The Downing Street Years

by Margaret Thatcher

  A LONG SLOG

  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:

  You saw the scenes … on television last night. I must tell you that what we have got is an attempt to substitute the rule of the mob for the rule of the law, and it must not succeed. There are those who are using violence and intimidation to impose their will on others who do not want it. They are failing because of two things. First, because of the magnificent police force, well trained for carrying out their duties bravely and impartially. And secondly, because the overwhelming majority of people in this country are honourable, decent and law-abiding and want the law to be upheld and will not be intimidated. I pay tribute to the courage of those who have gone into work through these picket lines … the rule of law must prevail over the rule of the mob.

  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.

  It was at about this time that we had the first clear evidence of large-scale intimidation in the mining villages. This problem grew steadily worse as th strike went on. Working miners were not the only targets: their wives and children were also at risk. The sheer viciousness of what was done provides a useful antidote to some of the more romantic talk about the spirit of the mining communities. In its very nature intimidation is extremely difficult for the police to combat, though as time went on officers in uniform and teams in plain clothes were specially deployed to tackle it.

  There was a good deal of public criticism of the failure of the nationalized industries to use the civil remedies which our trade union laws had provided. As the violence continued and the problems of BSC in particular increased, the ministerial group frequently discussed whether to encourage the use of the civil law against the NUM and other unions involved in secondary action. Failure to take civil action against the unions and their funds put all the pressure on to the criminal law and onto the police whose duty it was to uphold it. It was also pointed out that, if successful, legal action against union funds would restrict their ability to finance mass pickets and to engage in unlawful action. People were saying openly that our trade union reforms were being discredited by the failure of the nationalized industries involved to use the legal remedies. Instinctively, I had a good deal of sympathy with this view, as did my advisers.

  However, Peter Walker persuaded us that use of the civil law might alienate the support we had among working miners or moderate trade unionists. The chairmen of the BSC, NCB, BR and CEGB agreed with him, at least for the present: they met towards the end of June and decided that in all the circumstances this was not the time to apply for an injunction. Nor were the police convinced that civil action would make their job on the picket lines any easier. Of course, that did not prevent others — whether businessmen or working miners — making use of the new laws. The fact was that throughout this dispute there was much to be said for emphasizing the point that it was the basic criminal law of the country which was being flouted by the pickets and their leaders, rather than ‘Thatcher’s laws’.

  Peter Walker’s argument won the day, and the NCB went on to win the strike. In a sense, therefore, the outcome justified the tactic. But could the same result have been achieved earlier through civil action leading, by way of the NUM’s defiance, to sequestration of union funds? Such ‘might-have-beens’ are always impossible to resolve. Looking back, however, we might reasonably have urged the nationalized industries to take action against the NUM and at an earlier stage. When the working miners actually did so on their own initiative — the best possible outcome but not something on which we should have relied — this put enormous pressure on Mr Scargill and severely circumscribed the ability of the NUM to keep the strike going. Since then, however, the use of ‘Thatcher’s laws’ has become standard in Britain’s industrial relations and the number of strikes and industrial disputes has plummetted.

  Meanwhile, we kept a very close watch on the number of pits reopening and men working. In July and August many pits close to take their annual holidays and we had some hopes that there would be a large-scale return to work when the holiday period ended, though there were fears too that pits that had been working before the holidays would fail to reopen due to renewed efforts by the pickets. The cost of being on strike to miners and their families was one consideration in estimating what would happen. But perhaps psychology was more important. A really large return to work after the holiday might create its own momentum. For his part, Mr Scargill would try to persuade his troops that with autumn approaching there was hope of the NCB being forced to back down by a government unwilling to impose winter power cuts.

  It was clearly very important that the NCB should do everything possible to get its case over to those tempted to give up the strike and return to work. On my recommendation, Tim Bell, who had given me so much good advice on presentation in the past, had begun to advise Ian MacGregor. There was certainly a powerful positive case to deploy: massive new investment was available for the pits under existing plans, though this was now being held up, and if work resumed there was the promised pay rise for miners to look forward to. There was also the negative side: pits might never reopen because of deterioration which occurred while the strike continued. Customers were being lost, probab
ly permanently: no one in industry tempted by our subsidies to change from other fuels to coal was likely to have much faith in the reliability of coal supplies from now on. It would also have been possible to go ahead with pit closures on economic grounds while the strike was still on, and we debated this. But on balance the risk of alienating moderate miners was too great. We also had to consider whether to encourage more miners to take the uniquely generous redundancy terms on offer. There were two problems with respect to redundancy: first, even if large numbers of miners took up the offer, there was no guarantee that they would be from the pits we needed to close. And the savings lay in closing uneconomic pits. Second, there was a real risk that it was the moderate miners, sickened by the violence and intimidation, who would find redundancy most attractive, leaving the hardliners in a majority in particular areas or even nationally. So again we held fire.

  July proved to be one of the most difficult months of the strike. On Monday 9 July almost out of the blue the TGWU called a national dock strike over a supposed breach of the National Dock Labour Scheme (NDLS). The NDLS had been established by the Attlee Government with the aim of eliminating casual labour in the docks. Based on statute, it operated in the majority of British ports, establishing a closed shop and giving the union extraordinary powers. The occasion for the strike was BSC’s use of contract labour to move iron ore by road from stockpiles in the docks at Immingham to the Scunthorpe steelworks. In fact, BSC were satisfied that neither the scheme nor local agreements had been breached. Under the scheme’s absurd provisions ‘shadow’ labour consisting of registered dock workers was required to stand and watch the work as it was being done by contractors. This had been complied with in the ‘normal way’. We hoped that the National Dock Labour Board, which included union representatives, would give an early ruling to this effect. But the TGWU leadership was strongly committed to supporting Mr Scargill and plainly welcomed the opportunity to call a strike.

  We had already made an extensive study of the implications of a national dock strike in 1982. It seemed likely that the strike — which would probably only seriously affect those ports which were part of the NDLS — would have little direct impact on the outcome of the coal strike. We were not importing coal for the power stations, because it would have risked losing us the support of working miners. But a dock strike would have serious implications for BSC by disrupting its imports of coal and iron ore. Indeed, it looked as if a major motive for the strike had been the desire of the left-wing TGWU leadership to assist the miners by tightening their grip on the major steel plants, counteracting BSC’s success in by-passing secondary action on the railways by organizing road deliveries. The general effect on trade would be very serious — particularly on imports of food — though about a third of non-bulk cargo was carried by roll-on — roll-off ships (known as ‘RO-RO’), much of which was driver-accompanied and passed through ‘non-scheme’ ports such as Dover and Felixstowe. Everything would depend on how well the strike was supported and whether it was confined to the NDLS ports.

  Our regular meetings of the ministerial group on coal now had to deal with two strikes rather than one. I told the group on the day after the dock strike began that it was vital to make a major effort to mobilize opinion over the next forty-eight hours. We should urge the port employers to adopt a resolute approach and use all available means to strengthen opposition to the strike among workers in industries likely to be damaged by it, and indeed among the public. It must be clearly demonstrated that the pretext for the strike was false and that those taking this action already enjoyed extraordinary privileges. We should make the point that it was estimated that 4,000 out of the 13,000 dockers registered under the NDLS were surplus to the requirements of the industry. Of course, this was not the right time to abolish the NDLS — in the middle of a coal strike — but we should aim for the present to solve the dispute without ruling out future change. We mobilized the Civil Contingencies Unit to prepare to meet the crisis but avoided proclaiming a state of emergency, which might have meant the use of troops. Any sign of overreaction to the dock strike would have given the miners and other union militants new heart. Our strategy had to be to end the dock strike as quickly as possible, so that the coal dispute could be played as long as was necessary.

  The earliest indications were that the dock strike would prove extremely difficult. On Monday 16 July I met the General Council of British Shipping for lunch and I found them in defeatist mood. This was an instance of something I came to know well: employers were always advising me to be tough except in their own industry. They told me that the strike was of greater extent than anything they had seen before in the docks.

  I had called an ad hoc ministerial meeting that evening to review the overall position and we ran though the options. We recognized that if picketing spread to ‘non-scheme’ ports there was a high probability that civil action would be taken against the TGWU, and that there would be a strong case for activating the NCB’s suspended injunction against the NUM. The conflict seemed to be on the verge of a significant escalation.

  My recognition of the importance of presentation, however, did lead me to take a specific initiative, which was to set up a group of junior ministers from the departments concerned to co-ordinate government statements during the crisis, under the chairmanship of Tom King, then Employment Secretary. Peter Walker was not particularly pleased. He always liked to play his cards very close to his chest and although he did so with consummate skill there was a risk that one branch of government would lose confidence or lack proper information about what we were trying to do. In the end it was a great success: for once all of us in government contrived to sing the same song day after day.

  In the event the dock strike proved far less of a problem than we had feared. Whatever the views of their leaders, the ordinary dockers were simply not prepared to support action which threatened their jobs: even those at the NDLS ports were less than enthusiastic, fearing that a strike would hasten the demise of the scheme itself. But the decisive role was played by the lorry drivers who had an even greater direct interest in getting goods through and were not prepared to be bullied and threatened. By 20 July the TGWU had no alternative but to call off the strike. It had lasted only ten days.

  The end of the dock strike was only one of a number of important developments at this time. Following the fruitless meeting between the NCB and NUM on 23 May, talks had resumed at the beginning of July. Our hope was that they would end quickly and that the NCB would succeed this time in exposing the unreasonableness of Mr Scargill’s position. There would then be a chance that striking miners would realize that they had no hope of winning and a return to work would begin.

  However, the talks had drifted on, and there were indications that the NCB was softening its negotiating position. One problem was that each new round of negotiations naturally discouraged a return to work: few would risk going back if a settlement seemed to be in the offing. More troubling still, there was a real danger that the talks would end by fudging the issue on the closure of uneconomic pits: a formula was being developed based upon the proposition that no pit should be closed if it was capable of being ‘beneficially developed’. The NCB was also prepared to give a commitment to keep open five named pits that the NUM had claimed were due for closure. We were very alarmed. Not only were there ambiguities in the detailed wording of the proposals, but (far worse) a settlement on these lines would have given Mr Scargill the chance to claim victory.

  But on 18 July, two days before the end of the dock strike, negotiations collapsed. I have to say I was enormously relieved.

  A week later we reached what was for me a very important moment in the history of the strike, though this was something very few people knew about at the time. On Wednesday 25 July I held a meeting in conditions of strict security to discuss power station endurance with Peter Walker and Sir Walter Marshall, Chairman of the CEGB. That very day Norman Tebbit had written to me expressing anxiety that time was not on our
side in the coal strike. He had seen estimates of power station endurance that suggested stocks would be exhausted by mid-January: if this were so, he argued that we needed as soon as possible to consider measures to win the strike by the autumn, since he thought we could not afford to go on to the very brink of endurance.

  I perfectly understood Norman’s concern and it was partly because I shared his instinctive distrust of the figures — and could not quite believe Peter Walker’s laid-back optimism — that I had asked for the meeting with Peter and Walter Marshall. The message I received at the meeting was extremely encouraging. Walter Marshall confirmed the position as Peter had previously described it. If supplies of coal from Nottinghamshire and other working areas to the power stations were maintained at the present level the safe date for endurance would be June 1985. In fact, the CEGB believed they could keep the power stations running until November 1985. He showed me a chart which demonstrated that coal, nuclear and oil generation taken together almost exactly matched the (lower) summertime demand. Indeed, if endurance could be extended into the spring of 1986 — which we might manage by getting more miners back to work for example — it would then be possible to go on into the following winter.

  However, all these predictions were extremely sensitive to variations in the supply of coal from the Nottinghamshire pits. Walter Marshall stressed how important it was to maintain their output. Small improvements in supplies from these pits increased endurance dramatically: small shortfalls curtailed it equally dramatically. It would be essential to maintain transport from the Nottinghamshire pits and although road transport had made a great contribution, deliveries by rail could not be dispensed with. Enormous quantities of coal had to be moved, and pithead stockyards in many of the working pits were comparatively small — they had been built on the ‘merry-go-round’ system, by which trains ran directly to the power stations and back again on a daily basis. Accordingly, it was vital that we keep the rail unions working, if necessary at the price of concessions in pay talks.