I bought this book mostly out of spite, after the disgusting smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. But it is worth reading on its own. Union officers are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to financing direct action and protecting their members’ money; I suspect that lessons can be drawn from Scargill’s successes, and from the vicious attacks on him.

The book is kind of a slog, but then the material is hugely depressing. This book constitutes strong evidence for the argument that newspapers, TV stations, and other mass media apparatus should be democratically controlled by their audiences, rather than by private individuals and corporations. Robert Maxwell is a hugely unpleasant figure—and he’s far from the worst. My impression is that British news is even worse now.

I bought this book thinking it was about the miners strike itself, the event, and though mistaken I wasn’t disappointed. It actually focuses on the aftermath of the strike, and the government and press collaboration (particularly Robert Maxwell’s Daily Mirror) in their attempts to discredit and criminalise the National Union of Mineworkers leadership, especially Arthur Scargill, with the aid of ever complicit security services. The lengths that the government went to in their witch hunt were truly extraordinary and made me feel quite ill. At times it was reminiscent of Enemy of the State, a terrifying film that you would think belongs firmly in the realm of fiction.

This is a great book showcasing the strength of a state machinery when it is used for political purposes. By the end I was thoroughly angry, which I think is the intention. To feel anything else would be quite inhuman. The title comes from a speech made by Margaret Thatcher in relation to the miners when she had referred to them as the enemy within, as opposed to the Argentineans; the enemy without. Flogging a dead horse was never beyond the Iron Lady. They tried to allege communist conspiracies, Soviet gold, Libyan links and attempted to portray the NUM leaders as having pocketed donated cash from workers for themselves. All of this was of course lies, but it didn’t stop the government saying it, the police investigating it, and the press declaring the accused guilty before proven so, or as it turned out, innocent. Certain stories at the time suggested that brown envelopes were changing hands packed with money from foreign unions, and indeed they were, but only after the government closed the bank accounts of the NUM and refused them access to their members contributions. Is it any wonder that cloak and dagger operations were introduced? They were used to circumvent the illegal sequestration of union funds.

The most shady figure in all of this is possibly the former NUM employee Roger Windsor, whom the book reveals to be a double agent working for MI5 (under Stella Rimington at the time) who refused to speak to the author regarding the events in question. Windsor’s position was to distort the legality of the behaviour of senior NUM officials and destabilise the industrial dispute from within, indeed perhaps he was the real enemy within. After the fact, Windsor became chief witness in the case against Scargill which has never been proved, a case which, if there had been any criminality on his part, the authorities would surely have discovered since they were not above making it up anyway.

Milne weaves this incredibly complex series of events together well and leaves the reader with no doubt as to what really happened in the aftermath of the strike, and indeed as most of us who live in the north of England now understand, just how vindictive the government can be when it wants revenge; that is to say, to the point of destroying manufacturing in this country for the sake of a political grudge.

la vdd es q es bastante impresionante....pero si os interesa el tema con leer la conclusion te haces una idea (y asi no te tiras mas de dos años leyendolo jsjdjsjs)

great read

great read

La misma guerra sucia que se hace aquí contra estibadores, controladores o partidos políticos de izquierda.
Una lectura muy dura pero muy necesaria.

Really interesting read, and really important to understand the role of "counter-subversion" in the role of the state against any form of social change. The book does not discuss the actual strike much, rather focuses on the scandals surrounding Scarlgill and the NUM after the strike. It starts a little dry as it establishes the facts of payments, however this is necessary to know the facts before the scandals are dissected. Milne goes into great detail to illustrate the entire array of tricks that the agencies of the establishment have at their disposal will use to discredit left-wing persons, and the work of their allies in the media, willing to suspend their principles and ethics to serve a common goal.

This book feels very relevant with the reaction to Corbyn, which has many similarities to the campaign against Scargill.

ps. if anyone has any recommendations for a history of the strike I'd be grateful!