For years, I suspected MI5 interfered in the miners’ strike. The truth was even more shocking than I thought | Mark Hollingsworth

by ninjascotsman

3 comments

  1. I worked in the telephone exchange that served Mick McGahey back in 84. One day, when the miners strike was just taking off, two guys in suits walked in and told me to lose myself. After they’d gone, I spotted unusual wires on the MDF, which I traced to the basement cable chamber, connected to a mysterious unmarked black metal box tucked behind some cables. It was connected to McGahey’s phone line and a private wire line, which had no record of customer or routing.
    Asked the boss, got told to forget I ever saw anything. And he was a staunch union guy.

  2. [Scargill’s stated aim was to bring down that woman](https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/nostalgia/2024/02/29/the-miners-strike-40-years-on-the-day-relations-between-the-police-and-miners-changed-forever/)

    >Certainly, she thought it possible he might do so, and prepared herself carefully for battle in a number of ways, especially by building up coal stocks at the power stations: this time, she was determined to win: and what else could she do? It was Scargill’s intention to bring down her government, just as the miners had brought down Ted Heath’s. There are some battles that have to be not only fought but won.

    it literally was a battle as to who ruled the country the miners or the elected government.

    Scargill played a game of winner takes all and lost, well he didn’t, read up on his *life presidency* expenses claims, use of right-to-buy to try to get his union funded barbican flat on the cheap. Rather the miners lost and lost big

    A more pragmatic leader would have demanded stuff like

    * pit mergers
    * older miners medically retired (siliceous / black lung / emphysema / vibration white finger / etc etc) so they could at least enjoy a few years of retirement
    * retraining
    * enterprise grants /zones

    For Maggie she’s seen what happened to Heath & subsequent years of decay, three day week, power rationing, sterling crisis, IMF bailout, strikes upon strikes, inflation hitting 24%, culminating in the [Winter of Discontent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent)

  3. So the interference amounted to foiling an attempt to evade paying a lawful fine by abusing offshore bank accounts?

    It’s not exactly the shocking exposé the title promises, is it?

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