The press
Mac the Knife
Paul Johnson
`C cargill Losing His Grip', headlined L./the Daily Express. That seemed the general verdict as the miners' leader blundered about in his latest attempt to get the lads out. He got no sympathy even in quarters where he might once have expected it. The Guardian accused him of 'exploding his missiles on the launching-pad' and generating 'farce and incredulity'. It thought that 'the legend of King Arthur is becoming a bad joke. It is weakening his union and the labour movement as a whole'. The mood on the Left was 'despair at the silliness of it all'.
Among the Conservative papers, indeed, there was a nagging fear that Mrs Thatcher might spoil a perfect opportunity to wipe Scargill off the map by insisting on the ap- pointment of Mr Ian MacGregor as Na- tional Coal Board chairman, the one pro- vocative gesture which could push the mass of the miners into the militant camp. 'Tory Qualms Over MacGregor', was the Times headline. It reported that 'the expected ap- pointment' was 'causing intense misgivings among some Conservative MPs'. The Daily Mail thought that such an appointment would be 'a gift to Mr Scargill', though after the vote it declared MacGregor 'the right man for the job'.
The Daily Express was openly inclined to appease the miners on the MacGregor issue. Describing the steel boss as the ultimate in trade union bogey men', 'pushing 71, American and expensive', the paper thought his appointment would give Scargill his only 'trump card'; it would be 'a red rag to a bull', 'thrown like manna into Mr Scargill's lap'. MacGregor had halved the steel industry workforce and would do the same for coal. Hence Scargill 'and his lunatic extremists can barely believe their luck' and could 'no longer disguise their glee as they jibe about "the butcher from America". ' The price of MacGregor, the Express concluded, 'is that we are being carried wholesale into a coal strike. The price is too high to pay.'
The Sunday Express took a similar line. Even George Gardiner, said to be one of Mrs Thatcher's favourite backbenchers, thought that rumours of the MacGregor ap- pointment had 'played into Mr Scargill's hands' since 'he badly needs a bogeyman bigger than himself'. 'Mrs Thatcher does not often make a mistake', was the opening remark in John Junor's column, 'But I fear she could be making a bad one if she ap- points Mr Ian MacGregor as Chairman of the Coal Board'. He might, thought Junor, require a further 'transfer fee' of £1 million to Lazards, which would leave 'a bad taste in the mouth'. Worse, 'he is regarded by even moderate miners as a hatchet man who will savage their industry'. It would be a 'crucial twist of fate' if Mrs Thatcher were `to succeed where Arthur Scargill has so miserably failed and turn decent moderates into picketing militants'.
For my part, on an issue like the appoint- ment of MacGregor, I find it really does pay to read a wide variety of papers. The Daily Telegraph insisted: 'It is no use pretending that the coal industry is not sorely in need of Mr MacGregor or some- one like him'. Britain has the biggest and best coal reserves in Europe, but the total subsidy from economic to uneconomic pits was well over £1 billion a year, and by reducing lossmaking operations half a billion could easily be freed for productive investment. As the Sunday Times pointed
out, 'The essence of a successful industry is that it should constantly renew itself. Old and worn-out pits must be shut and new ones opened'. 'The question of Mr MacGregor's appointment is a red herring. The new coal board chairman will carry out the mandate the government gives him. There is no reason to suppose another chairtnan would get a different brief.'
In any case, as the Observer's_ Labour Editor, Robert Taylor, made clear, a good deal of mythology surrounded Ian MacGregor's work at British Steel. The `massive rundown in British Steel that halv- ed production and manpower in three years was planned and begun under his prede- cessor, Sir Charles Villiers', who had been appointed by Labour to run the corpora- tion back in 1976. MacGregor did not arrive at steel until July 1980, by which time 'the agonies of British Steel were well under way'. It was Villiers who had created the new Corporation strategy, dating from December 19,79, to cut capacity from 21.5 million to 15 million tonnes, with the loss of 60,000 jobs. And it was Villiers, not MacGregor, who switched to plant bargain- ing on the basis of local productivity agreements. Far from being 'brutal' to the industry, during the collapse of steel de- mand in 1980-81, MacGregor, wrote Taylor, had `led a remarkable fightback in 1981-early 1982 with the substantial help of taxpayers' money from a government that did not like what he was telling them about the need to keep on subsidising the Cor- poration, even if this meant hurting private sector 'steel-makers'. Moreover, `to the government's annoyance', MacGregor had been 'less than enthusiastic about privatis- ing parts of the corporation'.
On one thing virtually all the papers were agreed: in trying to engineer a national coal strike out of the NCB plan to shut down the Lewis Merthyr colliery, Scargill had picked the worst possible issue. After a horrifying description of conditions at the pit, the Sunday Times quoted an official as saying that to go on mining there would be an act of 'heroic futility'. Ivan Fallon, writing on the City pages of the Sunday Telegraph, thought that, with winter over and stocks high, some ministers, 'probably including the PM', would be 'happy with a strike, since a lengthy closure would mean the cer- tain collapse of many of the big loss-making pits .. There will never be a better chance to rout the miners'. On the other hand `more sensible voices' just wanted Scargill to be defeated by his own members, which would be 'seen by the NCB as an informal recognition by the main body of miners that old unprofitable pits can be closed'. In the event, the resounding defeat of Scargill s strike call prompted both the Daily Telegraph and the Times cartoonists to por- tray him as a 'wolf-man' trying ineffectual- ly to sink his fangs into 'Princess' Thatcher. As for me, British newspapers are now so smudgy and inky that I emerge from illy weekly tussle with them — having written this piece — looking as though I've Just done a shift down Lewis Merthyr myself.
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