Category: Trade Union Reporting

A tantalising secret has finally been revealed about the source of a controversial “hit list” for pit closures which became a critical issue in the year-long miners’ strike of 1984.

Throughout the long dispute and its bitter aftermath, Arthur Scargill prided himself on his ability to obtain confidential documents from high-level sources about the future of the coal industry.

He always claimed the information he had received proved the accuracy of his predictions about the true intentions of Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her ministers.

For 40 years Scargill refused to reveal either the source or status of what he declared was a secret plan prepared by the National Coal Board to “butcher” the coal industry.

He changed his mind when invited to speak at recent events to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the strike – and the secret he revealed was that the source of the leak was the then deputy chairman of the coal board.

Scargill was determined to use speeches commemorating the strike’s 40^th anniversary as an opportunity to correct what he said were myths and lies perpetuated by the news media and historians.

In seeking to set the record straight, he told me he was anxious to unlock some of the secrets about those with inside knowledge who had supplied him with confidential information about what was afoot.

Perhaps the greatest unresolved mystery was the origin of the “hit list” which Scargill used to great effect to warn that thousands of miners’ jobs were at risk.

The timeline started in November 1982, shortly after his election as President of the National Union of Mineworkers and well before the start of the strike, when he told a news conference that he had been given a confidential report indicating that “75 short life” collieries had been earmarked for closure.

Journalists who had crowded into the union’s former London headquarters in Euston Road were waiting to hear Mr Scargill’s response to a crushing ballot defeat.

In what newspapers had already dubbed a personal humiliation for the union’s newly elected president, miners had voted in a pit head ballot against an NUM recommendation to reject an 8.5 per cent pay offer and to endorse industrial action over future pit closures.

To the surprise of the media pack, Scargill seized the agenda by holding up what he said was a copy of a secret document on plans for a drastic cut back in the mining industry.

A coal board briefing prepared in March indicated that “75 short-life pits” would close within the next five years.

Scargill chose a 40^th anniversary rally at Goldthorpe miners’ welfare in South Yorkshire (29.6.2024) to reveal “certain important facts” about the lead-up to the union’s “historic struggle”.

He said that during the early summer of 1982, in his first months as NUM President, he was told – “obviously in great confidence” – by the board’s director of public relations, Geoff Kirk, that the NCB and the Tory government intended to launch a pit closure programme in the autumn of 1982.

“On the basis of our union’s experience and without betraying the source of my information, I warned that a pit closure attack on our industry was looming.

“On the evening of 1^st November 1982, Don Loney, the NUM chief executive officer, came to my office with a sealed package.

“He said it had been given to him by John Mills, the NCB deputy chairman, to hand to me privately. I opened it and read it.

“The following morning, 2^nd November, I reported to a meeting of the NUM national executive committee that I had been handed documents which showed that the coal board intended:

“A. To close 30 pits which were described as uneconomic, and according to the board accounted for operating losses exceeding £200 million.

“B. To close 75 short-life collieries (including Coegnant in South Wales, which had already been closed).

“There was a note: included in the list of short-life collieries were 10 of the uneconomic pits. The total number of threatened pits was 95.”

In his report to that day to the executive committee, he said the documents were dated March 1982, eight months earlier, at a time when the board had been denying that there was any “hit list” or closure plan.

Once the executive committee finished its meeting, Scargill met journalists waiting for his briefing on the ballot defeat only to find that he succeeded in upstaging their hostile questions by what I later said on BBC Radio was a master class in how to seize the news agenda.

In my book, Strikes and the Media (1986), I explained that Mr Scargill’s sense of timing can best be appreciated by listening to a tape recording of his news conference.

“In front of him are the outstretched microphones of the radio and television reporters, the newspaper cameramen and the journalists with their notebooks.

“At the precise moment that he announces he has some secret information, he holds up the document in his right hand, just beside his face, ready for the instant pictures for the television and the press.

“On the tape the clicking of the flashlights can be heard coming precisely on cue. Next day Fleet Street gave its account of the news conference:

“Scargill had pulled out a white rabbit, a coal board briefing on pit closures. It was his only shot.” (Daily Mail, 3 November 1982)

I concluded this was proof if proof was needed that Scargill thrived on confrontation with the news media:

“The incident demonstrates to the full Scargill’s resilience and ingenuity. He never seemed daunted on entering a room packed with journalists, baying like hounds...”

Perhaps the most significant historical footnote regarding the revelation about the source of the secret document was that it illustrated the unease within the coal board’s management over Mrs Thatcher’s determination to downsize the coal industry.

The briefing papers had been prepared by the board for the Monopolies Commission and the board’s hierarchy knew the writing was on the wall.

Mrs Thatcher was ready to seize the opportunity to slash the coal industry’s losses – an opportunity which had arisen with the imminent departure of the then board chairman Sir Derek Ezra and the outgoing NUM President Joe Gormley.

The two men had worked behind the scenes to do all they could to sustain the coal industry, but the management knew that era of co-operation was about to change with the expected appointment as chairman of Ian MacGregor.

He was quite prepared to take on the trade unions, as he had done during the action he had taken to slim down the British Steel Corporation.

The two coal board chiefs named by Scargill as the source of leaks – public relations director Geoff Kirk and deputy chairman John Mills – were both known to have great sympathy for mining communities.

Perhaps they were hoping that by taking Scargill into their confidence there was a possibility the industry might be able to continue the behind-the-scenes management-union co-operation that had been so effective in the past.

As events would demonstrate there was never any likelihood in reality of replicating the cordial relationships of the Ezra-Gormley era.

Mrs Thatcher was determined to smash the consensus that had developed within the nationalised industries; Ian MacGregor had no intention of becoming a patsy for the trade unions; and Scargill would not waver in a lifelong commitment to refuse to accept pit closures unless coal stocks had been exhausted.

Illustrations: Morning Star (3.11.1982); London Evening Standard (2.11.1982); News Lines (3.11.1982); Daily Mail (3.11.1982).

Nicholas Jones presents "The Art of Class War", a look back at the 1984-85 miners' strike through the eyes of newspaper cartoonists, at the South Yorkshire Festival on Sunday 18 August, Unison Room, Wortley Hall, Sheffield