced that there must have been casualties. But we could get no news.
I could only think of one thing to do. Crawfie and I knelt by the side of our beds and prayed for some time in silence.
I had brought no nightclothes and so I lay down fully clothed and slept fitfully for perhaps an hour and a half. I awoke to the sound of the breakfast television news at 6.30 a.m. The news was much worse than I had feared. I saw pictures of Norman Tebbit being pulled out of the rubble. Then came the news that Roberta Wakeham and Anthony Berry MP were dead. I knew that I could not afford to let my emotions get control of me. I had to be mentally and physically fit for the day ahead. I tried not to watch the harrowing pictures. But it did not seem to do much good. I had to know each detail of what had happened – and every detail seemed worse than the last.
It was a perfect autumn day and as we drove back into Brighton the sky was clear and the sea completely calm. I now had my first sight of the front of the Grand Hotel, a whole vertical section of which had collapsed.
Then we went on to the Conference Centre itself, where at 9.20 a.m. the Conference opened; and at 9.30 a.m. precisely I and the officers of the National Union* walked onto the platform. (Many of them had had to leave clothes in the hotel, but Alistair McAlpine had persuaded the local Marks & Spencer to open early and by now they were smartly dressed.) The body of the hall was only about half full, because the rigorous security checks held up the crowds trying to get in. But the ovation was colossal. All of us were relieved to be alive, saddened by the tragedy and determined to show the terrorists that they could not break our spirit.
By chance, but how appropriately, the first debate was on Northern Ireland. I stayed to listen to this but then left to work on my speech which had to be completely revised. All the while, and in spite of attempts by my staff to minimize the interruptions, I was receiving messages and fleeting visits from colleagues and friends. I knew that John Wakeham had not yet been freed from the rubble and several people were still missing. A steady stream of flowers arrived which were sent on to the hospital where the injured had been taken.
As in earlier days, I delivered the speech from a text rather than Autocue and ad-libbed a good deal as well. But I knew that far more important than what I said was the fact that I, as Prime Minister, was still able to say it. I did not dwell long in the speech on what had happened. But I tried to sum up the feelings of all of us.
The bomb attack … was an attempt not only to disrupt and terminate our conference. It was an attempt to cripple Her Majesty’s democratically elected government. That is the scale of the outrage in which we have all shared. And the fact that we are gathered here now, shocked but composed and determined, is a sign not only that this attack has failed, but that all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail.
I did not linger after my speech but went immediately to the Royal Sussex County Hospital to visit the injured. Four people had already died. Muriel McLean was on a drip feed: she would die later. John Wakeham was still unconscious and remained so for several days. He had to be operated on daily for some time to save his legs which had been terribly crushed. By chance we all knew the consultant in charge, Tony Trafford, who had been a Conservative MP. I spent hours on the telephone trying to get the best advice possible from experts in dealing with crush injuries. In the end it turned out that there was a doctor in the hospital from El Salvador who had the expertise required. Between them they managed to save John’s legs. Norman Tebbit regained consciousness while I was at the hospital and we managed a few w
ords. I also talked to Margaret Tebbit who was in the intensive care unit. She told me she had no feeling below the neck. As a former nurse, she knew well enough what that meant.
I left the hospital overcome by such bravery and suffering. I was driven back to Chequers that afternoon faster than I have ever been driven before, with a full motorcycle escort. As I spent that night in what had become my home I could not stop thinking about those unable to return to theirs.
What happened in Brighton shocked the world. But the people of Northern Ireland and the security forces face the ruthless reality of terrorism day after day. There is no excuse for the IRA’s reign of terror. If their violence were, as the misleading phrase often has it, ‘mindless’ it would be easier to grasp as the manifestation of a disordered psyche. But that is not what terrorism is, however many psychopaths may be attracted to it. Terrorism is the calculated use of violence – and the threat of it – to achieve political ends.
There are terrorists in both the Catholic and Protestant communities, and all too many people prepared to give them support or at least to acquiesce in their activities. Indeed, for a person to stand out against the terrorists carries great personal risk. The result is that it is impossible to separate entirely the security policy, required to prevent terrorist outrages and bring the perpetrators to book, from the wider political approach to the long-standing ‘Northern Ireland problem’. For some people that connection implies that you should make concessions to the terrorist, in particular by weakening the Union between Ulster and Britain. But it never did so for me. My policy towards Northern Ireland was always one aimed above all at upholding democracy and the law.
Margaret Thatcher: The Autobiography Page 60
