NUM: witch-hunt against Scargill
Labour Briefing1990sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
They have all been waiting for a chance to destroy Arthur Scargill.
The right-wing in the labour movement, the employers and the Thatcher government have been queuing up.
They all hate him for what he represents: uncompromising class struggle trade unionism and the defence of the interests of the working class.
The Miners' Strike was the great battleground which set the scene for the second half of the Thatcher years and the strengthened grip of New Realism on the labour movement in Britain.
Now we are told that it is the likes of Roger Poole who represents the way forward for the trade union movement, and is able to lead us to great victories. Scargill represents a by-gone age and we should forget all he stood for.
Now Robert Maxwell has stepped forward to lead the pack. Maxwell has used the Daily Mirror and his multi-millions to run a five day smear campaign which he says was "researched" by five senior journalists over a seven month period covering nine countries.
The smell of dirty tricks could not be stronger.
Maxwell's star witness was Roger Windsor who was reputedly paid a huge retainer for his services.
He only taken on as an employee of the NUM (an unelected member of staff) shortly before the strike and was soon elevated to the top of the unions administration: Chief Executive Officer.
Some several years after the strike he left the country to live in France.
In October last year Arthur Scargill called in the South Yorkshire police to investigate his connections with a company which received contacts for the new Notts area NUM offices.
It was Jim Parker — Scargill's personal driver — who claimed that Scargill had paid off his own mortgage, and that loans had been made to Peter Heathfield and Roger Windsor with money received from Libya.
Parker resigned his NUM job last year and has since co-operated with the Mirror "inquiry".
The NUM disputes this in the case of Scargill and Heathfield.
Sums of money owed by them to the NUM were paid off, when the union was faced with sequestration, from a trust fund and subsequently, in Scargill's case, repaid from his own funds.
Peter Heathfield's house is now owned by the National Union.
Windsor, however, has never repaid the £329,000 lent to him when the NUM office moved from London and is presently facing legal proceedings for its recovery.
Whatever the exact circumstances of the loans or their repayment, however, one thing is clear. The motivation for the transactions was not personal gain (and there is no evidence that either Scargill or Heathfield gained anything) but an attempt to stop the sequestrators from seizing the houses at a crucial stage of the strike.
Hundreds of transactions had to be made at that time in an attempt to keep the union functioning. It was Scargill's strength that he was prepared to defy the law if necessary — and those are the kind of measures which are then necessary.
Most of the right wing of the trade union movement have kept silent on the matter — which clearly showed where they stood.
Some, however, were more vocal. Kinnock called for an "independent inquiry". Eric Hammond has denounced Scargill and supported Maxwell as could be expected.
But the most vicious comments came from Kim Howells — who was also an unelected employee of the NUM (in South Wales) and who assumed great prominence and influence during the strike. Like Windsor, he stabbed the Scargill leadership in the back and he helped engineer the end of the strike.
He went into the newpapers to denounce Scargill as guilty as charged: "there will be tears in the valleys but the Daily Mirror has done a tremendous service to the NUM".
Scargill is right when he says that what is involved is attempted character assassination.
The issue is not whether the NUM took money from Libya or the Soviet Union or anywhere else to finance the greatest battle against the Thatcher Government. The issue is that is that they all want Scargill and what he represents out of the way.
They don't want him as leader of the NUM or as a Labour MP leading a fight against Kinnock in the Commons. The prospect of a Labour Government makes this all the more urgent in some quarters.
Militants in the trade unions must defend Scargill and the fighting tradition he represents.