[A-List] UK state: Maxwell, media and the miners

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

In 1994 Guardian journalist Seumas Milne published "The Enemy Within"
(Verso), his account of the smear campaign conducted against the
leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers by the British state
and, specifically, Robert Maxwell, at the time the proprietor of Mirror
Group Newspapers. Together with execrable Central TV journalist Roger
Cook, Maxwell portrayed a corrupt leadership lining its own pockets with
Libyan money and cash donated by Soviet miners in solidarity with their
British counterparts. Such was the storm that Soviet miners leaders
began to demand an accounting of their donation. Given the assault on
the union's finances by the British state (administered by Price
Waterhouse, the government-appointed sequestrator), getting any money to
striking miners was going to involve some amount of creative accounting.
Surprise, surprise, then, that the NUM leadership could account for its
exact whereabouts at every point in time. For if they could have, of
course Price Waterhouse would have been on hand to confiscate it. These
subtleties were lost on Maxwell and Cook, of course, as they went about
enabling Neil Kinnock to accelerate his transformation of the Labour
Party into a prototype New Labour, with the help of Maxwell acolytes
Alistair Campbell and Charles Clarke, among others, including Patricia
Hewitt and Peter Mandelson.

The great merit of Milne's book is that he places these events within
the context of a deeper, orchestrated effort to smash the UK labour
movement, including the Labour Party, by various "rogue" elements of the
security apparatus, the Conservative Party, the City of London, and
"civil society". His claims that the miners were so close to victory may
be questioned, but he performed a great service in uncovering important
truths regarding the conduct of the secret state and its linkages with
the news media and political parties. Around the time the book was
published Channel 4 ran a one-hour documentary based on Milne's
findings, in which the main protagonists of the sorry story (those still
around to tell the tale, that is -- Maxwell had since drowned in
mysterious circumstances) were interviewed. One of these was the
then-Daily Mirror editor, Roy Greenslade, who, when presented with all
Milne's evidence, and, having admitted that it looked all very dodgy
indeed, point-blank refused to offer an apology to Arthur Scargill and
Peter Heathfield. Now, eight years later, in one of the most unreported
events of significance to do with the British state, Greenslade has
admitted his wrongdoing, and has triggered an inevitable fallout.


Sorry, Arthur

In 1990, the Daily Mirror, then edited by Roy Greenslade, claimed that
at the height of the miners' strike NUM president Arthur Scargill had
taken money raised for strikers. But now the truth can be revealed

Monday May 27, 2002
The Guardian

On March 19 this year the highest court in France, the Cour de
Cassation, ordered Roger Windsor, former chief executive of the National
Union of Mineworkers, to repay a debt of £29,500. The judgment went
unreported in Britain, as did an NUM press release more than a month
later that celebrated the court's ruling.

Yet this case - and Windsor's humiliation - deserve the widest possible
audience because they are the culmination of a deplorable saga which
goes some way to vindicating a wronged man: NUM president Arthur
Scargill. Wronged by the press in general, by the Daily Mirror
specifically and, since I was then its editor, by me.

We journalists seem to find it impossible to apologise for what we have
written and I know, sadly, that some old friends and colleagues won't
appreciate this mea culpa. But lingering embarrassment is far outweighed
by my heartfelt delight in being able, at last, to put the record
straight by saying sorry.

Twelve years ago, the Mirror published a series of stories which
genuinely deserved the adjective sensational. The most damaging "fact",
headlined with a certainty that brooked no contradiction, was that
Scargill had paid off the mortgage on his house with money donated by
Libya. The main story claimed that at the height of the 1984-5 strike,
Scargill had counted out £70,000 from money supposed to go to
suffering strikers to clear his £25,000 home loan from the NUM, along
with those of two other officials, the then general secretary Peter
Heathfield and the then chief executive, none other than Roger Windsor.

Running in parallel were several other cloak-and-dagger tales about
£1m donated by Russian miners, movements of funds through Swiss and
Irish banks and boxes of cash being driven through the night. There was
a cast list of exotic characters, including Libya's Colonel Gadafy, a
Pakistani shopkeeper in Doncaster called Altaf Abassi and Scargill's
former driver-cum-minder Jim Parker.

Almost as exotic was the Mirror man responsible for obtaining the
original tips, Terry Pattinson - the testy and excitable industrial
editor. He was first approached by Parker, who had fallen out with
Scargill, in July 1989. Very soon after, he was separately contacted by
Windsor, who had quit the union and said he had a terrific story to sell
to the paper.

My predecessor as Mirror editor, Richard Stott, then oversaw months of
an investigation code-named Operation Cyclops. Cash deals of £50,000
were agreed with Parker and Windsor. Contracts were signed. The
investigation was said to be nearing completion when Stott was deposed
by Mirror proprietor Robert Maxwell in my favour.

When I took over in February 1990, Maxwell gleefully confided that the
paper had a huge, hush-hush scandal in the pipeline. But my heart sank
when I realised the subject: I had no animus against Scargill (quite the
reverse); I thought it inappropriate for the left-of-centre Mirror to
target a trade union leader; but, most important, I thought the copy
presented to me was both impenetrable and lacking in substance. With the
NUM's assets under sequestration during the strike, it had been entirely
understandable for Scargill and his executive to use subterfuge to
protect their funds. I had donated money to street collectors shaking
buckets and I didn't really expect it to reach strikers through official
union routes.

To help me understand what Cyclops was about, I assigned two experienced
reporters - Frank Thorne and Ted Oliver - to go over every detail of
Pattinson's story, and to reinterview Parker and Windsor. It was obvious
Pattinson had no love for Scargill, and I wanted to make sure this
didn't cloud his judgment. He also detested the involvement of Thorne
and Oliver, and there were several rows between the trio. After one
noisy pub argument, I had to placate the fractious Pattinson by
pretending to admonish the other two.

This incident alerted me to the most farcical situation of all: the
great Scargill story was no secret. Five months before I became editor,
Scargill had got wind that something was up, and his union's paper ran a
story asking: "Has Robert Maxwell's Daily Mirror launched a special
'smear' campaign against the NUM? And is its prime target union
president Arthur Scargill?"

After a couple of weeks, an industrial correspondent from a rival paper
asked me when we were going to run our Scargill scoop. Not only did half
of Fleet Street appear to know, I then discovered that Central TV's The
Cook Report was so far down the road on the same investigation that its
intrepid reporter, Roger Cook, was already planning his script. I could
and should have abandoned the whole project at that point. But I
respected the reporting talents of Thorne and Oliver who, despite their
disagreements with Pattinson, had come to believe in the veracity of his
informants' stories.

By this time our main witness, Windsor, was living in France and I sent
the trio to see him, to go over every point in his allegations. He
demanded a further £30,000 (eventually paid to him) and proved
difficult to deal with. They did have reservations about him, due in
part to his reluctance to return to Britain, but on balance they
believed him. The central revelations concerned the mortgage repayments
and the fact, always previously denied, that the NUM had received money
from Libya. Each of the claims was sensational. Linked, they were
dynamite. But was Windsor telling the truth?

Parker couldn't really corroborate either claim. He spoke mainly about
collecting boxes of cash from British trade union leaders. Windsor named
Abassi as the Libyan link man who given him the money and, after a
little persuasion, Abassi confirmed to Thorne and Oliver that he had
given £163,000 to Windsor from Libyan sources. There was still a
problem. Windsor was the only witness to the alleged dividing of the
money to repay home loans. With the Cook programme pressing to broadcast
and requesting our help in return for telling us what they knew, one of
the most extraordinary moments in my journalistic career happened.

Out of the blue, Steve Hudson, the finance officer whom Windsor had
named as the other man in the room when the money was counted out,
phoned one of our reporters. Hours later, he turned up in my office to
give a taped interview in which he confirmed every word of Windsor's
account. He didn't ask for payment and spoke under no duress. Despite my
earlier misgivings, I could no longer turn a blind eye to Cyclops.

Throughout these weeks I had been editing a paper owned by the world's
most intrusive proprietor. But I didn't tell Maxwell how the Scargill
investigation was progressing until suddenly informing him that we had
to publish on March 5 to coincide with that evening's Cook Report. He
was furious - Maxwell hated surprises - and was even more bad-tempered
when the Sun preempted our scoop with a story suggesting that Scargill
was facing a controversy over Libyan and Russian money. After we
published, Maxwell foolishly hogged the TV limelight, reinforcing
Scargill's belief that Maxwell was part of a plot.

We sent a set of written questions to Scargill but, nervous of an
injunction, didn't mention the mortgage. That was an ethically suspect
decision, breaking a time-honoured tradition in which people are given a
chance to answer press allegations. I expected Scargill to sue.
Pattinson, convinced by every allegation, was sure he wouldn't. He was
right about that. Scargill confined himself to a statement decrying our
"vicious lies".

The series ran all week and one evening Maxwell asked me if I was
entirely happy with the story's provenance. I knew immediately what he
meant. Had the Daily Mirror been duped as part of a secret service plot
to discredit Scargill? Was Windsor, if not an agent of MI5, being
manipulated by one of its officers? I discussed this with the trio and
they dismissed any such notion. Thorne and Oliver didn't much like
Windsor, but they thought him an unlikely recruit to MI5. They pointed
to the interlocking jigsaw in which Parker, Abassi, Windsor and Hudson
had played their parts and, as I would repeat endlessly in the following
months and years, if it wasn't true why hadn't Scargill sued for libel?

Even when Gavin Lightman QC, who held an inquiry at the NUM's prompting,
ruled that the mortgage story was "entirely untrue" I was relaxed -
though I was badly shaken by Hudson changing his story. Most of us moved
on. I departed from the Mirror. Maxwell departed from this earth. Peter
Heathfield retired in 1992, distraught at the slur on his name. But
Scargill, similarly outraged, fought on.

The most important enduring court action was launched by the
French-based International Energy and Miners' Organisation (IEMO), which
sought to recover from Windsor the £29,500 he had admitted receiving
from union funds. In 1994, the IEMO won its case to recover the money
when a French court decided that despite his denials, Windsor had signed
a mortgage deed and - according to forensic handwriting experts - his
wife's signature, which strongly resembled his own, had been forged.

Four years later, two courts of appeal in Bordeaux reaffirmed that
judgment. The Cour de Cassation was Windsor's last hope. Now claiming
insolvency, he faces a bill for the loan plus interest, costs and
damages estimated at £250,000.

I left a phone message at Windsor's home in central France this week. He
did not reply, but his London-based lawyer called in his stead. I
repeated that I wished to speak to Windsor, who didn't call back.
Similarly, Hudson - now the director of finance for the coal industry
social welfare organisation - didn't return my call.

So was Windsor working for MI5? He strenuously denies it and recently
sued the Daily Express for asserting that he was. Dame Stella Rimington,
the former head of MI5, was asked directly by the Guardian last
September whether he was an MI5 agent. Choosing her words carefully, she
replied: "It would be correct to say that he, Roger Windsor, was never
an agent in any sense of the word that you can possibly imagine."

It looks as though the mystery behind Windsor's decision to make such
sweeping allegations against his former union colleagues may never be
solved. It has brought him to ruin and the NUM estimates it has cost the
union £750,000 to fight court battles since the Mirror's series.

I am now convinced that Scargill didn't misuse strike funds and that the
union didn't get money from Libya. I also concede that, given the
supposed wealth of Maxwell's Mirror and the state of NUM finances, it
was understandable that Scargill didn't sue.

Nothing I have said should be taken as criticism of the Mirror trio: we
were all taken in. I can't undo what has been done, but I am pleased to
offer the sincerest of apologies to Heathfield and to Scargill, who is
on the verge of retirement. I regret ever publishing that story. And
that is the honest truth.

-----

Scargill: a landmark confession, or too little, too late?

Wednesday May 29, 2002
The Guardian

* I congratulate Roy Greenslade for his remarkably candid piece (The
story I got wrong, Media, May 27) about the Arthur Scargill "sensation"
carried in the Daily Mirror when he was editor. It is a landmark
confession in honest journalism - and one which I would hope will set a
precedent for our tarnished trade.

The Scargill scandal story was one that I never believed. Whatever may
be said about Arthur Scargill and the tragic story surrounding the
miners' strike of 1984/5, I never believed that he was personally
dishonest in the way suggested by the Daily Mirror at that time. Nor, as
a former industrial editor of the Daily Mirror, am I making any
accusations against my former colleagues on the paper. If the real story
ever emerges I suspect it will not reflect against them so much as other
areas in our society.

My principal point is to praise Roy Greenslade for his honesty and his
professionalism in pursuit of the truth. He has hoisted a very important
flag that all journalists should salute.
Geoffrey Goodman
Editor, British Journalism Review

* Roy Greenslade's apology is too little, too late, and too hollow.
Anybody overseeing investigations into the NUM and Roger Windsor must
have been struck by the fact that Scargill's potential for galvanising
effective political and trade union activity had made him the main
target for MI5 dirty tricks. The "impenetrable" nature of the case
against Scargill would surely have alerted any fair-minded political
journalist to secret service skulduggery.

No doubt history will reveal the actual extent of the secret state's
involvement, but the shocking truth is that the coal industry and its
workforce have all but disappeared, but the unprincipled middle-class
journalists (who share the responsibility for that awful vandalism)
remain, always on hand to do the establishment's bidding.
Dave Collins
Huddersfield

* I for one will not forgive Roy Greenslade. Not only did he and his ilk
outrageously slander two men of honour and integrity, Arthur Scargill
and Peter Heathfield, but thousands of mineworkers, like myself, who
supported our union all through the strike with the full support of our
families.

The only thing we were all guilty of was our refusal to bend the knee to
the industrial and social vandalism that was Thatcherism. The resulting
destruction of whole swaths of hard working, caring communities,
contributing to the national wellbeing, has been replaced by run-down,
demoralised, crime-and drug-ridden ghettos and wastelands.

Many miners had trumped up charges brought against them, most were
subsequently found to be unsubstantiated, but quite a few lost their
jobs and pensions and never got them back.

I'm afraid an apology 12 years late will not suffice.
G Chesters
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs

-----

'Roy says we were taken in. We were not'

Last week in Media Guardian, Roy Greenslade apologised for a story he
ran while editor of the Daily Mirror accusing Arthur Scargill of
pocketing union funds. Here the reporters who wrote the story reply

Monday June 3, 2002
The Guardian

Terry Pattinson, industrial editor of the Daily Mirror when the story
ran in 1990

Roy Greenslade's public apology to Scargill could not have been better
written if it had been penned by the trade union leader himself.
Greenslade's 1,500-word feature may have cleansed his soul but was a
disservice to journalism. Scargill can now laugh his way into the
history books as a vindicated man.

Greenslade did not explain why the Daily Mirror revelations were
inaccurate, a journalistic omission that beggars belief. Thousands of
young Guardian readers, who may not have read the Daily Mirror's March
1990 exposé, have a right to know on what grounds Greenslade now
denigrates the story.

The man who took charge of that investigation was editor Richard Stott,
a man difficult to like, but admired, feared and respected by everybody
who worked for him. It was Stott not Greenslade who appointed Ted Oliver
and Frank Thorne to assist me in the probe.

It was true that I resented their intrusion, but I came to realise that
I could not do it on my own. They were experienced, hard-bitten
characters who knew a good story when they saw one and they did not take
prisoners.

Oliver and Thorne, however, went over all the ground I had covered for
the previous three months and decided that I was on the right path to a
good story.

In a morning of good fortune, Thorne helped me to capture NUM general
secretary Peter Heathfield on tape confirming the begging trip to Libya
by Roger Windsor, the NUM chief executive.

The key player who entered the arena was Steve Hudson, the NUM
accountant, who came to see me at the Mirror headquarters in Holborn
Circus hours after being confronted by Thorne and Oliver, who had
arrived unannounced on his doorstep. He told them nothing, but told me
that he and his pregnant wife had spent a sleepless night wondering what
to do. Young Hudson had a career to save and a reputation to keep.

He had been avoiding me for weeks, but decided to travel to London at
first light the next morning to spill the beans. He gave one taped
interview and said he would never speak to the press again. He kept his
word and later refused to speak to Roy Greenslade. He remains silent to
this day.

His testimony, however, was the clincher, and I will never forget his
words until my dying day. He confirmed Windsor's story, saying that
Scargill, Heathfield and Windsor had paid off their NUM home loans with
cash taken into their headquarters in a suitcase by Windsor. The main
allegation in the Mirror story, therefore, would never have been made
but for Hudson's taped testimony. Although Windsor's account had more
than a hint of veracity, no journalist could have used his version
without corroboration. Windsor was, in legal terms, a "tainted witness",
because he wanted lots of money for his story.

As a result of the Mirror/Cook Report story, Scargill was forced to
reveal details of secret bank accounts in the UK, Ireland and other
countries. Roger Windsor should have paid off his £29,500 bridging
loan to his union with the money given him by the Mirror Group. I urged
him early in the investigation to pay off that debt because I knew that
Scargill would hound him to eternity for the money.

The NUM executive told me after the story was published that Scargill
was "on his own" and would have to sue the Mirror/Cook Report from his
own resources.

Windsor could not have been a spook in MI5. The security service would
not have allowed an agent to get into debt over a bridging loan and go
crawling for financial help to a Fleet Street tabloid. In any case, the
man who interviewed Windsor for the job of NUM chief executive was
Scargill, another unlikely spy.

I was sorry to have written such a story about the leader of a union I
loved, but I am a journalist who believes in writing stories in the
public interest. I realise I played a pivotal role in the downfall of
Arthur Scargill but I have no regrets.

If I went back in time, I would write the same story. As Roy Greenslade
would say, "that is the honest truth".

Frank Thorne and Ted Oliver, the two reporters assigned to help
Pattinson

We write in response to our former editor Roy Greenslade's ill-judged
apology to NUM president Arthur Scargill. As two of the reporters
involved in that long and exhaustive investigation in 1989-90, we
believe Roy's memory has let him down on some aspects while, on others,
he is completely incorrect. Having spent almost a year amassing
evidence, we still reject Roy's views. Scargill did not sue and the
Daily Mirror has never withdrawn the revelations.

Roy is wrong to say he assigned us to the story. We had been assigned by
his predecessor, Richard Stott, and the investigation was almost
complete when Maxwell appointed Roy. We are astonished by his claim that
it was "inappropriate for the left-of-centre Mirror to target a trade
union leader." Why? If there were suggestions that any trade union
leader had misled or cheated his members - who included our readers -
then it was the Mirror's duty to investigate.

Roy describes Altaf Abassi, the man who brought £163,000 in cash from
Libya supposedly to help the miners, as a Pakistani shopkeeper from
Doncaster. After tracking him down, we came to believe he was a highly
placed representative of Libya in England, well-known to high-ranking
Libyan officials. Above his fireplace he had a glowing citation signed
personally by "The Leader". We also had proof that he had been to Libya
to seek funds for the miners.

Roy is correct in stating that we did not like or trust the main
whistle-blower, former NUM chief executive Roger Windsor. That was a key
reason we opposed the Mirror paying an extra £30,000 to Windsor,
believing that - in justice - it belonged to the miners. It was Roy's
decision to pay it and, ironically, it was this money that led directly
to the miners' court action against Windsor in France.

As for the question of whether Windsor might have been an MI5 agent or
manipulated by one of its officers, if he was why did he wait for so
long before blowing the whistle at a time when the NUM was a defeated
and largely defunct union? Windsor didn't even initiate the
investigation into Scargill's strange financial dealings: it began
because the Mirror discovered a bank statement showing a deposit of
£1m.

Roy plays down the role played by Jim Parker, Scargill's driver and
minder, claiming he could shed little light on the Libyan money. But
Parker witnessed the cash being handed over to Windsor. Parker was, and
is, an honest man who grew disillusioned with Scargill, his life-long
friend.

Roy says he discovered that Central TV's Cook Report "was so far down
the road on the same investigation that its intrepid reporter, Roger
Cook, was already planning his script". In fact, when The Cook Report
approached Roy, they knew basically nothing about what we were doing and
admitted to us that they "conned" the editor.

Roy says that former NUM finance officer Steve Hudson phoned "out of the
blue" to confirm Windsor's story. In fact, we spent weeks tracking him
down and after we did, he spent several sleepless nights before finally
phoning the Mirror and agreeing to talk to us.

Roy points out that the inquiry launched by the NUM under Gavin Lightman
QC found that the allegation that Scargill had used money destined for
the miners to pay off a mortgage was "entirely untrue". He did. It was
Roy who took the decision not to cooperate with Lightman because we all
suspected - wrongly, as it turned out - that the inquiry would be a
whitewash. But many of his findings did agree with other allegations we
made during that series. The Libyan transactions were later repeated by
Colonel Gadafy to the Sunday Times which, we recall, gave Roy great
satisfaction, though Scargill has always denied that Libyan money was
paid to Windsor.

Roy states that he "could and should have abandoned the whole project".
He was the editor and, if he had genuine doubts, he shouldn't have
succumbed to pressure, whether from The Cook Report or the Mirror's
owner, Robert Maxwell.

Finally, Roy declares that all of us were "taken in". We were not. He
says that he regretted publishing the story. The "honest truth" is that
we don't - despite Roy's retrospective retraction.

-----

More dispatches on Roy's repentance

Friday May 31, 2002
The Guardian

Dear Roy Greenslade, it was good to read your apology about the Arthur
Scargill story (Sorry, Arthur, Media, May 27). I wonder if you remember
our film for Dispatches, which exposed those lies in, I think, 1991. It
seems a bit late to come clean now.

Do you remember our doorstepping your hapless Mirror hack? Or pursuing
Roger Cook - who had repeated the allegations on TV - as he fled his
uneaten breakfast? Or confronting you on air to apologise and your
steadfast refusal?

It's easy to repent now, after the damage done to the miners when they
were at their most vulnerable. Perhaps you should go round the destroyed
communities and make your apology in person.
Ken Loach
Sixteen Films

· Roy Greenslade thought at first that Arthur Scargill's failure to
sue the Mirror for its scurrilous attack on him during the miners'
strike showed the story to be true.

But overwhelming financial odds are not the only reason trade union
leaders don't go to law when grossly misrepresented. Following the
so-called winter of discontent Alan Fisher, then Nupe general secretary,
was libelled in Callaghan's mendacious account of the grave-diggers
strike. In his autobiography he stated that when asked by Peter Shore to
tell Nupe members to return to work "Fisher refused". Actually, Alan
Fisher told Shore that the grave-diggers were members of the GMB union
not Nupe, and this fact was relayed to Callaghan who for his own reasons
ignored it.

Despite legal opinion being that should he sue he would almost certainly
win, Alan's view was that libel actions of that sort served only to
promote the sales of second-rate books (Spycatcher was then enjoying the
boom resulting from the Thatcher government's law case). He decided to
take no action, the repercussions of which continue, alas, to this day,
long after his death.
Ruth Fisher
Bontddu, Gwynedd

· How could Roy Greenslade have been so frivolous? And, now, the
self-satisfied patting on the back. I assume that his smooth citing of
the Cour de Cassation indicates that he has now left the country he
helped to ruin.
Nina Tuckman
London