Neo-liberalism, Monetarism, and the Ridley Report

During the 1950s and 1960s, successive British governments had adhered to the postwar settlement. The country had kept to a social-democratic, Keynesian economic program, based upon a symbiosis of free-market capitalism and government planning.Footnote ¹⁰ Although primarily a capitalistic economy, the government would step in when needed, propping up struggling industries until those sectors had recovered. Key industries, including coal, were fully nationalized. Throughout those decades, Britain had experienced consistently low levels of unemployment. After twenty years of Keynesianism, Britain was home to a network of nationalized public services, protected by a robust network of public sector trade unions. By the mid-1970s, however, the economic growth evident in those previous decades seemed to have broken down. Inflation was surging, causing a series of fiscal crises for Britain, which included a bail-out from the International Monetary Fund in 1975–1976 to ward off bankruptcy.Footnote ¹¹ As such, many looked for a new economic direction. The mid-1970s had seen a revival, mainly in Britain and the United States, of doctrines of the free-market, both as ideology and as political economy.Footnote ¹² At the forefront of this new ideological direction was the neoliberal doctrine of monetarism, championed by the economist Milton Friedman.Footnote ¹³ Central to all neoliberal doctrine was a belief in the superiority of individualized, market-based competition over other modes of economic organization.Footnote ¹⁴ Named the Chicago School after the university that Friedman taught at, these free-market fundamentalists were highly critical of state involvement in economic issues. Moreover, they saw near-full employment as a negative manifestation. They believed that the absence of any fear of bankruptcy or unemployment had swung the pendulum of power too far to the side of the workers. They pointed to the huge increase, under Keynesianism, of the bargaining power of the trade unions. This was a major cause, argued the monetarists, of Britain and America's economic stagnation. As such, the monetarists were hostile toward the very idea of trade unions, which they saw as artificial barriers to unregulated laissez-faire. In Britain, an early adherent to monetarist doctrine was Conservative Secretary of State for Social Services Keith Joseph. Joseph was an influential member of the monetarist think-tank the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). The IEA had long argued for a move toward unregulated laissez-faire, since its inception in 1955.Footnote ¹⁵ After the Tory election defeat of 1974, Joseph became shadow home secretary. He also became the de-facto leader of a group of rebels within the Conservative Party, who advised that the Tories should move away from traditional conservatism, abandon adherence to the postwar settlement, and embrace Friedman-style monetarism. One of Joseph's allies was the Conservative MP for Cirencester and Tewkesbury, Nicholas Ridley.

Ridley was an archetypal Tory of a certain kind—an old-Etonian, Oxford graduate, and outspoken critic of socialism. He had been fiercely aligned with the Conservative Party since his Oxford days and had championed monetarist theory since the 1960s, when the ideology was nothing more than a fringe theory.Footnote ¹⁶ In 1974, Ridley was open about his involvement in Joseph's rebel group. Like Joseph himself, Ridley felt that the leadership of the moderate Ted Heath had been a disaster for the party—culminating in the election defeat of 1974. As well as a penchant for free-market fundamentalism and a deeply-entrenched dislike of socialism, Ridley felt that Heath's weakness in the face of trade union militancy, particularly in the form of the NUM, had cost the Tories that election. Ridley was personally unhappy with the Heath tenure, and believed that the former leader was responsible for leading the party off course, not only in the case of the election defeat, but also ideologically.Footnote ¹⁷ In 1972, Heath had appointed Ridley to a policy group tasked with determining privatization policy for the Conservative government. However, Ridley soon became disillusioned at what he saw as dithering and backtracking from the party leader. After Heath attempted to move Ridley sideways, Ridley resigned, declaring that he wanted nothing more to do with a Heath-led government, and returned to the back benches.Footnote ¹⁸ Ridley's ingrained dislike of socialism, his fondness for monetarism, and his personal dislike for Heath made him a willing member of Joseph's rebels.

Heath's election defeat had strengthened the position of the Tory monetarist rebels. However, they did meet with stern opposition from traditionally small-c conservatives within the party. Ian Gilmour, who had been secretary of state for defense prior to the election defeat, denounced the monetarists on two counts. Firstly, that strict adherence to monetarism was no different from strict adherence to socialism. Secondly, that strict adherence to any doctrine was anathema to traditional British big-C Conservative politics. Gilmour would later denounce monetarism as “simple-minded, text-book economics.”Footnote ¹⁹ Nevertheless, the monetarist group continued to win over supporters. According to Ridley, a vital ally was secured later in 1974. At that time, Thatcher became a staunch adherent to monetarism and allied herself with the Joseph group.Footnote ²⁰ According to Ridley, he, Joseph, and Thatcher were all heavily influenced by, and met regularly with, Alan Walters, a monetarist economist based at the London School of Economics.Footnote ²¹ Walters, who knew Friedman personally, was, like his friend, an open supporter of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.Footnote ²² With American backing, Pinochet had overthrown the democratically-elected left-wing government in Chile, and turned the country into the first fully-monetarist state. Also like Friedman, Walters visited the dictator in Santiago numerous times. Walters neither supported nor condemned the repression that Chile's Chicago School policies appeared to necessitate.

Thatcher's Conservative Leadership Election victory, in February 1975, saw the monetarists take control of the Conservative Party for the first time. The new Leader of the Opposition derogatorily denounced the Tory MP's not fully committed to monetarism—labeling them as “wets.” Thatcher attacked some of the entrenched forms of class power and aristocratic traditions that dominated the military, the judiciary, and the financial elite, much to the fury of traditional conservatives, such as Gilmour. The target for most of Thatcher's rhetoric was, however, the political Left, as the new leader of the opposition regularly displayed an almost fanatical hatred of socialism. In a 1977 Shadow Cabinet meeting, Thatcher announced that, for her, the real case against socialism was “not its economic inefficiency, (but) its basic immorality.”Footnote ²³ On the election campaign trail in 1979, Thatcher repeatedly linked socialism with “evil,” without ever explaining what she meant by the word socialism.Footnote ²⁴ Rather than talking about any economic benefits or drawbacks of competing economic systems, Thatcher, Ridley, and the monetarists portrayed themselves as moral crusaders, whose mission was to eliminate socialism from British society.Footnote ²⁵ Rather than viewing Britain's economic problems in terms of policy failings, the Conservative leadership, after 1975, began to view those problems in line with monetarist theory—as symptoms of a long-term malaise in both the British economy and British society.Footnote ²⁶ Thatcher and her presumed mentor, Joseph, believed that if an incoming Conservative government was to deliver monetarism in a democratic society, the tenets of the Keynesian system—the welfare state, the nationalized industries, as well as working-class institutions such as the trade unions—had to be attacked and dismantled. In their place, industries would be fully privatized. As Joseph reflected in 1975, “monetarism is not enough.”Footnote ²⁷ However, the Tories needed a detailed plan, a strategy of how they would go about implementing their attacks and opening up those markets to privatization should they return to power, as expected, in the next general election.

With his fellow monetarists now at the helm of the party, Nicholas Ridley had been asked to join a Conservative, parliamentary speech-writing team, alongside Norman Tebbit and Nigel Lawson. The purpose of this team was to discuss and devise the best strategies for harassing the Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, during the Prime Minister's Questions.Footnote ²⁸ As a fellow monetarist back from the rebel days, and someone whose writing skills were valued by the party, Ridley may well have seemed like the perfect choice for Thatcher and Joseph, as they looked for a candidate to write the plan of attack on the barriers to monetarism. Ridley's devotion to monetarism was second to none. In 1975, Ridley's admiration for Pinochet led him into a series of meetings with the retired British Army General, Walter Walker. Walker had previously described himself as an English Pinochet in waiting, who believed that a military coup was needed if the Conservatives were to break trade union power in Britain.Footnote ²⁹ According to Walker, Ridley often insinuated that he agreed with the idea of a military coup, though “didn't have the guts to say it outright.”Footnote ³⁰ In early 1977, Thatcher and Joseph tasked Ridley with formulating a privatization plan. This was a repeat of Ridley's brief under Heath, from five years earlier. However, Ridley was “delighted” to accept, given that, unlike that original brief, this was issued by a leadership more ideologically-compatible with Ridley himself.Footnote ³¹ Later in 1977, with the Tories still in opposition, Ridley produced his report.

The Ridley Report was a detailed blueprint on how to firstly provoke, and secondly win, a battle against the so-called “barriers” to monetarism. The report suggested several steps in order to achieve the stated, monetarist goals of “fragmentation” and “denationalization” of key industries.Footnote ³² Echoing the contemporary monetarist thinking of Joseph and Walters, Ridley outlined the motivation behind his report. He listed five objectives that an incoming Tory government should look to implement: breaking up the power of the “monopolistic” public sector trade unions, rooting out inefficiency, spreading responsibility within management, linking worker reward and effort, and facilitating denationalization.Footnote ³³ Ridley argued that previously there had been too much “carrot” and not enough “stick” in regard to negotiations with public sector trade unions.Footnote ³⁴ As such, he argued, the lack of fear of redundancy meant that financial discipline in the nationalized industries could never be achieved. Ridley was clear, in no uncertain terms, that “plants must be closed and people must be sacked” if particular plants were not “economic.”Footnote ³⁵ The Ridley Report suggested that the first step on the road to privatization should be to provoke and attack one of Britain's powerful trade unions.Footnote ³⁶ The coal industry was suggested as the prime target. Despite its polemical language, however, the report was much more than a vague proposal to be taken or left. Rather, it was a detailed stratagem that gave precise recommendations on how to prepare for and win the battle, once provoked. These recommendations included the transformation of the police, the conversion of power stations to oil-burn, recruitment of non-union haulage firms, issuing anti-strike legislation, recruiting politically-aligned chairmen, and stockpiling coal supplies before the provoked strike could occur.

In the confidential annex to the Ridley Report, it was suggested that an incoming Conservative government should look to provoke a battle in a non-vulnerable industry, where the Tories would be most likely to win.Footnote ³⁷ The nationalized industries were put into lists of vulnerability in order to assess which one the government should attack. The report warned against an attack on the electricity, gas, or water industries, due to the small amount of time the country could last without those particular amenities. However, the first name on the “vulnerable” list was coal.Footnote ³⁸ The Report pointed to the government's victory over striking postal workers in 1971 as the model for success. It was suggested that a real “opportunity” could lie in destroying one of the “vulnerable” industries. The damage would be such that “it would be irreversible by a future Labour government.”Footnote ³⁹ After a fight in a pre-chosen industry had been provoked, continued the Report, the Tories would only need to sit back and wait for a spark to ignite the fuse. It was presumed that the spark would come over wage claims or redundancies. The Report also warned that any incoming Tory government should be aware of the “communist disruptors” of Britain's trade union movement who, the Report claimed, would be all too happy to “exploit (any) discontent.”Footnote ⁴⁰ In order to counter the political threat, continued the Report, haulage companies that employed non-union drivers should be recruited to “help us move coal when necessary.”Footnote ⁴¹ Also, power stations should be converted to oil-firing, undermining the country's dependency on coal.Footnote ⁴² In the Report's confidential annex, Ridley was clear that when it came to provoking the battle, once again “the most likely area is Coal.”Footnote ⁴³ As such, he suggested specific precautions be set in place to deal with the formidable flying pickets of the NUM, whom Ridley described as the “Saltley Gate mob,” a reference to an earlier coal dispute.Footnote ⁴⁴ On the one hand, the report suggests a large, mobile squad of police be assembled and, on the other hand, that financial legislation be brought in to “cut off the supply of money to the strikers” during the coming, planned conflict.Footnote ⁴⁵ Ridley also suggested stockpiling supplies of coal in order to prepare for the coming battle.Footnote ⁴⁶ He went on to recommend that “sympathetic chairmen” should be recruited and put in place before the plan was implemented.Footnote ⁴⁷ However, Ridley feared the formidable strength of the trade unions within Britain's nationalized industries. As such, the Report warned against a frontal attack on an admittedly strong foe. Instead, it was suggested, a plan should be put in place to return the “industries to the private sector more or less by stealth.”Footnote ⁴⁸ This call for stealth is crucial, as throughout this paper it will be shown that the plan to use stealth was central to the PU's strategy.

A central tenet of monetarism was the need to dramatically reduce the amount of money in circulation, in the hope of cutting inflation.Footnote ⁴⁹ Denis Healey, the previous Labour chancellor, had embraced some tenets of monetarism before Thatcher came to power, by cutting government spending. However, Labour's monetarist policies, and accompanying public-sector pay caps, were deeply unpopular with trade union leaders. In the winter of 1978, a wave of public sector strikes took place—weakening the Labour government and causing Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan to label the situation as the “Winter of Discontent.” The anti-union, right-wing press seized on the phrase—and went about portraying the country as being paralyzed by over-bearing, over-powerful “union-barons” who were unwilling to enter into any form of negotiation. In reality, many of the strikes were about poor pay and conditions caused by the economic stagnation of the period. Between 1975 and 1980, real wages in Britain had fallen by thirteen percent—the biggest contraction since the 1930s.Footnote ⁵⁰ With the economy struggling and the rhetoric of “union-barons” prevalent, the Tories were able to sweep to power in the general election of 1979. Armed with the Ridley Report, Thatcher began to fill key roles in her administration with key monetarist allies. The original leader of the Tory monetarists, Keith Joseph, became Secretary of State for Industry. Another Thatcherite, Geoffrey Howe, was made Chancellor. Between 1979 and 1981, Howe went about implementing a raft of monetarist policies collectively labeled the Medium Term Financial Strategy. In 1980, the so-called “wets” were alarmed when Howe told one of them that for him, monetarism was not a political ideology, but rather an incontrovertible scientific principle, like the law of gravitation.Footnote ⁵¹ In 1981, Thatcher appointed the monetarists’ favorite economist, Alan Walters, to the position of Chief Economics Advisor. In 1983, Ridley himself was rewarded with the post of secretary of state for transport. Ridley's own monetarism had not waned. Neither had his support for Thatcher. In 1985, toward the end of the strike, he upset the “wets” by declaring that Thatcher's large electoral majorities had given her an unprecedented, unquestionable jurisdiction, meaning that only she alone should make important governmental decisions. The views of the “wets” were deemed inconsequential to Ridley.Footnote ⁵² Defending monetarism in the late 1980s, Thatcher herself would echo Howe's earlier claim that for her and her ministers, monetarism was “as essential as the law of gravity.”Footnote ⁵³

In his paper, John Saville had labeled the new political and ideological direction of the Conservatives as the “new Toryism.” This was represented, most evidently, argued the historian, by the rise of a raft of hard-Right reactionary ideas and organizations such as the Economic League and the National Association for Freedom, the latter an umbrella group of Conservative reactionaries, which included Norman Tebbit, who would serve as Thatcher's secretary of state for trade and industry during the strike. Saville was the first to highlight the existence of the Ridley Report which, he argued, Thatcher and the Tories had adhered to for the duration of the strike.

Scargill, the NUM, and Saltley Gate

Arthur Scargill, the President of the NUM, stood in complete ideological antithesis to Thatcher and the new monetarist thinking. The NUM president was known for his open espousal of class politics, his friendship with Fidel Castro, and his solidarity with left-wing regimes around the world.Footnote ⁵⁴ Scargill's father had been a communist, and Arthur had joined the Young Communist League at age fifteen.Footnote ⁵⁵ As well as his penchant for revolutionary politics, Scargill believed in using union militancy to bring about change. He already had a successful template to adhere to: a victory over the Conservatives and the police in 1972. That year, Scargill had been instrumental in organizing the NUM picketing of the Birmingham coking plant, Saltley Gate. Though just a branch official at that time, Scargill had convinced around twenty thousand flying pickets—not only miners but also sympathetic members of local unions from other industries—to descend on the plant on February 10, 1972. The move forced West Midlands Chief Constable Derrick Capper to ask the depot manager to close the plant. Humiliatingly for the police, this was done in full view of the television cameras.Footnote ⁵⁶ As well as police humiliation, Edward Heath's Conservative government was also forced into a spectacular climb-down, weakly arguing that they had suddenly realized that the miners were a “special case.”Footnote ⁵⁷ Though the strike in 1972 was primarily about pay and conditions, Scargill openly espoused his accompanying, ideological objectives. Using Marxian rhetoric, the Branch Official would call for the working-class to “take over the means of production,” in order to “create a new socialist society.”Footnote ⁵⁸ For Scargill, Saltley Gate and the 1972 Miners’ Strike was nothing short of a class war, and a victorious one against Heath and the Tories.Footnote ⁵⁹ Arthur was not alone in this thinking. Britain's small, but committed Communist Party (CP) had been working quietly to secure the election of party members to key NUM positions since the sixties, according to the CP's own industrial organizer, Bert Ramelson.Footnote ⁶⁰ Mick McGahey, the NUM's Vice President from 1972 onwards, was a member of the CP's Ruling Committee.Footnote ⁶¹ Although Scargill had distanced himself from the CP by 1972, he remained on friendly terms with them, and often secured backing from them at crucial moments. For Thatcher, then Secretary of State for Education Saltley Gate was a symbolic surrender for the police and the Conservative-led state in the face of trade union militancy.Footnote ⁶² In its confidential annex, the Ridley Report had also named the incident, warning of the need to uphold the law against “the Saltley Gate mob” in the future, planned confrontation.

It has been argued that Scargill and the flying pickets were also instrumental in forcing Heath into calling an impromptu general election in 1974, after a raft of further strikes.Footnote ⁶³ Amongst Tory politicians, anti-NUM hawks such as Ridley had initially wanted an election. They felt that a large Tory majority, as predicted in the polls, would strengthen the government's hand and allow the Tories to be tougher in their negotiations with the then NUM leader, Joe Gormley.Footnote ⁶⁴ However, the Tories were hampered by Heath's stilted public appearances and a series of damaging reports revealing poor economic growth in the run up to election-day. The 1974 election also saw a surge in support for the Liberal Party, an unexpected development which harmed the Tories at the polls much more than it did Labour. The peculiarities of the British electoral system meant that the Liberal surge harmed the Tories without allowing them to gain any more influence of their own. Though the Liberals got six million votes, this transformed into a mere fourteen seats. The Tories still got the largest share of the vote, but this was not reflected by the first-past-the-post electoral system, which saw the Tories trailing Labour by four seats. Heath's election gamble had backfired in the most spectacular fashion. Desperate to cling to power amid a wave of criticism from every direction, including Joseph's monetarist rebels inside his own party, Heath met with Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe in the hope of forming a coalition. However, talks broke down over Thorpe's wish to become home secretary. Heath later admitted that aides had told him that “things in Thorpe's private life, as yet undisclosed to the public, might make this a highly unsustainable position for him to hold.”Footnote ⁶⁵ It was left to the Labour Party to form a minority government. After the defeat, Heath's political secretary Douglas Hurd wrote in his diary that, in the ongoing battle between the Tories and the NUM, the party was now “wandering vainly over the battlefield, looking for someone to surrender to.”Footnote ⁶⁶ The NUM had been instrumental in forcing Heath to call the election. As such, Heath's defeat fed myths about the industrial and political strength of the miners’ union.Footnote ⁶⁷ In truth, Gormley, who was considered a moderate by National Coal Board (NCB) chiefs, had no intention of “bringing down the government.” Heath had chosen to go to the country, despite negative opinion regarding his handling of the strike and widespread public sympathy for the miners’ cause.Footnote ⁶⁸ Heath had campaigned by asking the nation who ran the country. The electorate had decided that it certainly was not him.

The minority Labour government warded off the threat of NUM industrial action by agreeing to terms beneficial to the miners. Following the Conservatives' return to power in 1979, however, animosity resumed between the union and the now monetarism-aligned Tory leadership. In 1981, the Thatcher administration had its first run-in with the NUM. In February, the NCB announced a plan to close twenty-three pits deemed uneconomic, with immediate effect. A further fifty pits were earmarked to close within the next five years, leading to tens-of-thousands of job losses. The announcement by the NCB led to a wave of strikes across the more left-wing areas of the NUM. Senior Tories felt that the NCB Chairman, Derek Ezra, had been foolish to announce the closure program.Footnote ⁶⁹ None of the recommendations in the Ridley Report were in place—as Ezra's own tenancy as NCB Chairman showed. Moreover, the miners seemed united in support of the strikes, and the government was facing polls depicting large levels of unpopularity amongst the electorate.Footnote ⁷⁰ Fearing that the government was not in a position to face down the strikes, the closure program was withdrawn—on orders from Thatcher herself.Footnote ⁷¹ Once again, the NUM seemed to have displayed its political clout, in doing so defeating a sitting Tory government intent on closures. In December 1981, Scargill was elected President of the NUM with a massive majority, signaling a shift leftwards in the NUM leadership. Scargill's election was complemented by a corresponding left-wing shift at the NUM national conference, and a series of appointments of Scargill loyalists to the NUM Executive Committee. Just as the Tory government was now being led by hard-liners, Scargill and his supporters gained control over the national NUM apparatus for the first time.Footnote ⁷² The left-wing leadership felt that the only way to combat further closure threats was to match the NCB and the government with their own uncompromising, hardline stance. However, some less militant but longstanding members of the NUM Executive Committee felt alienated by the leftwards shift. Self-described right-winger Roy Ottey argued that he and others on the Right of the executive committee felt intimidated during the Special Delegate Conferences. One such event in December 1981 had been called to discuss the NCB's latest pay offer. McGahey, now Scargill's vice president, invited into the hall a group of lobbyists who had gathered outside to heckle executive members deemed too right-wing. Ottey claimed that the lobbyists had been paid for by his political opponents.Footnote ⁷³ Once inside the hall, the hissing continued as an accompaniment to the speeches of those in favor of accepting the NCB's offer. With the Left consolidating power at the top of the union, Scargill repeatedly claimed that the NCB were pursuing a program of pit closures by stealth, on behalf of the Conservative government. He made the claim in October 1982, whilst addressing delegates in Stoke.Footnote ⁷⁴ The threat of further industrial action was never far away. McGahey warned, in 1983, that another coal strike was now inevitable.Footnote ⁷⁵ John Saville, as might be expected, supported Scargill and the left-wingers during the strike. However, the historian did believe that Arthur's incorruptible unwillingness to negotiate was seen by some Tories as something that they could use in their favor.Footnote ⁷⁶ In regard to stealth, Scargill was correct.

Assembling Thatcher's Policy Unit

The Downing Street Policy Unit was a relatively new department, having only been set up for the first time by Harold Wilson in 1974. After the Tories’ 1979 election victory, however, Thatcher saw the PU as a useful method by which she could get private-sector, ideologically-aligned allies into Number 10, in an official capacity. As such, she substantially increased the staff of the department, and appointed a new head of the unit, her former special advisor, John Hoskyns. Hoskyns was an ex-army officer, computer tycoon, and strident anti-trade-unionist.Footnote ⁷⁷ He had been producing reports since 1977 that were fiercely critical of trade unionism, particularly in regard to the NUM. These reports argued that previous Tory climb-downs in the face of NUM militancy were counterproductive capitulations, or adherence to the “Macmillan Doctrine.”Footnote ⁷⁸ This was a reference to a previous Tory prime minister's perceived reluctance to take on the NUM. In order for the government to stand up to these undemocratic militants, Hoskyns theorized, it was inevitable that the role of the police would have to become more militaristic as a direct response to picket-line violence—a suggestion made in the confidential annex of the Ridley Report. It is unclear whether Hoskyns read the Ridley Report, or just coincidently arrived at the same recommendations given there. What is certain, however, is that both are in identical alignment in their recommendation regarding the police. In 1982, another prominent army officer, Frank Kitson, was promoted by Thatcher to the position of Major General and Commander-in-Chief of the United Kingdom Land Forces.Footnote ⁷⁹ Kitson was a highly-regarded strategist who had been responsible for deciding army policy in Northern Ireland during the troubles. He wrote an influential book in 1971 entitled Low Intensity Operations concerning psychological warfare and counterinsurgency techniques. In it, Kitson argued that the British Army's main operations in the coming decades would be “within the (mainland) United Kingdom” and against “political extremists.”Footnote ⁸⁰ Kitson warned that a drop in living standards might cause those who protest against a wide variety of causes to unite, requiring the army to step in to “restore the position rapidly.”Footnote ⁸¹ Kitson warned that any future British government that underestimated the threat posed by these “subversives” would be remiss, and argued that steps must be taken to prepare for such a conflict, something that would be of vital importance to “those whose business it is to protect the existing order.”Footnote ⁸² According to Hoskyns and Kitson, then, trade union militancy, violence, and intimidation were responsible for a changing relationship between the state and the police force, with more militaristic techniques transferred from Northern Ireland, and gleaned from decades of suppression in the colonies, needed to transform the police into a force fit to fight the militants. Hoskyns retired as head of the PU in 1982 and was replaced by Ferdinand Mount. In another show of how valuable Thatcher regarded the PU, she credited Mount with writing the entire Conservative manifesto for the Tories’ second successful election victory in 1983. After the election, however, Thatcher replaced Mount with the merchant banker and outspoken Tory firebrand, John Redwood.

Redwood was a young, anti-trade-union, monetarist radical and member of the Conservative think-tank, the Centre for Policy Studies. He had based much of his work for the think-tank around the idea of achieving “irreversibility” for the Tories. That is, fast-paced, sweeping privatization that would prove irreversible to a future Labour government.Footnote ⁸³ As such, Redwood was the perfect recruit to head the PU if, as the Ridley Report had suggested, a battle with the trade unions was to be engineered that would cause irreversible damage to the unions. As well as Redwood, the prime minister recruited and staffed the PU with private-sector executives who filled one, or both, of two necessary criteria: firstly, known and outspoken political allies who were hostile to trade unionism, and secondly, executives from companies or corporations that were in direct economic competition with British coal. Alongside Redwood, three other leading members of the PU emerged from the new evidence. Like Redwood, all three were unelected businessmen, apparently determining government policy. Two of the four were oil executives. David Pascall was a high-end executive with British Petroleum (BP). Still working for the oil giant, he was seconded to the PU for the duration of the strike. John Wybrew worked for Britain's other oil conglomerate, Royal Dutch Shell Group. Like Pascall, Wybrew was seconded to the PU between 1984 and 1988. As such, BP and Shell would have a direct hand in the upcoming strike.

BP and Shell, their Middle Eastern oil empires, and their UK tax payments had been regarded by successive British governments, since at least as early as the Second World War, as vitally important to the country's economic interest. In late 1970, the companies had once again proven their value to the Exchequer after the discovery of North Sea Oil. By the end of 1970, BP had announced the discovery of the Forties Field, a huge reservoir in British waters off the coast of northern Scotland. A plethora of further oil-strikes followed including, in 1971, Shell and Exxon's discovery of the massive Brent Field. These discoveries became even more valuable to Britain in 1973, after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) proclaimed a worldwide oil embargo in response to the United States’ support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. By the mid-seventies, the minority Labour government had set up a new state-owned oil company, the British National Oil Corporation (BNOC) in order to oversee and maximize profits for British North Sea crudes, under the stewardship of the Secretary of State for Energy and veteran Labour left-winger, Tony Benn. However, Benn's attempts at nationalization were thwarted after the multinationals threatened to hold back their North Sea operations. Both BP and Shell, as well as the American oil companies, had decades of Middle Eastern experience in out-negotiating indigenous calls for oil nationalization. As such, BNOC ended up with a watered-down deal, which established the impression of government control, but nothing more.Footnote ⁸⁴ For the incoming Thatcher government in 1979, the hostility of Big Oil towards any form of nationalization made the companies fine exemplars of the new, ideological direction favored by the prime minister. Even more in keeping with monetarist doctrine, Big Oil operated strict anti-union procedures aboard their off-shore rigs. American senior management had sacked whole crews if they believed that union organization was being considered. Shell's Personnel Director in 1978, Peter Linklater, argued that this stance was justified, as “the last thing we would want is to have political subversives on our payroll.” As such, the oil companies would give potential employees a political screening during the interview process. As Linklater explained, “we are interested in identifying overt opponents of the system.”Footnote ⁸⁵ Again, this may well have endeared Big Oil to Thatcher and her supporters. As early as 1971, oil had replaced coal as the leading fuel consumed in Britain.Footnote ⁸⁶ By 1983, North Sea Oil was producing more barrels-per-day than the traditional oil-producing trio of Algeria, Libya and Nigeria combined. In response to an early eighties successful privatization of its Nigerian assets (done in response to North Sea competition), BP underwent a complete change in corporate culture. The company went about implementing a program of decentralization, introducing competition-based individualism within its different sectors, in the hope of becoming more “entrepreneurial.”Footnote ⁸⁷ As such, the company now became dominated by “traders and commercial people” who replaced the old guard of supply-planner diplomats.Footnote ⁸⁸ As such, it is no surprise that Thatcher picked Pascall and Wybrew to advise her on policy in regard to the coal strike. Both men represented not only the biggest economic rival to coal, but also the anti-nationalization, anti-union ideology adopted by Thatcher and her ministers. The Ridley Report had stated clearly the importance of converting power stations from coal to oil-burning, in the hope of undermining the NUM. As such, Pascall and Wybrew fitted the bill perfectly for the prime minister.

The early 1980s also saw nuclear power make a rapid entry into electricity generation. As such, Thatcher completed the assembly of her PU by recruiting the fourth member, Peter Warry. Warry was the Chief Executive of British Energy, which operated Britain's eight nuclear power stations. He was brought in from 1984 onwards. All three were given the official title of “special advisor.” Despite some glaring conflicts of interest, then, Redwood, Pascall, Wybrew, and Warry, representing the City Banks, BP, Shell, and British (Nuclear) Energy respectively, would help to determine policy for the government for the duration of the coal strike.

Wider Society: Friends and Enemies Within

Thatcher's neoliberal policies and public service cuts exacerbated social divisions, leading to a reduced standard of life for many amongst the working-class. Just a year into her first premiership in November 1980, she gave a speech at the Lord Mayor's Banquet in which she stated that “we now have no alternative but to accept a reduction in the standard of living, if investment and employment are to recover.”Footnote ⁸⁹ That is, certain sections of society would have to suffer for perceived longer-term economic benefits. However, it is pertinent here to ask whom the prime minister was referring to by using the inclusive pronoun “we.” The living standards of Britain's wealthiest individuals did not fall during the period, though those of ordinary workers certainly did.Footnote ⁹⁰ Many leading trade unionists blamed Thatcher's policies for a sharp decline in membership, as they had lost over two million members between 1979 and 1984.Footnote ⁹¹ By 1982, unemployment had risen to over ten percent, where it would stay for the entire decade. Also that year, the Employment Act of 1982 restricted union rights, banned closed shops, and made secondary picketing illegal. Arthur Scargill was defiant in the face of this new legislation. At the NUM's annual conference, he told the assembled delegates that “we do not and will not recognize distinctions between forms of picketing.”Footnote ⁹² Massive job losses in traditional, heavily-unionized sectors in northern England, South Wales, and Scotland were entrenching geographical, as well as class, divides. Across northern Britain, middle-aged people who had worked all of their lives were subjected to the indignities of the inching, shaming queues of the dole office. They were joined by another generation, as thousands of school-leavers shared a similar fate.Footnote ⁹³ Severe cuts in welfare provision exasperated economic distress further. Cutting back on social security would prevent people from falling into a “benefit culture,”Footnote ⁹⁴ claimed Minister for Social Security John Major. In reality, the Tories were well aware that high unemployment was an inevitable consequence of their pursued fiscal policy of maintaining high interest rates in the hope of protecting finance capital for the benefit of the City of London.Footnote ⁹⁵ However, the protection of finance capital through interest rate manipulation conflicted with the needs of manufacturing capital.Footnote ⁹⁶ Whilst the financial sector in London was rising, the north of England, in particular, was losing its political and economic leverage, leverage it had enjoyed since the industrial revolution a century and a half earlier.Footnote ⁹⁷

The Tories’ own political entrenchment was most evident in their attitude towards the traditionally left-wing port city of Liverpool, one of the areas hardest hit by public-sector cutbacks and enduring the specter of mass unemployment. In July 1981, Thatcher-loyalist and Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe wrote a private letter to Thatcher, suggesting that the city should be subjected to a policy of “managed decline.”Footnote ⁹⁸ July 1981 also saw the outbreak of violent confrontations on the streets of several major cities between rioting local residents and police, including in Toxteth. Many of the riots were centered in black communities, angry at what they saw as inherent racism displayed by the police, particularly the “stop-and-search” method that was used, according to them, disproportionately against ethnic minorities.Footnote ⁹⁹ However, the riots can also be seen as a manifestation of discontent with lack of investment, poor housing, and rising unemployment. Indeed, many working-class whites joined in the rioting, particularly in Liverpool.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ In and around Toxteth, any buildings that were linked with the Conservative Party were vandalized or set on fire by the rioters. Swainbank's Pawnbrokers (ran by a former Tory councilor), Thatcher's Tea and Coffee House (ran by the local Conservative association), and Sefton Park Conservative Club were all attacked.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Rioting was also reported in several districts of both Birmingham and London, as well as across many towns and inner-cities in the north of England.Footnote ¹⁰² The attacks on the Conservative buildings can be seen as a manifestation of the blame leveled at Thatcher and the Tories by some from the poorer elements in society, many of whom saw the prime minister as the harbinger and cause of the extreme economic deprivation affecting parts of the country.

However, the prime minister also had her supporters. Thatcher's policies of low tax and financial deregulation had led to large increases in dispensable income for sections of the upper middle-classes, hence the “yuppies” phenomenon.Footnote ¹⁰³ But despite overt coverage of the yuppies in the mass media, they were not numerous enough to win any elections for the Tories. However, standing in antithesis to Thatcher's plethora of detractors, the Conservatives had created an electoral coalition well-suited to the peculiarities of the British first-past-the-post system. They were, inadvertently yet vitally, bolstered by the formation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981, a move which split the vote on the Left and allowed the Tories to easily endure a sharp decline in their own share of the vote between 1979 and 1983.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ The SDP launch meant that the Tories were still able to increase their representation in Parliament, despite the decrease in vote share. Moreover, the Tories’ privatization programs were enthusiastically embraced by some sections of the working-class. Many working-class people, particularly in the southeast of England, were encouraged to buy, and did buy, shares in newly-privatized companies such as British Gas. Many of these same people became homeowners for the first time under Thatcher's right-to-buy program. Many working-class people, then, had not only become home owners for the first time under Thatcher, but also felt that they had increased their social status and gained a real stake in society through their shares in the privatized companies. These policies greatly endeared Thatcher to those who benefited from them. Even for those who did not benefit from privatization, many working-class voters approved of Thatcher's perceived hardline stance on issues such as race and crime.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Thatcher's personal popularity, amongst some, meant that even policies that would make working-class people economically worse-off would often be supported—put down to “common sense,” Thatcher's oft-repeated phrase. Though these policies may not have been good for many people, or even most people, they were accepted as an inevitable consequence of economic realism. In 1983, with unemployment at its highest level for over half a century, a survey amongst unemployed people found that twenty-four percent of the jobless fully intended to vote Conservative at the next election.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ This figure amongst unemployed people can only be attributed to Thatcher's personal popularity. The new home-owning, shares-investing beneficiaries of Thatcherism were also avid supporters, matching the partisanship of Thatcher's fierce detractors in their unwavering support for the prime minister. British comedian, Labour supporter, and keen football fan Harry Enfield would parody these better-off, southern working-class people with his character Loadsamoney.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Enfield had been inspired to create the character after seeing Tottenham Hotspur supporters outside his north London flat, waving £10 notes at supporters of clubs from the unemployment-stricken north.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Well aware of the polarized opinions within society, Thatcher often used the right-wing press to illicit surges of patriotic fervor and to quell discontent. In April 1982, Thatcher was given a golden opportunity when Argentinian President Leopoldo Galtieri invaded the Falkland Islands. Because of the conflict, the House of Commons, media, and indeed many voters got a taste of military aggression in pursuit of liberal-sounding causes such as the right to self-determination and the need to remove dictators.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ The Falklands War was the only event that saw Ridley in disagreement with Thatcher. In the run-up to the Argentine invasion, Ridley had visited the islands. On his return, he suggested to the Prime Minister that the islands be “leased back” to the Argentines, as they had no real economic value for Britain. Thatcher's response to Ridley was described as “thermonuclear.”Footnote ¹¹⁰ The Falklands episode helped to consolidate Thatcher's power within the Conservative Party itself. Norman Fowler, who served in a number of different Cabinet positions under Thatcher, wrote a newspaper article in 2013 in which he claimed that prior to the Falklands War, Tory Cabinet meetings were often riven with dissent. According to Fowler, the traditionally-conservative detractors of hard-monetarism fiercely criticized Thatcher's massive cuts and sweeping privatization programs. Derided by Thatcherites as the so-called “wets,” these included the Environment Secretary Michael Heseltine, the Minister for Arts Norman St. John-Stevas, and the Lord Privy Seal and long-standing Thatcher critic Ian Gilmour.Footnote ¹¹¹ All argued that the prime minister's monetarist policies were hurting the poorest in society. Fowler claimed that he was an outspoken “wet” himself. In a show of her trademark low tolerance for dissent, however, Thatcher replaced Fowler as secretary of state for transport in October 1983. The new incumbent would be Nicholas Ridley. This would certainly have been seen as a promotion for Ridley, who had been serving as a mid-level treasury secretary beforehand. Fowler was moved to the relatively minor position of secretary of state for social services. Despite widespread hostility from many political opponents inside and outside the party, in June 1983, the Tories won a second general election and Thatcher's first landslide victory. With her aims and methods legitimized by the result, argues Fowler, internal dissenters were silenced. The removal from the Cabinet of some who questioned the prime minister's decision-making may also have contributed to the decision of those who remained to be more careful with any criticism. In 1984, Thatcher and her newly-assembled, private-sector loyalists in the PU could go about their duties safe in the knowledge that the election result had consolidated the Tory front bench behind them.

Preparing for the Strike

Six months before the strike, in September 1983, Thatcher and the PU began to show animosity toward the miners. In September, the NUM and the NCB began what were supposed to be routine wage negotiations. A report from the Cabinet Office argued that sensitivity would be a key issue in upcoming negotiations, and offered a generally positive outlook on achieving a settlement. After reading the report, Thatcher dismissed it with a single word, crossing out Undersecretary Peter Gregson's suggestion of sensitivity, and writing “NO” over the top of it.Footnote ¹¹² The Ridley Report had made a specific recommendation with regards to coal: in order to prepare for their attack, the government should immediately set out to achieve the maximum quantity of (coal) stocks possible. Between 1980 and 1983, coal stocks had indeed risen to their highest recorded levels. However, the NCB's Director General of Industrial Relations, Ned Smith, dismissed claims that stocks had become high as a means of preparation, at least as far as the NCB were concerned. Smith pointed out that stocks of coal began to accumulate in the early 1980s because of a recession-induced poor market for coal, culminating in a reduced demand for energy between 1980 and 1983. Smith was not aware of the existence of the Ridley Report, however, until after the strike had ended.Footnote ¹¹³ Moreover, he could not explain, nor would he have been aware of, the PU's clear fascination with the coal stocks from 1983 onwards. A series of PU reports on coal stocks culminated in a report issued to Thatcher just days after the beginning of the strike. The report, entitled Endurance Levels of Coal, revealed that “measures had already been undertaken to increase power station coal stocks.” Whatever these “measures” were, it seems unlikely that the Policy Unit was talking about naturally-occurring economic cycles inherent within the coal industry. Thatcher underlined a section highlighting that, in fact, “coal stocks at power stations are at record levels.”Footnote ¹¹⁴

As another means of preparation, the Report had suggested that the government should begin to “recruit chairmen sympathetic to our objectives.”Footnote ¹¹⁵ As such, Thatcher personally selected Walter Marshall and Ian MacGregor to run the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) (electricity) and National Coal Board (NCB) (coal) monopolies respectively.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Both were huge advocates of nuclear power, running down the coal industry, and privatization.Footnote ¹¹⁷ MacGregor was infamous in the United States as a hard-right, reactionary strike breaker who had initially been appointed by Thatcher as Chairman of British Steel—quickly becoming a hated public figure amongst many British steelworkers.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Before the strike had even begun, then, the Ridley Report's suggestions of stockpiling supplies and recruiting ideologically acceptable chairmen seemed to be in place. MacGregor commanded the same animosity from the miners as he had the steelworkers. Scargill branded him the “American butcher of British industry.”Footnote ¹¹⁹ Even right-wing members of the NUM Executive Committee, such as Roy Ottey, thought the appointment of MacGregor was provocative.Footnote ¹²⁰ Tory “wets” agreed. Ian Gilmour, now relegated to the backbenches, later claimed that the position of the so-called “moderates” within the NUM had been destroyed by the appointment of MacGregor.Footnote ¹²¹ NCB executive Ned Smith criticized Scargill and the NUM Left for their theatrical portrayals of MacGregor. As the Director General of Industrial Relations, however, Smith admitted that even he reacted to the news of MacGregor's appointment with great dismay.Footnote ¹²² In September 1983, shortly after MacGregor's appointment, Scargill again made the claim that the Tory government was “operating a pit closure program by stealth,” and that MacGregor was a part of this plan.Footnote ¹²³ Although he could not have known for certain at the time, Scargill was again correct, in that both the need to use stealth, and the recruitment of ideologically-aligned chairmen were central instructions in the Ridley Report. In early February 1984, during a trip to a Northumbria colliery, the seventy-year-old American was jostled and knocked to the floor, sustaining bruising to his head and neck. At a Cabinet meeting, several Tory ministers seemed more interested in exploiting the media coverage of the incident than in MacGregor's health.Footnote ¹²⁴ Nevertheless, the incident shows the levels of animosity that existed between a section of the miners and the new NCB chief.

On March 6, 1984, MacGregor announced that twenty pits were to be closed outright, with the loss of twenty thousand jobs across the country. Scargill claimed to have seen secret evidence that put the hit-list figure closer to seventy pit closures. Cabinet papers released in 2014 confirmed Scargill's figure as correct.Footnote ¹²⁵ A mass walk-out at the Cortonwood Pit in Yorkshire, one of those named on the list, followed. The NUM President may well have taken this personally. Cortonwood was just down the road from where Scargill lived. The leaders of the Yorkshire Area of the NUM announced a strike across their area in resistance to the closure threat. At the same time, strike action was taking place in Scotland over the proposed closure of the Polmaise Colliery. However, not all pits in either the Yorkshire or Scottish Areas joined the strike, which had not been officially sanctioned by the NUM Executive Committee. Although Scargill and McGahey wanted a national strike, they were reluctant to call a national vote amongst NUM members to determine specifics. In accordance with his repeated claim that the NCB and government were attempting to close swathes of the coal industry by stealth, Scargill had attempted to win national ballots for strike action in both 1982 and 1983, and was voted down on both occasions.Footnote ¹²⁶ As such, he, McGahey, and other NUM executive left-wingers were reluctant to call another ballot, which they feared they would lose. At a meeting of the executive committee on March 8, 1984, called to discuss Cortonwood and Polmaise, several right-wingers on the executive committee pushed for a national ballot on strike action, convinced that it would be rejected by the NUM rank-and-file.Footnote ¹²⁷ However, a rival motion was put forward by the South Wales Area President and Scargill ally, Emlyn Williams, saying that the executive committee should give official sanction to the ongoing strikes in Scotland and South Yorkshire. Ottey, the right-winger, saw this as both undemocratic, and as a backhanded way to begin a national strike without holding a ballot.Footnote ¹²⁸ Once Scotland and South Yorkshire were out, flying pickets could be deployed to spread the strike not only across those regions, but nationwide. The flying pickets could travel en masse to non-striking pits in non-striking areas and converge around the pit entrances, in the hope of either persuading or intimidating working miners to join the strike in solidarity. As discussed, these tactics had given Scargill a satisfying victory over the Tories and police at Saltley Gate in 1972. As the meeting closed, the executive members voted outright to either hold a ballot, as favored by the Right, or officially endorse the Scottish and Yorkshire Area strikes, as favored by the Left. With the Left now in the ascendancy on the executive committee, the latter vote won by twenty-one votes to three.Footnote ¹²⁹ With the Scottish and Yorkshire Areas endorsed, the miners’ strike had begun.

The Ridley Report had called on the next Tory government to provoke one of Britain's strongest unions into a battle. It had named the coal industry as the best target. It had stated that a threat to jobs was the best way to go about it. MacGregor's closure plan can be seen as a move to fulfill all of those requirements, delivered by an ideologically-aligned chairman—another move suggested by Ridley in 1977. Later, on the same day that the NUM Executive Committee meeting had taken place, a Cabinet meeting was held at Downing Street. If it is startling that Scargill seemed to know about the “closure by stealth” plan, it is equally startling that government ministers seemed to be aware of the NUM executive's discussions and decisions from earlier that day. Thatcher and her ministers were well aware that Scargill and the NUM leadership would not call a national ballot for strike action. The Minister for Energy, Alick Buchanan-Smith, told Thatcher so at the meeting. The prime minister gave a vote of confidence to MacGregor, replying that “the chairman of the NCB should be allowed to handle the matter as he thought best.” Thatcher was also well aware that without a legitimizing ballot, the striking miners would deploy the flying pickets. As such, she assured attending ministers that measures had already been taken to alert chief constables to “the possibility of violence from flying pickets.”Footnote ¹³⁰ Once again, the NUM and a Conservative government were set on a course for collision.

The Miners’ Strike Begins

Just a few weeks into the strike, in March 1984, Pascall nailed the PU's colors firmly to the mast. He advised Thatcher not to waste a “unique opportunity to break the power of the militants in the NUM.”Footnote ¹³¹ The BP executive cautioned that if such a “great opportunity” was passed up, industrial relations would continue to be dominated by, as he saw it, the ideologies of the Left.Footnote ¹³² Redwood agreed. In August, he admitted what it was that, for him, was really behind the dispute. He reported to Thatcher that “it is clear that we are in a political rather than an industrial strike.”Footnote ¹³³ Thatcher agreed with this sentiment.Footnote ¹³⁴ The primacy of political considerations was passed down from the PU and government officials to the police. A secret report, in June, from the Home Office, outlined how pickets arrested in Mansfield had been asked “political questions.”Footnote ¹³⁵ The arrested miners had been asked if they voted for Scargill, and whether they belonged to any “political organization.” They were asked about how they would vote in a general election if the only two options were Conservative or Communist.Footnote ¹³⁶

The PU confidently estimated that it would be a minimum of twenty-six weeks before the miners’ strike would have any effect on the British economy. In the first weeks of the strike, however, Pascall suggested the implementation of a further precaution that the PU had been working on. Taking full advantage of his oil background, he wrote that pursuing a policy of maximum oil burn at electricity power stations, at the expense of coal, would increase endurance even further—a suggestion identical to one made in the confidential annex of the Ridley Report.Footnote ¹³⁷ Ignoring the BP executive's clear conflict of interests, Thatcher underlined her agreement. Just weeks later, in mid-April, the Energy Secretary Peter Walker announced that Pascall's plan had been implemented, and that maximum “oil burn is working well.”Footnote ¹³⁸ Pascall was not alone in promoting his “other” field of work. Once the strike was underway, nuclear power chief Warry pushed for the prompt building of a raft of new nuclear power stations.Footnote ¹³⁹ Shell's John Wybrew also, unsurprisingly, favored the oil option—dismissing the calls from some ministers for large purchases of imported coal and insisting that “imported coal (was) unlikely to be cheaper” than increased oil usage.Footnote ¹⁴⁰

At the outset of the strike, Thatcher had set up a regular group meeting, to be attended by cabinet members, in order to discuss the ongoing strike. Chaired by Thatcher herself, the meetings were officially entitled the Ministerial Group on Coal. However, ministers referred to the meeting group by the shorter title of MISC101. Regular attendees of MISC101 meetings were Thatcher loyalists such as the Energy Secretary Peter Walker, the Home Secretary Leon Brittan, and the new Secretary of State for Transport, Nicholas Ridley. One such MISC101 meeting took place in April, just weeks after the PU's suggestion of power station conversion to maximum oil burn. Thatcher voiced her own satisfaction that this directive, suggested so clearly in the Ridley Report, was being met.Footnote ¹⁴¹ Ridley, whose report had initially suggested this back in 1977, was also in attendance. As secretary of state for transport, however, he had been tasked with delivering another of the suggestions in his initial report. He reassured the prime minister that the recruitment of non-union haulage firms had been a success, and that “virtually all coal (was) being delivered.”Footnote ¹⁴² Ridley, then, had succeeded in carrying out this particular instruction from his own report.

PU members often used the language of those locked in an ideological war. In June, the day after the Battle of Orgreave, Pascall referred to the striking miners as “Scargill's shock troops,” as if it were them, and not the police, who looked, acted, and carried the weaponry of a paramilitary organization.Footnote ¹⁴³ Redwood was scathing about what he saw as a socialist challenge to Tory power, decrying the “extreme left, mounting a major extra-parliamentary challenge to the government.”Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Full of Cold War bravado, Redwood railed against “revolutionary strategies” used by dockers and miners alike.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ He warned that local government offices might also be a “breeding ground” for more such left-wing activity.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ Redwood also took action, issuing a policy for the government to adopt a tougher stance toward “political” enemies. He suggested closing pits in militant areas as a punishment, regardless of economic viability. By crushing their political enemies, he reflected, the government could “gain something from this long dispute.”Footnote ¹⁴⁷

Thatcher and the PU were also supported by private-sector business leaders, keen to show that they knew the real nature of the battle. John Plessey was the Chief Executive of Plessey Inc., a major British arms trader. Plessey wrote to the prime minister in July to give his full support. He opined that, among many company executives like himself, “the basic issue of the miners’ strike—namely the fundamental conflict between capitalism and collectivism (is) now well understood.” Thatcher also received a message of support from her counterpart across the Atlantic. President Ronald Reagan wrote to send “considerable empathy” to his opposite number in Britain.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ Thatcher wrote back, seemingly eager to convince the president that “the ports are open again, and a substantial portion of the (coal) industry is back at work.”Footnote ¹⁴⁹ Thatcher's reply suggests that she felt the need to explain herself to the president—wary of any damage to the “special relationship” and keen to ward off any accusation that the Tories could “lose” the strike. Despite the PU's own preference for politically-charged language, the members were quick to label any public figure who spoke out against government strategy as a leftist ideologue. The Bishop of Durham was secretly lambasted for criticizing government policy. He had written to the prime minister, seeking to highlight the plight of suffering miners’ families. The PU derided him as a “minor folk-hero of the Left.”Footnote ¹⁵⁰ It was decided that the bishop be ignored out of hand.

The Un-Economic Myth

As proponents of the Ridley Report's stealth approach, PU members were well aware of the need to disguise their ideological motives, at least in the public sphere. This was achieved by exaggerating the economic aspect of their motivations. Pascall wrote to Thatcher in May to suggest that it be publicly asserted in the press that Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire were the only two areas that had not become an economic liability.Footnote ¹⁵¹ No evidence was offered to support this assertion, though the BP executive would have been aware of the benefits of publicly backing the two areas where the strike was at its weakest. The government's public claim to be acting solely on economic principle was severely undermined by the fact that a string of Britain's leading economists lined up to dispute that claim. An independent, impartial report by London Weekend Television was commissioned in September 1984. The report was compiled by, among others, Gavyn Davies, a chief UK economist, and Professor David Metcalf, a professor of economics at Kent University. The report was damning. It found that the government had “failed to address the social costs which were inherent in the straightforward closure option.”Footnote ¹⁵² In December, the Journal of Accountancy published a devastating critique of the accounting methods of the NCB. Five academic accounting specialists, including professors in the field from the University of Sheffield and University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, agreed that the coal industry appeared to be operationally viable.Footnote ¹⁵³ Other economists, such as Emile Woolf, accused the NCB of having accounting books, which were “a supreme masterpiece in the art of obfuscation.”Footnote ¹⁵⁴ That is, the NCB had laid a “maze of artfully presented decoys,” designed to make it look as if a profitable industry was losing money.Footnote ¹⁵⁵

In private, Thatcher herself acknowledged that some pit closures were not entirely due to economic consideration. In a cabinet meeting in December, the prime minister spoke of the importance of closing pits even when it was not practical or cost-effective to do so. This had to be done to “preserve the principal.”Footnote ¹⁵⁶ This response can be seen as the clearest indication of all that the economics of the coal industry were secondary in importance to Thatcher, the PU, and the Tory government. Winning the political battle was their primary concern. Rather than saving money, the closure program and the ensuing strike were costing millions. In May, the Treasury estimated the cost of the strike at £3 million per week.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ In August, after Orgreave, the figure had risen to £25 million per week.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ A huge chunk of this was spent on providing buses and organizing police protection for working miners. At each striking pit, the government was spending large amounts of money in order to get three or four working miners past the flying pickets. Despite the costs, they continued this expensive practice, believing it to be worth every penny as a propagandistic gesture.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ The PU tried to spin these spiraling costs positively, maintaining that it would be cheaper in the long run than funding the supposedly uneconomic pits, an assertion that they knew to be untrue.Footnote ¹⁶⁰

The Policy Unit and the Policing of the Miners’ Strike

Giving advice on how the government should conduct itself during a provoked strike, the Ridley Report had highlighted police and picketing as a key issue to address. Instruction was offered on how best to overcome the violence that had marred previous industrial disputes, with Ridley making direct reference to what he called “the Saltley Gate mob” of 1972.Footnote ¹⁶¹ The Report had called for the formation of a “large, mobile squad of police” to be used in any “crunch situation to uphold the law” and to overcome “violent picketing.”Footnote ¹⁶² From very early in the Tory administration, Thatcher personally oversaw the implementation of this part of the report. Before 1979, there had been no national police force in Britain. The police were organized into fifty-two local forces, each headed by a chief constable. Authority was divided between the home secretary, local police authorities, and chief constables.Footnote ¹⁶³ However, the Thatcher government had set up the National Reporting Centre (NRC) in 1979, centralizing Britain's police forces for the first time. During the early stages of the strike, Thatcher made it clear that she thought that certain forces were not “enforcing the law” strictly enough when it came to the flying pickets.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ In adherence with the stealth approach, Thatcher publicly distanced the government from any practicalities in regard to policing the strike. In private, however, the prime minister went to great lengths to make it clear to senior officers that Tory ministers “would not let them down” and would offer all of the “practical support” that was required.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ Coupled with this, the Tories had implemented the Edmund-Davies Pay Increase, a substantial wage rise throughout the entire service, from senior officers to rank-and-file.Footnote ¹⁶⁶ These political and economic incentives seemed to invoke a particular response. Throughout the 1980s, public statements given by chief constables grew closer and closer in tone and content to those made by the Conservative Party. In 1980, the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police explained, on national television, that it was “common sense to have secret files on anyone with an affinity to communism” in order to best combat political subversives who were, according to him, intent on “pecking away at the foundations of society.”Footnote ¹⁶⁷ The following year, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, James Anderton, blamed the “moral descent of society” on “extreme left-wing groups (and) ethnic minorities” who were “permanently hostile to the police.”Footnote ¹⁶⁸ During the polarized atmosphere of the 1980s, the police seemed to become more and more associated with the Tory law and order lobby and the abrasive policies of the Thatcher government.Footnote ¹⁶⁹ During the strike, this blurring of the lines continued. Throughout the dispute, chief constables in strike-bound areas continued to echo the Cabinet's political perspective in the media.Footnote ¹⁷⁰ In such a climate, it could certainly be argued that rank-and-file officers might have had some trouble disentangling fact from prejudice. Indeed, many officers seemed spurred on by the “hostile and stigmatizing climate of opinion against the miners.”Footnote ¹⁷¹

By 1984, the NRC controlled 416 well-drilled mobile units totaling 13,500 officers.Footnote ¹⁷² These officers could be sent into any area in the country to swell the numbers of regional police. The establishment of the NRC and its mobile squads was a definitive move away from traditional forms of policing. Whereas, in 1972, the flying pickets of the NUM had come up against regular policemen, by 1984 the militaristic NRC forces carried American-style riot-sticks, visor-equipped helmets, and a choice of either long or short shields.Footnote ¹⁷³ Rather than impartial defenders of the law, the new equipment made the officers look more like a powerful paramilitary organization at the disposal of the state.Footnote ¹⁷⁴ The intimidating appearance of these officers further blurred the lines of police neutrality, already hazy due to the apparent wholehearted adoption of government ideology by certain chief constables.

Thatcher was already putting her plans regarding the police into action whilst still on the opposition benches. In March 1979, during the last months of the Labour government, Thatcher wrote to the then Home Secretary Merlyn Rees asking him if he could, for future reference, inform chief constables of their “responsibilities” when it came to picketing.Footnote ¹⁷⁵ Rees wrote back, offering reservations about being asked to intervene in this way. He told Thatcher that it was “unconstitutional” to “tell Chief Constables how to enforce the law.”Footnote ¹⁷⁶ The leader of the opposition was distinctly unimpressed, and wrote a strongly-worded reply accusing Rees of previously stating that such interference could occur—in particular circumstances such as “1972” (a reference to Saltley Gate).Footnote ¹⁷⁷ Thatcher was keen to point out that she was not asking Rees to act unconstitutionally, though this seems a strange claim given her previous letter. Rees was resolute. He wrote again, rebuffing Thatcher's criticism and feeling the need to tell her directly that “it is not the job of the Home Secretary to give instructions to the police about the day to day conduct of their job, and that includes the enforcement of the law.”Footnote ¹⁷⁸ Within a month of this correspondence, however, Thatcher was elected prime minister and Rees had been replaced as home secretary by William Whitelaw. By 1984, Whitelaw had himself moved on to become deputy prime minister and had been replaced as home secretary by the committed Thatcher loyalist, Leon Brittan. In the first month of the strike, Brittan told Thatcher and other ministers that these new mobile squads were already being used against flying pickets. Thatcher told Brittan to ensure that all chief constables in strike-bound areas were reminded that “vigorous action” against the pickets would be popular with the public, and that the Chief Constables should be “expected to take account of that.”Footnote ¹⁷⁹ Unlike Rees five years earlier, Brittan was happy to comply, justifying this apparent unconstitutional meddling by denouncing the miners and their supporters in a Cabinet meeting as “anarchists.”Footnote ¹⁸⁰ Therefore, Brittan seems to have reflected, constitutional concerns were secondary, at best.

During picket line confrontations throughout the early part of 1984, the flying pickets aimed to make themselves more than a match for the police. They would make life as difficult as possible for the officers sent to marshal them. The striking miners were tough men, long used to hard labor and furious with the lines of police who faced them.Footnote ¹⁸¹ Using 1972 as their template, they would push police lines back, chanting “easy, easy;” pour ridicule on the officers; and, when massing in such large numbers, match the police by offering a very physically-intimidating sight themselves.Footnote ¹⁸² Thatcher revealed that she had seen reports of miners on the picket line pelting police officers with bricks, darts, and other missiles.Footnote ¹⁸³ The prime minister also highlighted other reports, which had revealed violence and death threats aimed at working miners and their families.Footnote ¹⁸⁴ With the Tories still carrying the NUM-inflicted scars of 1972 and 1974, Scargill's militant tactics were enough to give the union demonic status with Brittan, who shared none of Merlyn Rees’ earlier reservations.Footnote ¹⁸⁵ Speaking early in 1984, the home secretary asserted that “Mr. Scargill … hate(s) our democratic system.”Footnote ¹⁸⁶ In contrast, the police were portrayed as the defenders of democracy, a brave bulwark against the bureaucratic dictatorship of Scargill and other union leaders.Footnote ¹⁸⁷ Several months into the strike, in October, Thatcher wrote in the Sunday Times that “What is at stake (here) is the future of democracy.”Footnote ¹⁸⁸

The PU seemed to sense that this aggressive level of policing could lead to trouble. On June 18th, a day that would become infamous in British industrial relations history, Redwood and Pascall both wrote to the prime minister to urge caution. They believed that the government had to be careful to avoid accusations of creating a police state. The PU seemed to sense a coming confrontation. As such, they reminded the prime minister of the importance of stealth in the overall plan. To avoid a head-on collision, they advised Thatcher that “preventative patrols” should be set up in “vulnerable villages.”Footnote ¹⁸⁹ Thatcher underlined the suggestion. In fact, the police had already occupied many mining communities. Residents of these villages were forced to live under the watchful eyes of a besieging army of police officers, brought in from all over the country. Of particular notoriety was the Metropolitan Police Force of London, drafted in on paid overtime to occupy many northern mining villages.Footnote ¹⁹⁰ Within the mining communities, there were numerous accusations of invading Met officers physically and verbally abusing women and children.Footnote ¹⁹¹ As tensions ran high, it soon became clear that the PU's warning had come too late.

On the afternoon of June 18th, the Battle of Orgreave occurred after mass picketing at the Orgreave coking plant in South Yorkshire. For Scargill and the miners, this was to be a repeat of the famous Saltley Gate victory in 1972. For South Yorkshire Chief Constable Peter Wright and his deputy Tony Clement (the latter of whom was in charge of policing on that day), this was a chance to inflict revenge on “the enemy within” and reciprocate Thatcher's perceived unwavering support for the police by reestablishing the force's Saltley-damaged reputation for dealing with large amounts of gathered pickets. All of this was, however, in complete antithesis to both the Ridley Report's recommendations and the advice of the PU—the full frontal battle that both had warned against. Any notions of stealth were abandoned as scenes of hand-to-hand fighting and pitched battles between riot-gear-clad, truncheon-wielding police and thousands of flying pickets were broadcast nationwide. Miners described nightmarish scenes as hundreds of mounted police charged lines of unarmed pickets screaming “come on, you bastards.”Footnote ¹⁹² Many miners were assaulted and injured, and hundreds were arrested. Several officers were also hospitalized. The police, accused of using particularly brutal methods, did eventually disperse the miners. For many police officers who had wholeheartedly bought into Thatcher's “enemy within” narrative, this was a significant victory against a subversive and dangerous enemy. In 1990, several officers present at Orgreave retold their experiences to the police historian Roger Graef. An officer from a northern force reminisced that “it was great to see [the mounted police] smashing into all them bastards. It was the greatest thing I ever saw.”Footnote ¹⁹³ An officer from an eastern force resented the fact that the police had been politicized, but admitted that “no question, we were Maggie's boys.”Footnote ¹⁹⁴ The Ridley Report had stressed the importance of readying the police before an ideological war could be fought. Thatcher's implementation had been so successful that even rank-and-file officers seemed to be fighting for Thatcher and against the “enemy within.” However, not every police officer was a committed Thatcherite. Moreover, some senior officers seemed well aware of the stealth tactics that the government was deploying, at least in regard to covering their own backs. After the strike, at a Police Federation Conference, an inspector told the conference that in his view “the police were being abused and violently assaulted in order to allow the government to maintain a low profile for political purposes.”Footnote ¹⁹⁵

The scenes at Orgreave had worried some within the government enough to secretly consider drastic measures. Fearing further disturbances, Brittan requested that funds be immediately made available in order to convert the local Royal Air Force barracks to receive yet more police, even though up to eight thousand were already present.Footnote ¹⁹⁶ If no funds were forthcoming, he warned, the armed forces would have to be used instead.Footnote ¹⁹⁷ Some government officials now wanted a head-on collision, and called for army troops to be brought in to the fight.Footnote ¹⁹⁸ They pointed out that the Queen could be used to declare a state of emergency.Footnote ¹⁹⁹ This left the PU at odds with some ministers. The PU was still committed to the Ridley Report's stealth approach. The day after the Battle of Orgreave, with ministers calling for Scargill's blood, Pascall warned Thatcher that leveling criminal charges against Scargill would make a “martyr” out of the NUM president.Footnote ²⁰⁰ The prime minister seemed to side with the PU. Hoping to avoid any involvement of the armed forces, Thatcher authorized a further release of funds and sought assurances from Brittan that the money would be speedily and directly delivered to the police forces who needed it.Footnote ²⁰¹ The PU appeased the panicked ministers by referring them to the Emergency Powers Act of 1964, which would allow troops to be brought in covertly, without declaring a state of emergency. Thatcher underlined the idea to show her approval.Footnote ²⁰² There is no clear evidence that troops were deployed, despite claims from some miners that this was the case. Nevertheless, the evidence does show that such a move was a serious consideration. A month after Orgreave, with the dust settled, the prime minister attended a meeting about the strike. With Thatcher, the PU, and senior ministers present, it was decided that the best policy was to “use troops as far as possible without declaring a State of Emergency.”Footnote ²⁰³ Even when deploying the military, then, the PU had found a way to adhere to the Ridley Report's central suggestion of stealth. Once again, Thatcher had taken their advice over that of her ministers.

Going beyond the Ridley Report: The Policy Unit and the Law Courts

Although the Ridley Report had not mentioned the British courts, it soon became obvious to Thatcher, Brittan, and the PU that interference into this area would be vital—lest the changes in policing become nullified. By December 1984, 8,907 people had been arrested in connection with the strike.Footnote ²⁰⁴ Most, as to be expected, were arrested in Notts (2,374), Derbys (1,179), and South Yorks (1,256).Footnote ²⁰⁵ Most arrests were for public order offenses or obstructing police. However, there were thirty-two different offenses in total, ranging from murder to reckless driving. Thatcher and the PU knew that it was pointless getting the police to make so many arrests if the offenders were soon to be back on the streets and back on the picket line. As such, they began to lean heavily on the courts.

After Orgreave, the police implemented a policy of maximum arrests on picket lines.Footnote ²⁰⁶ As well as this, snatch squads were sent to miners’ houses, kicking down doors and arresting people in their own homes.Footnote ²⁰⁷ With so many arrested, the government faced a backlog of cases that needed to go before a magistrate. Rather than let the miners stand trial fairly and without prejudice, the PU called on ministers to strong-arm judges into giving out particularly harsh sentences. In August, two months after Orgreave, Redwood called for pressure to be put on courts “to give exemplary sentences to miners,” as long as such a request could be made without public attention.Footnote ²⁰⁸ Thatcher received a report from the Home Office. In it, it was revealed that the attorney general had previously been asked by the prime minister if there existed “any means of increasing effectiveness and enforcement of criminal law.”Footnote ²⁰⁹ Responding, the attorney general wrote to highlight the “usefulness of offenses such as riot, unlawful assembly and affray.”Footnote ²¹⁰ In other words, these unspecific offenses could be used as a cover for issuing unusually harsh sentences. To cope with the backlog, temporary courts were set up in Chesterfield, St. Helens, Mansfield, and Peterlee. All achieved notoriety throughout the mining communities.Footnote ²¹¹ Any magistrate with any connection to the Labour Party, the NUM, or other trade union was disqualified from hearing cases of striking miners.Footnote ²¹² This meant that the majority of judges held Conservative sympathies, though these faced no such sanction. Judges were brought in from elsewhere in the country to hurry through the sentencing.Footnote ²¹³ The results were predictable. A Thorseby Picket noticed that the “judges are always on the government's side.”Footnote ²¹⁴ An Ollerton Women's Action Group member complained that “the courts are all Tory-run.”Footnote ²¹⁵ An Ollerton picket had been in trouble before. He remarked that “last time I was being tried for my crime. This time I was being tried as a striking miner and no other reason.”Footnote ²¹⁶ Indeed, the courts were being used to generate a “picketing equals crime” equation, and thus legitimize the actions of the government and police.Footnote ²¹⁷ Such was the level of governmental interference; even Brittan was forced to issue a word of caution. Echoing Rees’ earlier misgivings, he wrote to the prime minister to warn that “it may be inappropriate, or even unconstitutional, for the government to seek to influence judges in this way.”Footnote ²¹⁸ Unlike Rees, however, Brittan left a handwritten note at the end of his letter stating the following—“This is sensitive territory. Verbum Sapienti Suffcit” (A word to the wise is sufficient).Footnote ²¹⁹ In other words, the courts could be pressurized, as long as the continued adherence to stealth was kept up—just as the PU had suggested.

Due to government interference, total custodial sentences for miners shot up from forty-seven between the whole of March to November, to 106 by the end of December.Footnote ²²⁰ Nevertheless, this must still have felt like a defeat for Brittan and the PU, when the total number of arrests was 8,907. Writing to the prime minister in November, a frustrated attorney general explained the problem. He remarked that it was “one thing to be satisfied that an offense had been committed, quite another to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a particular person committed it.”Footnote ²²¹ Despite Brittan's “word to the wise,” then, it was simply not possible for the judiciary, however compliant, to bend the law far enough to lock up Thatcher and the PU's political enemies without serious constitutional infringements. Nevertheless, Brittan's eagerness to give his “word to the wise” is in stark contrast to the more constitutionally-minded Rees, and could certainly be seen as evidence of the home secretary's prioritization of the Thatcherite project over all else. Brittan's note also echoes the recommendations of the PU—both in his willingness to cross constitutional boundaries and lean on the judiciary, but also in his mindfulness regarding stealth. As such, the Ridley Report could be seen as leaving its mark on the justice system via the PU, and fully adhered to by the home secretary.

The Policy Unit and the NACODS Scare

Throughout the strike, the PU produced weekly reports in order to keep tabs on the national trickle back to work. By September 1984, the number of pits on strike compared to those working fully was 102–42 in favor of the strikers, with some men present at twenty-four.Footnote ²²² Although more pits were on strike than not, the fact that nearly a third of pits were operational meant that the government still had a strong hand. These operational pits, coupled with the record levels of stockpiled coal and the industry-specific peculiarities, which made it such that a coal strike took a long time to have any effect, meant that the PU could afford to advise a hard line against the strikers. After the miners had tried and failed to repeat the Saltley Gate incident, at Orgreave in June, Redwood called for the suspension of all talks—believing, as the Ridley Report had suggested, that the government need only wait out the miners.Footnote ²²³ Despite their eventual victory, however, the evidence shows that during September 1984, Thatcher and the PU feared defeat. Of particular concern to the PU was the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies, and Shotfirers (NACODS) dispute. The NACODS represented colliery deputies and officials in every pit. As such, a strike by their members would be a massive boost to the NUM, shutting down the operational coalfields in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, as well as pits in other areas that were defying the strike. This would, for the first time, change the strike into a truly national one. The plethora of correspondence from Redwood during this period suggests a near-frantic mindset. He advised that “all efforts be made to appease (the) NACODS leaders.”Footnote ²²⁴ The same day, Peter Walker told the Cabinet that he had it, on good authority, that the NACODS president was sympathetic to Scargill and might try to influence the NACODS membership to vote for a strike.Footnote ²²⁵ The cause of the NACODS dispute had been a circular issued on August 15th. Though the NCB had hastily retracted the circular, Redwood stressed the importance of informing the leaders that this was the case. In complete contrast to his policy toward the NUM, Redwood proposed a “full week of talks,” in the hope that this might “confuse the issue.”Footnote ²²⁶ Worried that the government's pandering to NACODS might prove unsuccessful, Redwood nervously advised ministers to make sure that they could still access their accumulated stockpiles of coal in case of a NACODS strike.Footnote ²²⁷ A report suggested that if a NACODS strike did take place, endurance would last only until January.Footnote ²²⁸

British Nuclear Fuel Chief Warry also seemed nervous, warning that the drift back to work was too slow, and that the government was in danger of losing the initiative.Footnote ²²⁹ Shell's Wybrew offered a contingency plan. He pointed out that power stations, already at maximum oil-burn on the recommendation of both the PU and the Ridley Report, could now be run on oil burners alone, taking coal out of the equation altogether.Footnote ²³⁰ However, the government seemed reluctant to undermine the entire coal industry in this way—perhaps considering such an audacious move as a full-frontal attack, one out-of-step with the continued, pursued policy of stealth. Moreover, the NACODS dispute had come at a time when the government was feeling vulnerable due to a raft of other industrial disputes. The Department of Employment had reported that Cammell Laird in Birkenhead, the Department of Health and Social Security in both Longbenton and Durham, and British Aerospace in Filton were all undergoing strike action.Footnote ²³¹ Indeed, the evidence around the proposed NACODS strike shows the PU, for the first time, to be on the back foot. Warry worried about a “Dunkirk spirit” emerging amongst the miners.Footnote ²³² He warned that upcoming government negotiations with metropolitan councils could end with “the forces of darkness joining in a cause célèbre.”Footnote ²³³ Alongside the miners and the city of Liverpool, many of the country's local authorities had been the target of Thatcher's “enemy within” speech in July.

However, NACODS accepted a last-minute deal from the NCB and dramatically called off their strike on the very morning it was due to begin. At a Cabinet meeting, Thatcher correctly and triumphantly labeled this last-minute U-turn as a “serious blow” for Scargill and the NUM.Footnote ²³⁴ For the PU, the possibility of a catastrophic defeat had been averted. Reassured, the PU went back on the attack. Wybrew cynically called for MacGregor to immediately implement redundancies approaching one hundred thousand, as punishment for the scare.Footnote ²³⁵ Although the ideological and partisan language espoused by PU members was continuously evident throughout the duration of the strike, it does seem that it was particularly colorful around the time of the NACODS scare. Warry's theatrical visions of the “forces of darkness,” Redwood's frantic calls for appeasement, and Wybrew's triumphant yet cynical calls for punishment of the PU's enemies all reveal two things. On the one hand, all serve as another example of the PU members’ apparent, total, ideological commitment to the Thatcherite project, as set out in the Ridley Report. On the other hand, the spike in activity and colorful language show that despite their successes earlier in the strike, the PU knew full well that a NACODS strike could well have reversed all of their earlier victories and placed the advantage squarely with Scargill and the NUM. Despite a bad scare with NACODS, though, the PU's adherence to the Ridley Report—and Thatcher's apparent willingness to follow the advice of the PU—eventually paid off.

By November, the strikers advantage had fell to forty-seven–forty-five, with some men present at eighty-two. With victory all but inevitable, Thatcher continued to adhere to Redwood's suggestion and did everything possible to avoid any solution to the dispute with the NUM, convinced that the drift back to work would now end the dispute in the government's favor.Footnote ²³⁶ By the end of January 1985, the amount of pits on strike compared to those working fully was twenty-two–forty-nine, with some men present at 103.Footnote ²³⁷ Thatcher was informed by ministers in late January that some amongst the NUM leadership, now faced with the very real prospect of outright defeat, had become increasingly desperate to resume negotiations. Thatcher was clear, “There is no purpose in further negotiations.”Footnote ²³⁸ Ned Smith, the NCB senior executive, was appalled by the government's refusal to enter into talks. Smith had met with Scargill and McGahey in December, with both members of the NUM executive telling the NCB man that they wanted to resume talks. Later that month, Smith also met with NUM General Secretary Peter Heathfield, after which both men left happy that an agreement could be reached. Upon leaving the meeting, however, Smith was outraged to find that one of MacGregor's “special advisors” David Hart had given a press release announcing that the talks had broken down acrimoniously. Not only was Hart not present at the meeting, but the press release was made whilst the meeting was still taking place. Smith, it must be remembered, was a harsh critic of Scargill and the other left-wing members of the NUM executive. Nevertheless, he had become so sickened by the “unjust and immoral” behavior of the government, MacGregor, and the “advisors” that he tended his resignation.Footnote ²³⁹ The miners’ leaders did not give up. In February, the government had to write to Heathfield, asking him to cease with his constant requests for dialogue. The reason given was that the government no longer found any “basis for entering into talks.”Footnote ²⁴⁰

Redwood's plan to avoid a settlement by refusing to seriously entertain talks had succeeded. The two most defining moments of the strike, and the two most dangerous for Thatcher and the PU, had now been won. Orgreave in June and the NACODS dispute in September both carried the power to swing the momentum of the strike decisively in favor of the NUM. However, crisis had been averted in both instances. The new, more militaristic methods of policing suggested in the Ridley Report and implemented by the Thatcher government since 1979 had seen off another potential Saltley Gate. In the aftermath of Orgreave, Thatcher chose to follow the advice of the PU, returning to the methods of stealth, despite calls from some Tory ministers for a full-frontal attack. During the NACODS dispute, Redwood's advice for the government to temporarily abandon inherent, ideological antagonism with trade unions and make a behind-the-scenes deal with the NACODS leadership at all costs, had also resulted in victory. After September, then, victory for the miners looked impossible. However, if Thatcher and the PU were to strike a fatal blow to the NUM and achieve the “irreversibility” prescribed by both the Ridley Report and by Redwood in his think-tank days, another instruction from the Report would have to be put into place.

The Policy Unit and the Financial War

Although the Ridley Report had not mentioned the law courts in regard to arrested miners, it did suggest, very clearly, that the courts could be useful to the government in another field—finance. The Report had pointed out that the “greatest deterrent to any strike is to cut off the supply of money to the strikers.”Footnote ²⁴¹ As such, it continued, the government should look to introduce legislation to deny unemployment benefits to strikers. Social security benefits were highlighted as an area that could become a particularly “fruitful field” in the attack.Footnote ²⁴² This was another suggestion that the Tories began to implement as soon as they had gained power in 1979, by introducing a raft of legislation aimed at limiting the ability of potential strikers to fund themselves. After less than a year in office, the Social Security Bill was brought in. The bill included Clause 6, which changed the law so that strikers were not entitled to any unemployment benefits. The Social Services Minister and self-proclaimed Thatcher-critic, Norman Fowler, defended the bill, branding it as a means to “restore (a) fairer bargaining balance between employers and trade unions.”Footnote ²⁴³ By July 1984, four months into the strike, the government had moved to block tax rebates that were due to striking miners. A puzzled letter from the House of Lords asked under what authority they were being withheld. Quoting the Finance Act of 1981, Thatcher defended the move, replying that “any refund can only be applied once an employee is back to work.”Footnote ²⁴⁴ After successfully navigating the NACODS scare in September, and with the NUM on the ropes, the government kept the new legislation coming. In October, a report welcomed another “change in regulations,” so as to stop mortgage interest being paid to striking miners, as had been their entitlement under existing legislation.Footnote ²⁴⁵ In November, the Department for Health and Social Security joined the fray. They reported that “new rules” meant that there would now be higher deductions from the dole payments of anyone suspected of striking.Footnote ²⁴⁶ At a Cabinet meeting in November, Thatcher floated the idea of cutting off the small allowance that strikers could claim if they had dependents. The prime minister was only talked out of it after Fowler argued that such a move might buy the destitute families sympathy from the Labour Party, the TUC, and an array of other trade unions. Thatcher reluctantly dropped the idea.Footnote ²⁴⁷ Given the sheer number of new legislative diktats aimed at strikers, it would be hard to argue that they were not made with political concerns in mind. Though supporters of Thatcher could argue that such legislation was justified, it seems clear that the prime minister had the miners in mind when issuing the raft of new restrictions. Indeed, the idea for the raft of legislation had been clearly stated in the Ridley Report. However, in the case of the NUM, the government had a further problem. With such a large membership, the union itself was rumored to be worth millions of pounds—money that could potentially be used to defy and undermine the government's legislative assault.

For the PU, the funds of the NUM became a primary target. After Orgreave, Redwood had urged Thatcher and Brittan to lean on the judiciary in order to influence sentencing. Although the results of that intervention were mixed, senior judges had seemed compliant enough to acquiesce. Moreover, Brittan might well have been prepared to have another “word to the wise,” or at least convince the seemingly compliant judiciary to turn a blind eye to unconstitutional meddling. From July onwards, then, Redwood and the PU were making the same recommendations of direct intervention in the law courts—though this time in order to seize NUM funds.Footnote ²⁴⁸ Within two weeks, Redwood's suggestion was implemented. In South Wales, Welsh pickets had defied an injunction against picketing, granted to two haulage firms. Thatcher and the PU spotted their chance. On August 1st a high-court judge ordered the seizure of the entire funds of the South Wales area of the NUM.Footnote ²⁴⁹ This was a massive blow for the Welsh miners, who called for help from the Trade Unions Congress. Their calls were ignored. For Redwood and the PU, a method was needed to expand the sequestration to the entire NUM.

The property dealer, David Hart, was a millionaire who lived in an apartment at Claridges in London. Hart was an outspoken, committed Thatcherite—a right-wing libertarian who had inherited a fortune from his banking father. Although other business leaders had offered full support to Thatcher's monetarist project, Hart decided to go much further. The banker's son would tour the Midlands in his chauffeur-driven Mercedes, trying to find dissatisfied miners who could be used to take the NUM to court for not having a ballot. As well as having his own wealth to fund him, Hart was also bankrolled by other business leaders such as John Paul Getty II, Lord Hanson, and Hector Laing of United Biscuits.Footnote ²⁵⁰ Hart was known to have an inflated view of himself. He claimed that he had personally orchestrated the Battle of Orgreave in order to inflict a defeat on the striking miners.Footnote ²⁵¹ Hart, alongside Tim Bell of Saatchi & Saatchi, acted as unofficial “advisors” to MacGregor during the strike. Ned Smith, the NCB's Director General of Industrial Relations, was shocked at the level of influence these outsiders seemed to have over the chairman. At one meeting between Smith and MacGregor, during the NACODS dispute, Hart and Bell denounced the NACODS leaders as communists in conspiratorial allegiance with Scargill and the NUM executive.Footnote ²⁵² According to Smith, Hart boasted that his “contacts” could help him to overcome any NACODS strike, just as these “contacts” would help to defeat the NUM. Despite accusations that Hart was a fantasist, however, he did indeed have a direct line to Thatcher. In keeping with his brash personality, Hart also publicly bragged about his access to the prime minister. Alarmed at Hart's haphazard approach to the stealth plan, Thatcher informed ministers in October that Hart should be told to stop talking about his direct access, particularly to the media.Footnote ²⁵³ Nevertheless, Thatcher did not move to restrict Hart's access, signifying that she must have considered him as at least partially valuable. Hart's tactic was to embroil the NUM in long-winded and difficult to fight legal cases.Footnote ²⁵⁴ As such, he was instrumental in setting up the National Working Miners’ Committee (NWMC). He was a regular attendee of the early meetings of the organization, whose main aim was to sue the NUM on behalf of anti-strike miners.Footnote ²⁵⁵ Hector Laing raised £30,000 for the NWMC from other pro-Thatcher business leaders.Footnote ²⁵⁶ The organization's funds were handled by Hodgkinson and Tallents’ solicitors, a firm with longstanding ties to the Conservative Party.Footnote ²⁵⁷ Considering himself an insider, Hart sent regular reports to Thatcher on the progress of the lawsuits, as well as information about both striking and working miners’ morale. In October, he had told the prime minister that NACODS members were very unhappy about the strike call, and advised that the government “should not show any weakness” in the continuing dispute.Footnote ²⁵⁸ Hart paid-back Thatcher's loyalty by using the accrued £30,000 to finance court actions on behalf of working miners.

Encouraged by Hart's progress, Redwood now suggested that the confiscation of funds be broadened to the entire NUM.Footnote ²⁵⁹ Once again, the judiciary seemed to need little encouragement to abandon their impartiality. Judge Nicholls found against the NUM on all counts. On October 25th, Nicholls ordered the seizure of all NUM funds, in Britain and abroad.Footnote ²⁶⁰ The reason given was an unpaid fine previously meted out to the NUM, accrued through endless court actions brought about by Hart's NWMC. By November, the central NUM funds had been sequestered. A Tory-appointed lawyer was named as “receiver” of all union funds. In effect, the judiciary had ordered the NUM to hand over its £8.9 million assets to the very people that the money was supposed to be used to fight against. In one of the PU's most celebratory reports, Peter Warry seemed triumphant over the sequestration of funds, which had come only weeks after the collapse of the proposed NACODS strike.Footnote ²⁶¹ With the NACODS strike averted and the sequestration of funds all but complete, the nuclear energy chief pushed for a propaganda offensive to finish off the NUM. He maintained that the government had to keep the initiative by “closing more (coal) faces with full publicity,” in order to show who was winning.Footnote ²⁶²

It was Thatcher's turn to remind a member of the PU of the stealth plan. The prime minister cautioned all allies and ministers that they should “avoid gloating,” at least publicly.Footnote ²⁶³ The NUM leadership launched an appeal against the decision. However, the judiciary again seemed less than impartial. After rejecting the appeal out-of-hand, Justice Nicholls forecast a coming “day of reckoning” for the miners.Footnote ²⁶⁴ Nicholls’ turn of phrase can be seen as evidence that, rather than standing up to any government meddling in regard to the law, the judiciary, as with the country's chief constables, was more than happy to close ranks with the Thatcher administration, abandoning any sense of impartiality and throwing their weight in against the supposed “enemy within.”

However, much to the annoyance of Thatcher and the PU, the NUM had foreseen the attack on its funds and had moved the vast bulk of its money overseas—making it much harder to seize. The NUM's struggle against the Thatcher government had won it many admirers abroad. The large French union, CGT, attempted to send funds to the NUM. When their money was sequestered, they sent convoys of lorries to England, carrying food and clothing for the striking miners. Clearly feeling under pressure to act, Home Office Undersecretary Nigel Pantling reassured Thatcher and the PU that “some (lorries) may be refused admission (at Dover) under normal immigration procedures.”Footnote ²⁶⁵ Despite this veiled threat, Pantling was left to concede that “the Home Secretary can find no way to exclude them all.”Footnote ²⁶⁶ The NUM also received help from the USSR.Footnote ²⁶⁷ This may well have been seen by Redwood and some ministers as vindication of their earlier attempts to compare their ideological enemies within and without. Indeed, the Tory administration dedicated an enormous amount of time to monitoring any supposed help offered by the Soviets to the NUM. Toward the end of 1984, a Soviet delegation was due to visit London on unrelated issues. At the same time, the press was rife with stories of Soviet funding to the miners. A confidential report estimated that the Soviets had handed over more than £1 million.Footnote ²⁶⁸ As part of their delegation, the Soviets had provocatively included the top Soviet coal-pit foreman, Strelchenko.Footnote ²⁶⁹ The government saw this as a clear act of provocation, and it was decided that the Soviets would be asked outright whether they had donated to the NUM. The Minister of State for Trade and Industry, Norman Lamont, did raise it with the Soviets, who asserted that the money had been raised and sent directly from Russian miners in an act of solidarity. Seeing through this, Lamont and others urged the Prime Minister to tell the Soviets to “stop meddling in our internal affairs.”Footnote ²⁷⁰ Once again, though, Thatcher urged stealth and caution. Urging Lamont to be careful, she reminded him that “we are always seeking clemency and exit visas from them for Soviet citizens.”Footnote ²⁷¹ The Foreign Office also sent reports on a check for ten-thousand pounds given to the NUM by Afghan trade unionists.Footnote ²⁷² Even the Foreign Office, it would seem, had been roped into the implementation of the Ridley Report, chasing and reporting on token gestures from the miners’ allies from around the world. The Attorney General also became involved, reporting in November that the NUM had up to £5 million in Luxembourg.Footnote ²⁷³ He also suspected that the miners had another stash in bank accounts in Eire. He reassured the Prime Minister that actions were in place to “freeze and obtain” these overseas funds.Footnote ²⁷⁴ Thatcher did not have to wait long. In February, a triumphal letter from the Law Officers confirmed what Thatcher and the Policy Unit had been waiting for. The Law Officers revealed that the Luxembourgian government had been pressurized to back down and hand over all NUM assets.Footnote ²⁷⁵ Although Dublin proceedings were still awaited, the Receiver had also “laid his hands on £600-thousand from Switzerland.”Footnote ²⁷⁶ Following the instructions of the Ridley Report and the guidance of the Policy Unit, the government had waged a successful, legal war on the NUM. By February 1985, the goal of full confiscation of funds from the strikers was finally achieved. That month, with the sequestration of funds completed, David Hart wrote to Thatcher to boast of his own involvement, claiming that “humiliation was at hand” for Scargill and the striking miners.Footnote ²⁷⁷

Then, a financial pincer-movement was applied to the miners, attacking both their ability to fund themselves and the ability of the NUM to help them. As the Thatcher critic Ian Gilmour admitted, the miners’ legal cases, brought about by Hart, did much to “cripple the NUM.”Footnote ²⁷⁸ All of this had been suggested in the Ridley Report, though those few lines had been fleshed out and given specificity by government ministers in relation to the individual miners, and the PU in relation to NUM funds. Not only were Scargill and the NUM losing the strike, the union was suffering irreversible financial damage at the hands of a deliberately aggressive campaign spearheaded by the PU and fully supported by the prime minister, the home secretary, a politically-aligned police force and a compliant judiciary. As NCB executive Ned Smith reflected, the government had obviated the possibility of a settlement, with the objective of defeating the striking miners by dire need.Footnote ²⁷⁹ Smith recognized the stealth method being adhered to by the government, and how different it was from the public image of the strike.Footnote ²⁸⁰

Going beyond the Ridley Report II: The Policy Unit and the Media

The importance of the mass media was not mentioned in the Ridley Report. However, Saville's 1985 article had pointed out what the historian saw as the compliant nature of the television news and print press. Moreover, the media was clearly seen as a vital area of the battle by several PU members. Indeed, PU members (and government ministers) often talked about the importance of being seen to win, as if this was as important as the victory itself. As such, they heavily monitored the newspapers and television news, and relied on their supporters in the right-wing press to ram their case home. One tactic suggested by the PU was to present the argument in the media as one exclusively about law and order. This allowed the government to avoid discussion of the real issues behind the strike. From the early days of the strike, Pascall had written of the importance of “presentation.” He wrote that the government had to be successful in “present(ing) anti-picketing measures as police action to maintain law and order.”Footnote ²⁸¹ The media seemed happy to oblige. On television news, police attacks on pickets went unreported.Footnote ²⁸² Police numbers and heavy-handedness were under-emphasized.Footnote ²⁸³ TV camera crews were four times as likely to be behind police lines as picket lines.Footnote ²⁸⁴ On the evening news after the Battle of Orgreave, sequences were shown in a different order than that in which they had occurred in order to create a narrative of a beleaguered police force.Footnote ²⁸⁵ In the press, the miners were portrayed as crazed ideologues led by a madman. Scargill suffered endless personal attacks and was ridiculed for claiming (correctly) that the NCB had a secret closure list for pits. The Sun was the most notorious. A strident cheerleader for the Thatcher government, the paper often used crude and hostile language to deride the miners and their leaders. Scargill was recast as Hitler, a comparison so obviously flawed that the papers’ printers at Wapping refused to print the edition.Footnote ²⁸⁶ The newspaper went ahead and printed that day's edition with a blank page on the front. Throughout the mainstream media, there existed a consensus of unquestioned assumption of police neutrality.Footnote ²⁸⁷ The government also enjoyed a positive spin, portrayed as the benevolent, neutral guardian of the national interest. The PU seemed more than pleased with the propagandistic arm of their campaign. Nuclear-chief Warry wrote of the vital importance of keeping this up.Footnote ²⁸⁸ In December, with the tide turning the government's way, he advised that the Conservative-supporting media should now be leaned on to push the narrative a step further. “Anyone who supports the strike is also a supporter of the violence.”Footnote ²⁸⁹

Though the government benefited from acute media bias in their favor, the PU was still cautious. They took out advertisements in what they saw as the left-wing press. Taking out a full-page ad in the Mirror in April 1984, the government portrayed the NUM as belligerent deal-refusers, and themselves as the ones seeking a settlement. As discussed above, this was the exact opposite of the truth. Thatcher was personally pleased with the ad.Footnote ²⁹⁰ Both Redwood and Pascall wrote of the dangers of “going soft” in the eyes of the general public.Footnote ²⁹¹ In June, a fortnight after the Battle of Orgreave, Thatcher reminded the Cabinet of the vital importance of media coverage of the dispute.Footnote ²⁹² Wary of any deviation from the orthodox narrative, Redwood lamented an episode of the BBC's Newsnight in September.Footnote ²⁹³ The episode had stated that coal stocks could be running low. Redwood ordered all members of the PU to step up the propaganda and push the narrative of stocks lasting well into the next year. As the strike wore on, the PU began to turn the screw. With the NACODS crisis averted in October, Warry called for a raft of announced pit closures, which should be done with “full publicity,” so that the public could be shown who was winning.Footnote ²⁹⁴ The PU was unwilling to go public on their real, ideological motives. Instead, a false narrative was created in order to recast the miners as ideologues and the government as rational peace envoys. As Pascall put it, in the eyes of the press, “We have been very successful in keeping the dispute at the industrial rather than political level—this should be continued.”Footnote ²⁹⁵ This was the very opposite, then, of what the PU were saying in private.

By November, Thatcher's Chief Press Secretary, Bernard Ingham, sensed that the government was heading toward victory. He congratulated Thatcher and the PU for adherence to Britain's new neoliberal, monetarist agenda. Ingham's words were hardly those of someone whose chief concerns regarding the strike were economic. He expressed his delight at the assumed victory of the monetarist project, the individualist focus of which was “committed to wealth through private enterprise, rather than the distribution of wealth regardless of where that wealth is created.”Footnote ²⁹⁶ Ingham compared the ideological battle with the miners to that with the Soviet Union over disarmament. By February 1985, with the strike all but defeated, Redwood echoed that claim. He announced that Thatcher and the PU were on the brink of a great victory, one even greater than the Falklands “because the enemy within is so much harder to conquer.”Footnote ²⁹⁷ Throughout the strike, then, both senior ministers and the PU used the lexis of ideological warriors, fighting against those whom the Ridley Report had labeled the “communist disruptors,” or, using Thatcher's more popular sound-bite for her political opponents, the “enemy within.”

The Policy Unit after the Miners’ Strike

On March 3, 1985, the South Wales area called for a return to work on the condition that men sacked during the strike would be reinstated. However, the NCB knew that the miners’ leaders were no longer in any position to negotiate. With its funds sequestered, the NUM could no longer fund striking miners. Faced with the stark choice of going hungry or returning to work, many miners had already, reluctantly, chosen the latter. As such, the return-to-work rate had increased exponentially since January. Safe in this knowledge, the NCB refused all concessions. On March 5th, the NUM officially called the strike off. Some pits in Kent defied the return to work, but by March 6th, Redwood could triumphantly report to Thatcher that ninety-seven percent of miners were not on strike.Footnote ²⁹⁸

It should be remembered, in reflection, that a sitting government is supposed to be impartial in an industrial dispute. Moreover, the Thatcher administration was, according to its own rhetoric, anti-statist by its very ideological and political nature. Despite all of this, the defeat of the miners had been achieved by a series of authoritarian, yet stealthy, interventions. The police force had been altered beyond all previous recognition and the law courts had been leaned on (though it must be said that a compliant senior constabulary and judiciary had been quick to go along). A financial pincer movement had been undertaken, attacking miners’ personal finances through legislation and NUM funds through endless legal proceedings. At Orgreave in June and during the NACODS dispute in September, the government had successfully circumvented the two events that could have won the dispute for the NUM. As Saville had correctly pointed out, the kernel of all of these ideas had been the Ridley Report of 1977 and its plan for an ideological and political attack on the trade unions—particularly the miners’ union. The basic ideas in that report had been fleshed out and made ready for implementation by a specifically-picked PU, whose members’ links to both Big Oil and the nuclear fuel industry made them the perfect candidates for the job. Indeed, throughout the evidence used for this paper, members of the PU used language so ideologically-charged, it is possible to believe that they exaggerated their beliefs in order to impress the prime minister. Certainly, this would have done no harm to their business interests, which in the case of Pascall (BP), Wybrew (Shell), and Warry (British Nuclear Fuel) certainly constituted an enormous conflict of interests. Redwood was, perhaps, more interested in furthering his own ambition to join the senior ranks of the Conservative Party. Nevertheless, all four seemed genuine in their committal and resolute adherence to anti-trade union, monetarist doctrine.

After the defeat of the miners’ strike, the four members of the PU were all rewarded well for their contributions. John Wybrew went back to Shell, where he was promoted to the position of director. By the end of the 1980s, he was also given an Order of the British Empire (OBE). He later moved to British Gas, which had been fully privatized whilst he was in the PU. David Pascall went back to BP. Just one year later, Thatcher sold the government's last remaining shares in the company, worth £7.5 billion, to the Kuwait Investment Authority. A new post was created for a director to oversee this transition to supposed full privatization. That director was David Pascall. No comment was made on the hypocrisy of claiming to “privatize” BP by selling the shares to a company controlled by the Kuwaiti government. Pascall received an Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1992. British Nuclear Fuel Chief, Peter Warry, was kept on by the Tory administration as a member of the “deregulation taskforce” for the Department of Trade and Industry, helping to implement a raft of privatization programs for the government. In the dying days of the Tory administration in 1996, he helped to oversee the full privatization of nuclear power in the United Kingdom. Perhaps the best known former member of the PU is its leader, John Redwood. In 1987, he was rewarded for his work at the PU by being made an MP in the safe Tory seat of Workingham. He was also promoted within NM Rothschild to a role that the leader of Thatcher's ideologues seemed destined for—“head of international privatization.” Redwood later became a Cabinet member, taking up the position of secretary of state for Wales. He made a bid for the Tory leadership in 1995 but was defeated. When Tory David Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010, he offered Redwood a new role, which he still holds to this day—co-chairman of the policy review group on economic competitiveness. He still claims a salary from NM Rothschild.

Nicholas Ridley went on to hold further Cabinet positions, including secretary of state for the environment and, later, trade and industry. In 1987, he attempted to influence Thatcher to bring about the privatization of the National Health Service. Just like with Ridley's suggestion regarding the Falklands, Thatcher dismissed this particular move toward free-market fundamentalism—perhaps with a better understanding of the limits of the Thatcherite program. She declared that it was “too sensitive a topic to expose to the electorate.”Footnote ²⁹⁹ Nevertheless, Ridley remained a staunch Thatcher loyalist, denouncing the Tories who overthrew Thatcher in 1990 and claiming that these plotters were only able to do so because the prime minister was abroad “bringing the Cold War to an end, an achievement for which she was in large measure responsible.”Footnote ³⁰⁰ In 1992, he was given a life peerage and was henceforth known as Baron Ridley of Liddesdale until his death in March 1993.

The PU fought a successful campaign against the miners. When the NUM was defeated, Britain's trade union movement as a whole suffered a shattering blow from which it has yet to recover, just as the Ridley Report had predicted. Thatcher's implementation of neoliberal, mass privatization programs left Britain's job market a very different place. Within the workplace, the implementation of neoliberal economic policies tipped the balance of power decisively in favor of employers and the super-rich, the exact transfer of power that the monetarists had called for a decade earlier.Footnote ³⁰¹ Within the mining communities, the pit-closures program that Scargill warned about took place with growing speed after 1985. Enfeebled and split, the NUM was no longer in any position to do anything about it. The effects in some former mining communities were devastating. Some were ripped apart, as whole towns sunk into desperate poverty. Drug-use soared, crime became a serious issue, and poor health was a major concern.Footnote ³⁰² Throughout Britain, the same patterns emerged. The working-class had suffered a terrible blow, and it showed. A countrywide development of deep-rooted poverty brought with it an entrenched apathy amongst working-class young people and led to the emergence of a little-understood underclass.Footnote ³⁰³ In his book published shortly after the strike, NCB executive Ned Smith warned of a new style of “macho-management” sweeping Britain's workplaces.Footnote ³⁰⁴ That is, a new, union-free working environment where managers were free to say to employees “this is what we have decided will be done, this is the way you will do it (and) if you don't like it, get the hell out.”Footnote ³⁰⁵ Smith signs off by hoping that such schools of thought will not become the norm. One might wonder how Smith might feel about those hopes in a contemporary British economy blighted by zero-hour-contracts, exploitative employment agencies, and precarious call-center and “gig-economy” jobs. At least in some part, these developments can be traced back to the enforcement of monetarist doctrine upon the British economy and the attack on the NUM planned in the Ridley Report in 1977 and delivered by the ideologues of Thatcher's PU during the Miners’ Strike. Throughout it all, Thatcher and the PU had adhered to one of the central tenets of the Report, the repeated instruction that stealth be deployed at all times. As the Tory “wet” and Thatcher critic Ian Gilmour would later remark, in regard to the miners’ strike, “Margaret Thatcher's cleverest tactic was to make out that the government was scarcely involved in it.”Footnote ³⁰⁶