There is No Alternative

by Claire Berlinski

  At the outbreak of the conflict, Thatcher’s colleague Enoch Powell had intimated, in the House of Commons, his suspicion that Thatcher was not up for the task:The Prime Minister, shortly after she came into office, received a soubriquet as the “Iron Lady.” It arose in the context of remarks which she made about defense against the Soviet Union and its allies; but there was no reason to suppose that the Right Hon. Lady did not welcome and, indeed, take pride in that description. In the next week or two this House, the nation and the Right Hon. Lady herself will learn of what metal she is made.136

  In the wake of the victory, the skeptical Powell became glowing effusion itself:Is the Right. Hon. Lady aware that the report has now been received from the public analyst on a certain substance recently subjected to analysis and that I have obtained a copy of the report? It shows that the substance under test consisted of ferrous matter of the highest quality, and that it is of exceptional tensile strength, is highly resistant to wear and tear and to stress, and may be used to advantage for all national purposes.137

  This was a view widely shared. Great crowds gathered in London to sing “Rule Britannia” and cheer the woman who had led Britain to triumph. Thatcher’s government won a massive victory in the 1983 general election—a victory that was by no means certain beforehand and indeed unlikely. She was returned to power with an increased parliamentary majority, empowering her to sweep ahead with the reforms that have now come to be associated with her name.

  The relationship between the United States and Britain became closer—Americans love a winner—resulting in a more confrontational policy toward the Soviet bloc, a period known now as the Second Cold War. On June 23, little more than a week after the surrender of the Argentines, Thatcher traveled to New York to address the General Assembly of the United Nations, which had gathered for a special session on disarmament. “There is,” she said,a natural revulsion in democratic societies against war and we would much prefer to see arms build-ups prevented, by good sense or persuasion or agreement. But if that does not work, then the owners of these vast armouries must not be allowed to imagine that they could use them with impunity.

  But mere words, speeches and resolutions will not prevent them. The security of our country and its friends can be ensured only by deterrence and by adequate strength—adequate when compared with that of a potential aggressor.138

  Margaret Thatcher is presented with a commemorative coin to celebrate the Falklands victory. “We adored her,” recalled Major General Julian Thompson, Brigade Commander during the Falklands war, “and would have done anything for her. In all my years’ service, I have never seen anything like it . . . we all loved her for her calmness . . . her enthusiasm, and dare one say it, because she is an extremely handsome lady. We appreciated that, too.” (Central Office of Information)

  These words clearly conveyed to the Soviet Union a great deal more seriousness than they would have had Thatcher not recently proven herself prepared—to the point of recklessness—to live by them.

  Galtieri was placed under house arrest on June 18. He was convicted of mishandling the war, stripped of his rank, and imprisoned. The junta collapsed.

  In one of those strange twists of fate suggesting that if nothing else, the Master of the Universe has a fine sense of irony, it now appears that the Falklands just might be sitting above a hundred billion barrels of oil. Recent technological advances in deep-sea exploration, specifically the development of controlled-source electromagnetic surveying, have led investors to wonder if the Falklands could be rather more valuable than they look. They have found nothing yet, but if their theory proves correct, the islanders will become the wealthiest people in the world. I stress that this was not suspected at the time and could not reasonably have been suspected: The relevant technology had not yet been invented.

  There is a nice story about the penguins. Some 25,000 land mines, mostly planted by the Argentineans, remain in the no-go areas of the Falklands. Fortunately, the penguins are too light to set them off. But the presence of the mines has ensured that the area is now a conservation zone, one where harsh penalties await those tempted to violate its integrity. The squawking penguins waddle about happily; conservationists are delighted by the protection of lands that had previously been overgrazed by sheep. There is a suspicion that other forms of bird and amphibious life have similarly profited, but no one is quite sure to what degree. As the director of Falklands Conservation, Grant Munro, remarked, “It has really not been looked into, for obvious reasons.”

  7

  Coal and Iron

  We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty.

  —THATCHER ON THE MINERS’ STRIKE

  Orgreave, South Yorkshire, June 18, 1984. It is blisteringly hot. Many of the striking miners are shirtless, dripping with sweat. Not so the police, mounted on horseback and dressed head-to-toe in black battle gear.

  It begins in a field near the British Steel coking plant. BBC News: Arthur Scargill called for a mass picket of Orgreave. Today, he got one. The sky is bright blue. Scargill—King Arthur, they call him—struts past the massed ranks of miners, directing them with a bullhorn. Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out! The miners, united, will never be defeated!

  But MI5 has infiltrated the National Union of Mineworkers, and the police know what Scargill has in mind even before he calls the orders. Ambulances are standing by. The cops pen the picketers away from the entrance to the plant. When the strikers spot the convoy of approaching trucks, a rumble passes through the crowd. Then they surge. Here we go, here we go! The air vibrates with the sound of shouting, police whistles, barking dogs. The phalanx of black-clad policemen runs directly into the scrum. They take on the miners in hand-to-hand combat. The horses charge. The miners throw missiles and rip up fencing—they throw that, too. Cloudbursts from smoke bombs turn the air bright red. London calling to the faraway towns . . . Now war is declared, and battle come down . . .

  The reinforcements arrive, brandishing massive riot shields. They hold the miners back, grabbing miners at random and shoving them into pig buses.

  The trucks sweep in procession into the plant.

  The pickets counter with a second push. The police call in the snatch squads: Modeled on the colonial riot police—in turn modeled on the Roman legions—the snatch squads have never before been deployed on the British mainland. An officer gives them their orders: You know what you’re doing. No heads, bodies only!

  The picketers begin throwing ball bearings, rocks. They hit an officer in the face; he clutches his bloody nose. The snatch squads bear down on their horses, cantering straight into the mass of men, beating the miners with truncheons. Panic sweeps the crowd. The miners have blood streaming from their head wounds: There is no doubt about that.

  At last the cavalry drives the miners back behind the police line. The ambulances burn off, sirens warbling. One hour and twenty minutes later, the trucks leave the plant, laden with the coal and scabby labor they came to collect. The picketing miners, helpless behind the police cordon, stand and watch in almost total silence.

  After this some of the miners shuffle off to the pub for a beer, dispirited. It is a red-hot day. But the die-hards stay on the lines. By afternoon, the police have been sweltering in the sun for far too long. The remaining picketers have been taunting them; the cops are tired, hot, thirsty—they begin banging their shields with their truncheons. What happens next? No one agrees. Round two is worse than round one—much worse. Police boots smash into the shins of the picketers. “Get bloody off!” “Shut your fucking mouth, or I’ll break your fucking neck!”139

  Miners flee across the field and the railway tracks, but the cops close in, beating them even after they fall, unconscious, to the ground. Then to the astonishment of the village’s residents, the miners run into Orgreave itself and the cavalry gallops right after them. The miners fight back with scrap-me
tal missiles. Enraged, the cops charge them—as well as the assembled onlookers—through the terraced streets of the town. The miners improvise barricades; they mount a contraption with a stake to impale the horses. One miner is slammed repeatedly against the hood of a car; the cops stamp on his leg, breaking it, then arrest him and drag him back, on one foot, behind the police lines. London calling, see we ain’t got no swing . . . ’Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing . . . Weirdly, amid the chaos, the Rock On Tommy ice-cream van keeps selling ice cream until it is completely enclosed by the cavalry.

  Twelve years before, the miners had forced Ted Heath’s government to surrender by picketing the Saltley coke depot in Birmingham. Scargill was a senior figure in the Yorkshire branch of the miners’ union then. He innovated the tactic of using flying pickets—dispatching shock troops of strikers from the most militant areas of Britain to the scene of the dispute. Most of the picketers who shut down the Saltley plant were not even employed there. The tactic was devastatingly effective. The event made Arthur Scargill into a hero among miners and a household name. In 1974, using the same tactics, Scargill brought down the Heath government.

  Now Scargill is the president of the National Union of Mineworkers. Thatcher is determined that Orgreave will not be a repeat performance—no matter what it takes.

  Soon the image will be broadcast from Orgreave to every British household with a television: a disheveled Arthur Scargill, clutching his baseball cap as he is dragged off by the police. He is telling anyone who will listen that Britain has been turned into some kind of Latin American junta. “1984—Great Britain!” he shouts to reporters.

  BBC News: This time Scargill seems to have failed—the 34 lorry drivers today managed to make two journeys unhindered and say they are determined to continue the coke runs.

  The day after, in the House of Commons:The Prime Minister: However serious the strike—and it is serious—the consequences of giving in to mob rule would be far graver . . . Mr. Kinnock: Will the Prime Minister tell us why she wants this chaos, conflict and cost to go on rising? [Hear! Hear! Rumbling and jeers.] . . . The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman . . . knows full well that what we saw there was not peaceful picketing, but mob violence and intimidation. I am astonished that he should suggest that, because one faction of the National Union of Mineworkers adopts these disgraceful tactics, it should be given what it wants! [Hear! Hear!] . . . Mr. Kinnock: If the right hon. Lady expended a fraction of the energy that she gives to political posturing on trying to promote a settlement, we would have ended the strike by now! . . . The Prime Minister: I note that the right hon. Gentleman referred to mob rule as political posturing. I can say to him only that whatever government are answering from the Dispatch Box, if they gave in to mob rule, that would be the end of liberty and democracy . . . Mr. Kinnock: That was not an answer; it was a recitation of arrogant complacency, an evasion, and a betrayal of the national interest! [Interruption, roaring.] The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman, who is shouting and posturing, is more accustomed to it than I am. We have seen violence which he has not—[Interruption, loud shouting.] Mr. Speaker: Order! There is so much noise that the Prime Minister did not hear that I called Question No. 2! . . . Mr. Redmond: Will the Prime Minister inform the House when she has sufficient blood on her hands to satisfy her hatred of the miners? . . . 140

  I meet Lord Peter Walker, who served as Thatcher’s energy secretary during the miners’ strike, for lunch at the Carlton Club in London. This is the club that reluctantly declared Thatcher an honorary gentleman. Thatcher surveys the foyer from her portrait; a massive bronze bust of her head presides above the staircase. When I ask the porter where to find the ladies’ cloakroom, he nods in the direction of the bust: “Turn left past Margaret, Madame.” Upstairs is the Wellington Room, where members are permitted to entertain their lady friends. This is where I dine with Lord Walker. Beyond is the Churchill Room—for members only—which of course I do not see, for I am not a gentleman, even of the honorary kind.

  Walker was one of the leading wets in Thatcher’s cabinet. “From the point of view of the right wing of my party, I was a terrible neocommunist myself, you know,” he says ruefully. Thus did it come as a surprise to him when Thatcher asked him, in 1983, to take the energy portfolio. Of course, from a public relations standpoint it made perfect sense to assign that responsibility to a man known for his lack of radicalism. We are not the ones causing the problems here. The miners can’t even get along with a wet like Walker . . .

  The Wet Lord sinks into the comfortable sofa of the morning room and orders an aperitif. He spots Bernard Ingham across the room; the men bob their heads at each other courteously. The waiter arrives with the Chablis. Walker clears his throat. Thatcher had called him, he tells me, the morning after the 1983 election. She feared a conflict with Scargill. She thought Walker was the man to handle it. She flattered him lavishly, telling him that everywhere she had gone on the campaign trail, the voters had declared him their hero. Walker’s feathers ruffle proudly as he recalls this conversation. He accepted the job. “The first thing I did was do an enormous personal study of Scargill,” he says. He read everything Scargill had ever written, every word about him that had ever been reported. “I had this enormous volume of papers. And what you discovered was that above all he was a totally committed Marxist.”

  Walker is not exaggerating. Scargill was a totally committed Marxist. This is the first point everyone close to Thatcher stresses when his name comes up, and they are right to stress it. The brutality of Thatcher’s response to Scargill can be put in proper perspective only if we appreciate that Scargill was, in fact, committed to bringing about a communist revolution in Britain. Moreover, it was not at all clear at the time that he would fail. A revolution along Bolshevik lines was never likely, but it was entirely realistic to fear that he would permanently establish the unions as the nation’s preeminent political power, reverse the outcome of a democratic election by force, and irreversibly cripple the British economy.

  “He was, you know, an absolute, outright, complete Marxist,” John Hoskyns had said to me several days prior. “I remember a senior union man saying to me, once, ‘I’ll tell you about Arthur.’ I said, ‘Tell me about Arthur.’ And he said, ‘Well, I think you can say that when he’s shaving and he’s looking in the mirror every morning, he says to his reflection, “One day, you will be the President of the Socialist Republic of Britain.”’”

  No one who knows anything about Scargill disagrees with this assessment, no matter what their political orientation. They disagree only about whether Scargill’s ambition was a laudable one.

  Arthur Scargill—King Coal—was born in 1938, just south of Barnsley, in Yorkshire. Scargill is not a nom de guerre, much though it sounds like one; it is just one of those oddball literary coincidences that his first name evokes mythical heroism even as his last name metonymically hints of thuggishness and slime. His father was a coal miner and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Scargill too became a miner after leaving school at the age of sixteen; he joined the Young Communist League in 1955. He became leader of the Yorkshire division of the National Union of Mineworkers in 1973. Two years after Thatcher came to power, he was elected president of the national union.

  I wanted very much to meet him. I wrote to him to ask whether he might permit me to get his side of the story. I received a reply from a woman by the name of Linda Sheridan. Scargill was, she wrote, “quite adamant that he does not wish to discuss Thatcher or the miners’ strike with you, or any other journalist for that matter.”141 When I entered Sheridan’s name in Google, I discovered that she represents the Socialist Labour Party in central Scotland. The party, which Scargill now heads, aims “to abolish capitalism and replace it with a socialist system.”142 Those nostalgic for the Labour Party’s Clause 4 will be pleased to know that it is not dead. It is merely pining for the fjords in the Socialist Labour Party’s manifesto.

  I wasn’t deterred. I w
rote back, saying that I understood that Mr. Scargill’s relationship with the Fourth Estate was not a particularly happy one. But I thought it important to represent his point of view accurately, and I couldn’t do that unless he spoke to me directly. Would she please ask him to reconsider?

  It was out of the question, she replied. I imagine she had looked me up on Google as well; perhaps she discovered that I am no great fan of revolutionary socialism.

  Dear Claire,

  . . . Please understand that Margaret Thatcher is hated by many of us here. For every dozen people you speak to who will say she was a wonderful strong Prime Minister who licked the unions into shape and privatized (and ruined) our national industries, you will find hundreds of others, living in communities which were destroyed by her policies, who feel nothing but a passionate hatred for her. The saying is that when Thatcher goes, she is going to a place where there is a lot of coal, hot coal, and when she does go, we’ll all be down at the pub raising our glasses, and putting two fingers up to her. I’m sorry but that’s how it is.

  Best regards

  Linda143

  I liked her spirit, if not her politics. I searched for more information about her and found her photograph online. She looks to be in her early forties. She has skin so pale it is almost translucent and a beautiful mane of wild auburn hair. I wrote again. Was she quite certain Mr. Scargill didn’t fancy meeting me?144

  Dear Claire