miners strike 1984-lessons to be learnt.

[borders]

hello John , great post , spot on with the content. a subject i find very interesting but it was a defeat nontheless. i have said before i admire Scargill for having a go, the only present Union Leader which has a similar aura about him is Bob Crowe.

[johnsouthwales]

i had to go earlier this afternoon as i didnt get a chance to to look at reply. ah yes, bob crowe with the railways. now, that is another subject of interest, ad they all matter because they are all have something in common. before him, everybody liked jimmy knapp, another character

[borders]

The Times 13th March 2009.


Arthur Scargill demonstrates that he still knows how to captivate a crowd


Christine Buckley Industrial Editor



It would have been easy to think from the rousing speech that he delivered last night to an anniversary event in London that Arthur Scargill had won the miners’ strike and that it had been more recent than 25 years ago.

The former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers was greeted as a hero by the audience in the Conway Hall, home to the Ethical Society. Seven hundred people welcomed the man who led one of the biggest, and most significant, of all industrial disputes. Mr Scargill, despite all these years in an apparent political wilderness, is still box office.

But it is not just the history associated with the 71-year-old Mr Scargill. A good, sometimes humorous speaker, he can captivate an audience because he believes passionately in what he says, a rare quality in a world of spin and soundbite.

Sure, there was an element of preaching to the converted. The event, attended by the actor Ricky Tomlinson, was organised by the Socialist Labour Party, of which both are members. But this was not just an occasion for the diehards. The 25th anniversary of the year-long strike, which in many ways defined the Thatcher Government’s approach to the trade unions, has had far more resonance than the 20th. Possibly the economic crisis and Mr Scargill’s increased willingness to answer his critics have made the strike seem more important than it did five or ten years ago.

Last night he was defiant to the end, emotional about the working-class struggle and more than a little self-righteous about the difficulties that capitalism finds itself in. He quipped about how he had been criticised for being misguided: “One journalist said Scargill had been reading the wrong Soviet books. I disagree, I was reading the right one.”

He had no truck with those who said that he started the strike at precisely the wrong time – in the spring. Not true, he said. The NUM had begun preparations several months earlier, but the strike was forced on the union by the immediate closure of several mines when there had been an agreement on nine months’ notice. “We had no option.

We were facing a simple choice,” he declared. The lack of a national ballot for the strike was dealt with on a number of fronts – it was not necessary under the union’s regional structure, and anyway the union had had a national convention that had voted not to have a national ballot.

The lack of success was down partly to betrayal by other parts of the Labour movement. He blamed Neil Kinnock, as Labour leader, for not urging all workers to support the strike, and some unions for advocating crossing picket lines.

Mr Scargill also outlined the scale of the strike, which seems quite astonishing now. Twenty-thousand miners were injured in the course of it, 13,000 were arrested. The crucial stand-off, at the Orgreave coking plant, involved 10,000 miners and 8,500 police. Eleven miners were killed.

He was, even now, moved to tears by the treatment in the press of one of those who died. Joe Green, a miner killed outside the Ferry Bridge power station, was described as being a loner with few friends. Mr Scargill said: “Twelve thousand people attended Joe’s funeral.”

The former NUM leader addressed his audience at the Conway Hall under a carved inscription over the stage proclaiming: “To Thine Own Self Be True”. Few, perhaps, could doubt that of him.

Ends.

[savo]

Arthur, went into the strike with a big union and a small house, came out of it with a small union and a big house.

Before his time?

[johnsouthwales]

it wasnt the intention of highlighting how many did well out if the strike. i know what you mean saying mr scargill got a nice house out of it, that fact was noticeable years ago. it would be equally deplorable if mr scargill used the miners to promote his own personal cause. then again, others got something out of it at the expense of others losing their homes and marriage break ups due to the strike.

i'm not promoting mr scargill or denouncing, the main interests is the strike itself, not to promote socialism or whatever.

after the recent media interests in the 25th anniversary, the subject has gone quiet now as if it was just something to talk about, something to read about and capture the publics imagination for a moment, and put it away into the archives of a distant memory

[borders]

Arthur, went into the strike with a big union and a small house, came out of it with a small union and a big house.

Before his time?

careful what you say my friend ?? every single allegation against Scargill has been disproved and the paper at the time responsible for a lot of these allegations was the Mirror owned then by Mr Maxwell, enough said .



----------------The man who smeared Scargill now admits it was...
All lies
THE MAN who used to edit one of Britain's biggest popular newspapers last week made an astonishing admission. He confessed that a major smear campaign his paper ran against the left wing leader of one of Britain's key trade unions was in fact a pack of lies. Roy Greenslade, the former editor of the Mirror newspaper, offered "the sincerest of apologies" to National Union of Mineworkers leader Arthur Scargill for the lies the paper told during a six-month campaign in 1990.

The Mirror, under Greenslade's editorship, ran a savage campaign against the then miners' union leaders Arthur Scargill and Peter Heathfield. It published allegation after allegation of what Greenslade now calls "cloak and dagger tales", without a shred of evidence. The paper accused Scargill of being corrupt, taking money from Libya to pay off his mortgage and lining his own pocket during the year-long miners' strike in 1984-5.

The smears were an attack on all those who took part in and supported the great 1984-5 miners' strike. The then owner of the Mirror, millionaire press baron, Labour Party member and crook Robert Maxwell, orchestrated the witchhunt. He was later found to be stealing from the Mirror's own pension fund.

The then Tory government and the right wing press had a field day, gleefully predicting that Scargill would be jailed. Deputy Tory prime minister Geoffrey Howe announced in parliament that the police were ready to act against Scargill. Every mainstream newspaper at the time and the leaders of the Labour Party went along with the witchhunt against Scargill. Even after an independent report by QC Gavin Lightman cleared Scargill, the Mirror continued to print filthy lies as if they were fact.

In 1991 the three journalists who made the story up were awarded the "Reporters of the Year" prize at the British Press Awards for the story which Lightman had described as "entirely untrue". Labour leader Neil Kinnock handed out the award and personally congratulated the three.

Such was the witchhunting atmosphere that even many of those who supported Scargill and the miners worried that there was at least a grain of truth in the allegations. Socialist Worker was the only paper to stand up and defend Scargill. We produced two special editions of the paper which systematically disproved every single allegation against him.

We were also key in launching a defence campaign. The campaign held huge public meetings and gathered thousands of signatures in support of Scargill. The campaign saw off the threats against him. All of the court actions and prosecutions collapsed.

Now, 12 years later, Greenslade has admitted what Socialist Worker said at the time-that all the allegations were lies. The witchhunt shows just how far the bosses and press barons are prepared to go to fit up a union leader. Greenslade was not a rabid right winger. He says he supported and gave money to the miners during the 1984-5 strike.

But such was the pressure that he ran the smears, even though he says he doubted their truth. Greenslade now accepts he was completely wrong to do so. But 12 years after the event is too little, too late. Today right wing media barons, the New Labour government and right wingers in the trade union movement are resorting to the same kind of dirty tricks to discredit left wing union leaders.

The right wing executive of the civil servants' PCS union has torn up democracy and tried to oust left winger Mark Serwotka from the leadership of the union. Earlier this year papers like the Sun and the Evening Standard ran a flood of scare stories against left wing union leaders like RMT rail workers' union leader Bob Crow.

The witchhunts are because the media and the bosses are terrified that groups of workers are beginning to organise today to fight back against low pay and privatisation. In January this year Socialist Worker revealed that even figures inside the labour movement were attempting to smear left wingers. We exposed how an official inside the Trades Union Congress had spun his own witchhunting stories to try and prevent the election of Bob Crow. Just as we didn't wait in 1990, Socialist Worker argues it is vital that we speak out now against these attacks.

That is why Socialist Worker is part of launching a vigorous campaign to defend Mark Serwotka, and why we will defend all the other left wing union leaders when they are attacked and vilified by the right.

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=5476" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Tman]

Scargill was the subject of a smear campaign, no doubt about that, but then the "Socialist Worker" can hardly be trusted to give an unbiased account either.
As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

[borders]

Scargill was the subject of a smear campaign, no doubt about that, but then the "Socialist Worker" can hardly be trusted to give an unbiased account either.
As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

so what part of this did you not get Mr Tman ? -----
THE MAN who used to edit one of Britain's biggest popular newspapers last week made an astonishing admission. He confessed that a major smear campaign his paper ran against the left wing leader of one of Britain's key trade unions was in fact a pack of lies. Roy Greenslade, the former editor of the Mirror newspaper, offered "the sincerest of apologies" to National Union of Mineworkers leader Arthur Scargill for the lies the paper told during a six-month campaign in 1990. ----
maybe the SWP is not to your liking but it is there in black and white A PACK OF LIES. read the book THE ENEMY WITHIN by Seumas Milne.

[borders]

Scargill was the subject of a smear campaign, no doubt about that, but then the "Socialist Worker" can hardly be trusted to give an unbiased account either.
As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

maybe this is more palatable--------------
Sorry, ArthurIn 1990, the Daily Mirror, then edited by Roy Greenslade, claimed that at the height of the miners' strike NUM president Arthur Scargill had taken money raised for strikers. But now the truth can be revealed
Roy Greenslade
The Guardian, Monday 27 May 2002
Article history
On March 19 this year the highest court in France, the Cour de Cassation, ordered Roger Windsor, former chief executive of the National Union of Mineworkers, to repay a debt of £29,500. The judgment went unreported in Britain, as did an NUM press release more than a month later that celebrated the court's ruling.

Yet this case - and Windsor's humiliation - deserve the widest possible audience because they are the culmination of a deplorable saga which goes some way to vindicating a wronged man: NUM president Arthur Scargill. Wronged by the press in general, by the Daily Mirror specifically and, since I was then its editor, by me.

We journalists seem to find it impossible to apologise for what we have written and I know, sadly, that some old friends and colleagues won't appreciate this mea culpa. But lingering embarrassment is far outweighed by my heartfelt delight in being able, at last, to put the record straight by saying sorry.

Twelve years ago, the Mirror published a series of stories which genuinely deserved the adjective sensational. The most damaging "fact", headlined with a certainty that brooked no contradiction, was that Scargill had paid off the mortgage on his house with money donated by Libya. The main story claimed that at the height of the 1984-5 strike, Scargill had counted out £70,000 from money supposed to go to suffering strikers to clear his £25,000 home loan from the NUM, along with those of two other officials, the then general secretary Peter Heathfield and the then chief executive, none other than Roger Windsor.

Running in parallel were several other cloak-and-dagger tales about £1m donated by Russian miners, movements of funds through Swiss and Irish banks and boxes of cash being driven through the night. There was a cast list of exotic characters, including Libya's Colonel Gadafy, a Pakistani shopkeeper in Doncaster called Altaf Abassi and Scargill's former driver-cum-minder Jim Parker.

Almost as exotic was the Mirror man responsible for obtaining the original tips, Terry Pattinson - the testy and excitable industrial editor. He was first approached by Parker, who had fallen out with Scargill, in July 1989. Very soon after, he was separately contacted by Windsor, who had quit the union and said he had a terrific story to sell to the paper.

My predecessor as Mirror editor, Richard Stott, then oversaw months of an investigation code-named Operation Cyclops. Cash deals of £50,000 were agreed with Parker and Windsor. Contracts were signed. The investigation was said to be nearing completion when Stott was deposed by Mirror proprietor Robert Maxwell in my favour.

When I took over in February 1990, Maxwell gleefully confided that the paper had a huge, hush-hush scandal in the pipeline. But my heart sank when I realised the subject: I had no animus against Scargill (quite the reverse); I thought it inappropriate for the left-of-centre Mirror to target a trade union leader; but, most important, I thought the copy presented to me was both impenetrable and lacking in substance. With the NUM's assets under sequestration during the strike, it had been entirely understandable for Scargill and his executive to use subterfuge to protect their funds. I had donated money to street collectors shaking buckets and I didn't really expect it to reach strikers through official union routes.

To help me understand what Cyclops was about, I assigned two experienced reporters - Frank Thorne and Ted Oliver - to go over every detail of Pattinson's story, and to reinterview Parker and Windsor. It was obvious Pattinson had no love for Scargill, and I wanted to make sure this didn't cloud his judgment. He also detested the involvement of Thorne and Oliver, and there were several rows between the trio. After one noisy pub argument, I had to placate the fractious Pattinson by pretending to admonish the other two.

This incident alerted me to the most farcical situation of all: the great Scargill story was no secret. Five months before I became editor, Scargill had got wind that something was up, and his union's paper ran a story asking: "Has Robert Maxwell's Daily Mirror launched a special 'smear' campaign against the NUM? And is its prime target union president Arthur Scargill?"

After a couple of weeks, an industrial correspondent from a rival paper asked me when we were going to run our Scargill scoop. Not only did half of Fleet Street appear to know, I then discovered that Central TV's The Cook Report was so far down the road on the same investigation that its intrepid reporter, Roger Cook, was already planning his script. I could and should have abandoned the whole project at that point. But I respected the reporting talents of Thorne and Oliver who, despite their disagreements with Pattinson, had come to believe in the veracity of his informants' stories.

By this time our main witness, Windsor, was living in France and I sent the trio to see him, to go over every point in his allegations. He demanded a further £30,000 (eventually paid to him) and proved difficult to deal with. They did have reservations about him, due in part to his reluctance to return to Britain, but on balance they believed him. The central revelations concerned the mortgage repayments and the fact, always previously denied, that the NUM had received money from Libya. Each of the claims was sensational. Linked, they were dynamite. But was Windsor telling the truth?

Parker couldn't really corroborate either claim. He spoke mainly about collecting boxes of cash from British trade union leaders. Windsor named Abassi as the Libyan link man who given him the money and, after a little persuasion, Abassi confirmed to Thorne and Oliver that he had given £163,000 to Windsor from Libyan sources. There was still a problem. Windsor was the only witness to the alleged dividing of the money to repay home loans. With the Cook programme pressing to broadcast and requesting our help in return for telling us what they knew, one of the most extraordinary moments in my journalistic career happened.

Out of the blue, Steve Hudson, the finance officer whom Windsor had named as the other man in the room when the money was counted out, phoned one of our reporters. Hours later, he turned up in my office to give a taped interview in which he confirmed every word of Windsor's account. He didn't ask for payment and spoke under no duress. Despite my earlier misgivings, I could no longer turn a blind eye to Cyclops.

Throughout these weeks I had been editing a paper owned by the world's most intrusive proprietor. But I didn't tell Maxwell how the Scargill investigation was progressing until suddenly informing him that we had to publish on March 5 to coincide with that evening's Cook Report. He was furious - Maxwell hated surprises - and was even more bad-tempered when the Sun preempted our scoop with a story suggesting that Scargill was facing a controversy over Libyan and Russian money. After we published, Maxwell foolishly hogged the TV limelight, reinforcing Scargill's belief that Maxwell was part of a plot.

We sent a set of written questions to Scargill but, nervous of an injunction, didn't mention the mortgage. That was an ethically suspect decision, breaking a time-honoured tradition in which people are given a chance to answer press allegations. I expected Scargill to sue. Pattinson, convinced by every allegation, was sure he wouldn't. He was right about that. Scargill confined himself to a statement decrying our "vicious lies".

The series ran all week and one evening Maxwell asked me if I was entirely happy with the story's provenance. I knew immediately what he meant. Had the Daily Mirror been duped as part of a secret service plot to discredit Scargill? Was Windsor, if not an agent of MI5, being manipulated by one of its officers? I discussed this with the trio and they dismissed any such notion. Thorne and Oliver didn't much like Windsor, but they thought him an unlikely recruit to MI5. They pointed to the interlocking jigsaw in which Parker, Abassi, Windsor and Hudson had played their parts and, as I would repeat endlessly in the following months and years, if it wasn't true why hadn't Scargill sued for libel?

Even when Gavin Lightman QC, who held an inquiry at the NUM's prompting, ruled that the mortgage story was "entirely untrue" I was relaxed - though I was badly shaken by Hudson changing his story. Most of us moved on. I departed from the Mirror. Maxwell departed from this earth. Peter Heathfield retired in 1992, distraught at the slur on his name. But Scargill, similarly outraged, fought on.

The most important enduring court action was launched by the French-based International Energy and Miners' Organisation (IEMO), which sought to recover from Windsor the £29,500 he had admitted receiving from union funds. In 1994, the IEMO won its case to recover the money when a French court decided that despite his denials, Windsor had signed a mortgage deed and - according to forensic handwriting experts - his wife's signature, which strongly resembled his own, had been forged.

Four years later, two courts of appeal in Bordeaux reaffirmed that judgment. The Cour de Cassation was Windsor's last hope. Now claiming insolvency, he faces a bill for the loan plus interest, costs and damages estimated at £250,000.

I left a phone message at Windsor's home in central France this week. He did not reply, but his London-based lawyer called in his stead. I repeated that I wished to speak to Windsor, who didn't call back. Similarly, Hudson - now the director of finance for the coal industry social welfare organisation - didn't return my call.

So was Windsor working for MI5? He strenuously denies it and recently sued the Daily Express for asserting that he was. Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, was asked directly by the Guardian last September whether he was an MI5 agent. Choosing her words carefully, she replied: "It would be correct to say that he, Roger Windsor, was never an agent in any sense of the word that you can possibly imagine."

It looks as though the mystery behind Windsor's decision to make such sweeping allegations against his former union colleagues may never be solved. It has brought him to ruin and the NUM estimates it has cost the union £750,000 to fight court battles since the Mirror's series.

I am now convinced that Scargill didn't misuse strike funds and that the union didn't get money from Libya. I also concede that, given the supposed wealth of Maxwell's Mirror and the state of NUM finances, it was understandable that Scargill didn't sue.

Nothing I have said should be taken as criticism of the Mirror trio: we were all taken in. I can't undo what has been done, but I am pleased to offer the sincerest of apologies to Heathfield and to Scargill, who is on the verge of retirement. I regret ever publishing that story. And that is the honest truth.

[Tman]

Scargill was the subject of a smear campaign, no doubt about that, but then the ex-editor of the Mirror can hardly be trusted to give an unbiased account either, after all, he has just admitted to lying..
As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, maybe.
Whatever this old twerp says doesn't exonerate Scargill from whatever he may/may not have done, but then the old-style Mirror was only the Sun in a Red guise anyway.

[borders]

Scargill was the subject of a smear campaign, no doubt about that, but then the ex-editor of the Mirror can hardly be trusted to give an unbiased account either, after all, he has just admitted to lying..
As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, maybe.
Whatever this old twerp says doesn't exonerate Scargill from whatever he may/may not have done, but then the old-style Mirror was only the Sun in a Red guise anyway.

nice try Mr Tman, slippery as ever.

[johnsouthwales]

Mark Serwotka is a familiar name.. pcs. and he's from wales. he didn't bother replying to me a few years ago (2005) when his own members caused an awful lot of trouble towards me, which resulted in my personal illness and interfered with my well being because of their muck up

[Tman]

Scargill was the subject of a smear campaign, no doubt about that, but then the ex-editor of the Mirror can hardly be trusted to give an unbiased account either, after all, he has just admitted to lying..
As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, maybe.
Whatever this old twerp says doesn't exonerate Scargill from whatever he may/may not have done, but then the old-style Mirror was only the Sun in a Red guise anyway.

nice try Mr Tman, slippery as ever.

You take too much of the printed word at face value and as the "truth".

Things are rarely black or white, and Scargill's efforts and achievements are a good case in point. The Far Left love him because he took on the "Establishment" as embodied by the Thatcher bitch, but away from the political dreamers and dogmatists he was an abject failure for the very people he was supposed to lead. Still, good to see the good old SW is still lauding the old boy after all these years.
But then Far Left never do have many super-heroes....

[johnsouthwales]

that is part of the flaw. i know mark is towards the very left of centre, and quite confrontational about issues concerning his members issues. probably what he did not realise at the time until i contacted him, that some sections of his own members sanctioned exploitation of labour and abuse of general wellbeing.

funny enough, i was in contact with peter hain's office regarding the same issue.. only to be told "oh i didnt know these things were happening".

[borders]

Scargill was the subject of a smear campaign, no doubt about that, but then the ex-editor of the Mirror can hardly be trusted to give an unbiased account either, after all, he has just admitted to lying..
As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, maybe.
Whatever this old twerp says doesn't exonerate Scargill from whatever he may/may not have done, but then the old-style Mirror was only the Sun in a Red guise anyway.

nice try Mr Tman, slippery as ever.

You take too much of the printed word at face value and as the "truth".

Things are rarely black or white, and Scargill's efforts and achievements are a good case in point. The Far Left love him because he took on the "Establishment" as embodied by the Thatcher bitch, but away from the political dreamers and dogmatists he was an abject failure for the very people he was supposed to lead. Still, good to see the good old SW is still lauding the old boy after all these years.
But then Far Left never do have many super-heroes....

absolutely nothing to do with my reply to Savo, i just pointed out to him that there was no truth in the allegation that Scargill paid off his mortgage with money from the strikers fund. the Daily Mirror editor has admitted he told a pack of lies, that is a fact , what the hell has that got to do with your poxy rant about the SWP ??