13/01/2014 Inside Out Yorkshire and Lincolnshire

It is 30 years since the miners' strike started here in Yorkshire `

an industrial dispute which caused deep divisions and helped define Mrs

Thatcher's Britain. Whatever the rights and wrongs, no`one can deny

the hardship faced by the miners and their families and the devastating

social impact of pit closures in the years that followed. But there's

another legacy of the strike which still causes real bitterness. It's

about money and the man who used to lead the miners, Arthur Scargill.

Tonight, Inside Out investigates questions about money and the miners

and asks why over the past 30 years ?700,000 has been paid to the

National union of miners to a separate organisation of which

Arthur Scargill is president. Loyalty to every minor and every

minor'swife in this country. 30 years ago, Arthur Scargill could

claim to be the most powerful trade union boss in Britain. He was always

controversial. To his critics, he was an enemy within. To many of his

supporters, he could do no wrong. Jim Kelly was a young miner at the

Yorkshire Main pit at Edlington, near Doncaster. He followed Arthur

Scargill without question. During the strike there was nothing better

than him. We'd have followed him to the end of the world and, in effect,

we probably did. Do you want a president who is ready to sit down

in a backfield `` in a back room doing secret deals? Don't vote for

me. But here at NUM headquarters in Barnsley, 30 years after the strike,

there's a deep rift between Arthur Scargill and the man who is in

charge of his old union. I think Arthur's lasting legacy is in two

halves. If you take what he did during the strike, just before and

just after then he had a very positive impact on the union.

Unfortunately, anybody that's looking at Arthur now on recent

events would see him in a very different light.

Relations between Arthur Scargill and the NUM have hit rock bottom.

There's been a series of legal disputes. In 2012, he got an out of

court settlement from the NUM over expenses due to him, including a car

allowance. A year ago, he lost the right to stay in his London flat for

life at the expense of his old union. There is no question that the

union could afford and can afford the payments of that entitlement to

which I was entitled and am entitled and I find it rather perverse that a

judgement of this kind can be given in today's terms. I would say it's

time now to walk away, Mr Scargill. You've been found out. The NUM is

not your personal bank account and never will be again.

It was a very bitter court case. We've got two of the documents. Both

produced in evidence, both likely to do little for Mr Scargill's

reputation. One document dates from 1993. It's an application by Mr

Scargill to buy his rented Barbican flat from the landlord, the

Corporation of London, at a discounted price.

This is where Mr Scargill lives, in a very expensive part of Central

London. It's hardly a typical council estate. Flats here sell for

nearly ?1 million. And Mr Scargill, perhaps Mrs Thatcher's most bitter

enemy, was trying to use highly controversial right`to`buy

legislation introduced by the Conservatives so tenants could buy

their own council homes. It is so hypocritical it is unreal. It was

Thatcher's legislation that actually gave council tenants the right to

buy their houses. But the application was refused because it

wasn't his primary residence. He doesn't mention in his application

that the flat was paid for by the NUM. And, it was established in the

Barbican court case, that from 1991 until 2008 the NUM's National

Executive Committee didn't know it was paying for the flat. I think if

it had been made public before then I think there'd have been a huge

outcry. People would be actually astounded by knowing that.

Mr Scargill told us the proposal, if accepted, would have been put to the

NUM's National Executive and the flat would subsequently have been

transferred to the ownership of the NUM. He says it would have saved the

union a substantial amount of money and provided the union with an

asset. It was a bitter court case and nothing caused more bad feeling

than this letter, apparently written by one of Arthur Scargill's oldest

friends and colleagues. If we honestly believe that our demands

are justifiable. Macro. In December 2001, Frank Cave, the

vice`president of the NUM, was dying of cancer. Mr Cave's illness

coincided with Arthur Scargill's imminent retirement from the union

presidency. I visited Frank on quite a few occasions over those three

months. He was in a bad way. I've seen him over the years and he's

that was his worst period. At that was written, parent by Mr Cave,

setting light his entitlement. Arthur Scargill insisted in court

that he had played no part in writing or drafting this letter.

I've seen Frank more than most, I would suggest, and, as far as I was

concerned, Frank wouldn't have been writing letters. An earlier draft of

the letter which Sean, with a change in Arthur Scargill'sown handwriting.

The issue was whether or not the letter came from Mr Scargill and Mr

Justice Underhill found that it did. Arthur Scargill had known Frank Cave

for nearly 40 years. He delivered the oration at his funeral. I don't

want to actually say on camera what I actually think about the deed that

he did. I hope with my answers that you can actually pick up what I

actually think. I don't think very highly of the man at all for doing

what he did. I think Justice Underhill put it quite well in his

summing up, that when you've got somebody who has convinced himself

as to how things are, it is a lot easier then to create the documents

to justify that you're right and I think that's, basically, what

happened. Arthur had a vision of what the union was, what his rights

were, and then created the evidence to back up what he believed to be

reality. Mr Scargill told us he stands by his evidence. He rejects

Mr Kelly's allegation. He said the Judge had inexplicably disregarded

other evidence in the case, indicating Mr Cave had been alert,

aware and orientated right up to the time of his death In his judgment,

Mr Justice Underhill said it was very unlikely Mr Cave had written

the letter. There'd been a lack of transparency in Mr Scargill's

dealings and he had been prepared to be economical with the truth. The

judge said, I believe he suffers to a high degree from the common

tendency to reconstruct his recollection in a manner favourable

to himself. I think the common pattern has been that there's always

been that nobody seemed to know what was happening but, documentary`wise,

everything, all the documents seemed to be there for you to find, when

you actually started to look at them in context and what was happening in

the organisation at the time, it didn't seem plausible that that

would have happened that way. To Arthur Scargill's critics, this

lack of transparency is a familiar story. To understand the full nature

of the fall`out between Mr Scargill and his old union, you have got to

go back 30 years, when the miners were on strike.

It was a fight to the finish between two bitter enemies: the NUM and Mrs

Thatcher's government. Early in the strike, after a court case,

accountants were called in to identify the union's assets.

Eventually, a receiver was appointed to control the NUM's finances. The

union effectively, very soon after the beginning of the strike, had no

funds, no income coming in. Its members were on strike and yet there

were expenses to be met. The NUM needed money to survive and it got

millions of pounds in donations from supporters and well`wishers, much of

it in cash. There are no receipts, often foreign currency, and it just

went into St James' House, went into the headquarters, on the basis, I

think he'd said, oh, well, you don't need a receipt you know what we're

going to use it for anyway. Understandably, the NUM wanted to

keep money away from its accountants. There was a need for

secrecy. One French`based journalist remembers helping trade unionists

bring secret donations of cash into the UK. I am absolutely confident

that when I handed over the money, in an alleyway outside a pub in

Folkestone or Dover, that that money was going in cash to the NUM.

The miners visit to Libya, now there is a row back home. In October 1984,

there was public outrage when it was revealed that Roger Windsor, the

NUM's chief executive, had gone to Libya to meet Colonel Gaddaffi, less

than a year after a policewoman had been shot dead outside the Libyan

Embassy in London. I went in and embraced and kissed Colonel Gadaffi

and gave him the story that Mr Scargill and I had agreed beforehand

about the plight of the union, the plight of the members and what the

Thatcher government was doing to the NUM and provided him with details of

a bank account, a bank in 1990, there was a front page news

story. It claimed Arthur Scargill paid off his mortgage with money

from Libya. The main source was Roger Windsor, who was paid ?85,000

by the Daily Mirror. It was claimed that, using Libyan money, Mr

Scargill paid off a ?25,000 mortgage on his house. Roger Windsor had

repaid a ?29,500 home loan and Peter Heathfield, the NUM's general

secretary, had paid off a ?17,000 home loan.

It was a shocking story, and very personally damaging to Arthur

Scargill, although he decided not to sue for libel. Instead, the union

appointed a barrister, Gavin Lightman, to make a report on the

NUM's finances. Most people regarded Mr Lightman as sympathetic towards

the miners. He'd given the NUM legal advice in the past.

Were you pleased when an enquiry was set up? Years. But you wouldn't

cooperate with it? I was advised not to participate in it. Like

co`operated... I didn't physically attend any meetings, because I was

advised not to. Four months later, Mr Lightman

produced his report, saying Mr Windsor's ?29,500 loan had been paid

from donations and a ?13,000 bill for Mr Heathfield's home

improvements had been paid from donations. But the central

allegation against Mr Scargill ` that he'd paid off his mortgage with

money from Libya ` was completely untrue. The editor of the Daily

Mirror later said the story was wrong, and apologised to Mr

Scargill. Are you going to be president of the next national

executive meeting, when this is discussed? Probably in the year

2001. So Arthur Scargill hadn't paid off his mortgage. But Mr Lightman

found that during the strike, in late 1984, money from cash donations

had been used to pay ?6,800 of Mr Scargill's household bills. Mr

Scargill told Mister Lightman he paid the money back in cash a few

days later. In the past 30 years, his memory appears to have changed.

He has now told us the ?6,800 bill was for council and water rates and

electricity. But in October 1984, he said in a letter to the NUM's

finance officer that more than ?6,000 of this bill was for

improvements to his home. Quite frankly, when you look at some of

the issues about home loans and repairing homes and things like

that, that the meat is just a no`no. `` that the me. This is the Lightman

Report. The NUM took court action to prevent its public distribution. So

its full contents have never been widely known. But it was far from a

total victory for Mr Scargill. Even today, it raises many questions.

Mr Scargill has always disputed nearly all Lightman's findings, but

it was only due to the Lightman Report that the NUM's executive

committee discovered 17 secret accounts had been set up across

Europe to take donations. There was money sloshing around in bank

accounts with individuals' names on them, most of them who were close to

Arthur, and it was just unhealthy. How have those questions not been

answered, then, for 20 years or more? I think basically the

questions haven't been answered for 20 years or more because there's

been a feeling within the union that any attack on the union would

reflect badly on what happened in the strike. Because it's in relation

to the strike, it's something people didn't want to re`open. It was a

case of the strike was right, which it was, and everything that were

done in the name of the strike must have been done for the right

reasons. The NUM's two senior officials, its president Arthur

Scargill and Peter Heathfield, face charges after the report into the

union's funds... It had been a tough time for Arthur

Scargill but he had survived. He told us the misapprehension of funds

had been denied by the Inland Revenue and the watchdog

investigation failed at the Lightman report was ruled inadmissible as

evidence. I thought you heard as I did that the prosecution offered no

evidence. That is a vindication of our position. They offered no

evidence against the three defendants, the Case against all of

us was dismissed, with costs. He also told us that a special NUM

conference in 1990 expressed total confidence in Mr Scargill and Mr

Heathfield and ratified all of their financial dealings. It was in Paris

that Arthur Scargill, after defeat in the miners' strike, turned more

of his attention after 1985. The International miners Organisation,

later renamed the ie M O, was created here, and claimed to

represent 6 million miners. The IEMO came up in the early '80s, maybe

before. It was an idea of both the NUM and the French miners to set up

a new organisation which would bring together East, West, Africa, Latin

America, Asia. The IEMO General secretary is a French trade

unionist, Alain Simon. Someone said to me in a visit to South Africa, he

said to me, Arthur Scargill is a hero of the working class. He is one

of Mr Scargill's oldest colleagues and closest friends. They both

played a leading role in founding this new, French `based

international organisation. Mr Scargill has been president since

1985, but, for more than 20 years, his close links with the IEMO have

caused controversy. The NUM was challenged again today over money

donated by Soviet miners during the miners strike.

After the Lightman Report, the IEMO was big news. Large sums of money,

donated during the strike, appeared to have come under its control.

As far as Alain Simon was concerned, the Soviet money was given to the

IEMO and not to the NUM. In the spotlight was a well`documented

donation of ?1 million from Soviet miners. This was shown to have been

given not for the NUM, but for miners around the world.

Mr Simon had refused to co`operate with Lightman. Indeed, Mr Lightman

described the secrecy surrounding the finances of the IMO as

"practically impenetrable." These were troubled times for Mr Scargill

and his union. The National union of Mineworkers and the IMO have agreed

a formula which they hope will end the dispute over ?1 million. These

are troubled times for Arthur Scargill and his union. The NUM, of

which he was president, was in dispute with the IEMO, of which he

was president as well. Finally, a deal was struck and the IEMO paid

the NUM ?742,000. Mr Scargill says no money intended as donations for

the NUM members was paid into stayed in the IMO accounts after the

strike. He describes the ?742,000 as a donation from the IMO to the NUM,

in return for which, the NUM agreed to make no new claims against the

IMO. There's so little publicly available information. If it was a

trade union, the IMO would have to comply with French laws requiring

unions to publish accounts ` something it hasn't done since 1993.

TRANSLATION: Probably, they didn't do, because they are not a trade

union. The IEMO is an international organisation which brings together

trade unions. They certainly ought to publish accounts, but they're not

obliged to. I suspect most of it is probably still sitting somewhere,

being given off in bits and bobs. To be honest, I don't think offered to

any of it personally. That is not really the way he does business.

In response to our questions about publishing the IEMO accounts, Mr

Scargill said the IEMO had always presented its accounts in accordance

with the instruction of its Congress. `` Arthur took any of

We asked him what that means. So far, he hasn't got back to us.

A freelance journalist specialising in industrial stories, Jeff Apter

spent three years in the 1980s working for the IEMO. I travelled

quite extensively, to various meetings. Health and safety... There

was one in Australia, one in the Philippines ` but that was on the

way to go to Australia. There was another one in Namibia, and one or

two in Europe. It was not staying in posh hotels, and we were hosted by

the unions there and I did reports. You cover trade union matters. When

did you last write a story about the IEMO? Er... I don't think I've ever

written a story about the IMO since the strike, since the end of the

strike. When did you last read a story about the IMO? I can't

remember. Is there any evidence in the last 20 years that this

organisation has done anything productive? Well, you should ask

somebody who is working for it or who is affiliated to it.

For Chris Kitchen, this is more than history. Mr Scargill's supporters

are certain all money was accounted for. But, 30 years on, Mr Kitchen's

still concerned about the financial relationship between the NUM and the

IEMO. So there is still a feeling that the IMO may have some money as

far back as the strike that was destined the British miners? There

is a feeling but looking back now, almost 30 years, it is difficult to

try and trace funds you never had any trace of in the first place.

Setting aside any money donated during the miners' strike, Mr

Kitchen has established that, in the 30 years since then, the NUM paid

the IEMO an additional ?712,000. More than ?464,000 of that is in

subscriptions paid by the NUM between 1985 and 2010.

Mr Scargill told us that the IEMO had in fact been entitled to more.

The NUM should have paid ?520,000 in subscriptions, but had stopped

paying in 2010, in breach of an NUM Conference decision. The trouble

happened when I was asked to justify paying that amount of money, and I

asked for the accounts from the IEMO and was refused them. Where do you

think that ?20,000 a year has been going, what it has been spent on? I

have no idea, that is why I wanted to see the accounts. It is

difficult, you cannot justify expenditure if you don't know what

it has been put to. One payment that's raised questions

is ?145,000 paid to the IEMO in 2002, shortly before Mr Scargill's

retirement. This was paid by the NUM without the union's National

Executive Committee being consulted. In the case about his London flat,

Mr Scargill said this money was the equivalent of what he could have

expected as a severance payment. What come out in the court case was

that Arthur's belief that he were entitled to severance redundancy

payments from the union upon retirement. They were discretionary

and not agreed, he hadn't asked for them.

Mr Scargill told us this wasn't a redundancy or severance payment to

him. It was money which would have been payable to him if he'd accepted

a lump sum, which he hadn't. He said the grant was from an NUM trust fund

and did not need to be referred to the union's National Executive

Committee. The explanation that was given that was this was money that

Arthur was entitled to receive the didn't want to receive. And

therefore the donation of the same amount of money were made to the

IEMO. Are you content with that? Do you think there was something more?

Without seeing the accounts of the IEMO, you can draw different

assumptions as to what happened to that money.

Meanwhile, things haven't gone smoothly for Roger Windsor. He was

accused of being an MI5 spy inside the NUM ` a claim he denied. And,

after he moved to France, he was sued for the recovery of a ?29,500

NUM loan which had been supposedly paid off with Libyan money during

the miners' strike. A French court decided Mr Windsor had forged

documents relating to his home loan. The successful legal action against

him came not by the NUM, but the IEMO. Mr Scargill continued to

pursue that action until eventually he obtained a court order in France

for the compulsory sale of our family home and half of the proceeds

of that sale went to the IEMO. The IEMO have now got their money

whether I like it or not. Chris Kitchen got a shock when he

discovered the extent to which the NUM had been funding the IEMO's

legal action against Roger Windsor in France. When I looked into it,

they had actually been wrongly categorised under Gavin Lightman

enquiry costs, which wasn't true. So I had them reinstated in the

accounts under Roger Windsor, the costs which obviously start the

questions about, "What is the Roger Windsor case? Why are we funding it?

What's it all about?" The case highlights the continuing close

links between Mr Scargill and the IEMO.

The case highlights the continuing close links between Mr Scargill and

the IEMO. Correspondence recently from the IEMO has emanated from the

Barbican flat. Do you think that's inappropriate? I personally think

that's inappropriate. We have spent two months trying to

get a response from Alain Simon or the IEMO, we have had none. So I

have come to see if we can get some answers here.

Their office is inside the headquarters of the CGT, the French

equivalent of the TUC. That was interesting. I was taken up

to the sixth floor, to the offices of the IEMO, and I met Alain

Simon's secretary, who attends it is actually his wife. She said that

apart from the pair of them, there is only one other person who works

for the organisation, writing its journal. I ask that there was any

other star and she said, no, we have got no money. She wouldn't ask ``

answer any questions answered we needed to put further questions to

Arthur Scargill. From Paris, the IEMO has now sent

the NUM the ?29,500 it received for Mr Windsor's loan. Mr Scargill says

the NUM agreed in 1990 to pay costs for the IEMO's legal action against

Roger Windsor. He said Mr Windsor had still not paid the IEMO his

total debt, and the NUM would be reimbursed when he had.

The NUM says it's about to launch legal action against Arthur Scargill

and Alain Simon over the legal bill, which the NUM says is more than

?100,000. But Mr Scargill says that doesn't take into account money owed

by the NUM to the IEMO. Mr Scargill's supporters say he's a

man of complete integrity. To some, he's still a hero. But to his

critics, he's left a bitter and troubled legacy. If a Mineworkers

sells his job, he is selling the job that belongs to his son and his

daughter, and he has got no right to sell that. Here we are in Edlington.

This was actually the first colliery to be closed after the strike and we

were huge supporters of Arthur at that time. And when you think

there's lumps of cash lying about in bank accounts in a foreign city,

it's not right. You should vote for me, because Margaret Thatcher and

the Tories hate me and want to see me defeated. I've always said about

the miners' strike and the aftermath of it all, looking at it now,

Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill deserved one another. These

communities deserved neither of them. If you want a leader that is

prepared to stand and fight in full view and on principle, then I am the

person that will continue to represent the best interests of

miners. How much has all this disappointed you? Has it shattered

your illusions of the man he was, the man you thought he was?

Unfortunately it has, the perception I had of Arthur the great trade

unionist, socialist, just is nothing like the reality as to the man that

I know now and that I've been at loggerheads with for most of my term

of office. On Inside Out next week, we

investigate claims by an industry expert that unregulated fracking

could soon be a rare `` reality all the Yorkshire. And we follow the

investigators on the Trail of the energy thieves.

Hello, I'm Ellie Crisell with your 90-second update.

The PM has backed fracking. He's promised councils incentives if they

let companies drill for shale gas. Critics have called the offer a

bribe, but the Government claims the process will give us cheaper energy.

More at 10pm. The biggest public inquiry into

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care in church and state-run homes over 70 years. More than 400 people

have asked to give evidence. Mark Bridger was convicted of

murdering April Jones last May. Today, he dropped his plan to appeal

a whole-life sentence. The five-year-old's body has never been

found. Is Britain on the verge of an

obesity crisis? The National Obesity Forum says