Page 182 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

PRESSURE GROUP POLITICS

strategy, using the media where possible to disseminate the miners’
positions to NUM rank and file members, other unions, and the
British public as a whole. Scargill, like Edwardes before him, appeared
in television interviews only if he was ‘live’ and in complete control
of the use made of his remarks. Indeed, his readiness to make public
defences of the miners’ case, and the competence with which he did
so in the face of invariably hostile interviewing techniques, made a
sharp contrast to the evasiveness and lack of presentational ability
demonstrated by National Coal Board Chairman Ian McGregor,
whose most memorable moment of the campaign was to be filmed
with a plastic bag over his head as he sought to avoid the attentions
of reporters.
Both the NUM and the management of British Coal broke new
ground in communication terms by accepting an invitation from
Channel 4 News to prepare contributions to the programme, over
which they had complete editorial control, outlining their respective
arguments. The Coal Board spent £4.5 million on advertising its
case in the press.
Despite the energy and innovative flair applied by the NUM to
its public relations campaign, it failed to prevent the destruction of
most of Britain’s coal industry, and a historic victory for the Thatcher
government, still seeking retribution for the miners’ role in the
humiliation and downfall of the Heath government. Explanations
for the miners’ defeat have subsequently been sought in the NUM’s
failure to organise a pre-strike ballot and thus legitimise the action
among those miners who, in the absence of a ballot, chose to carry
on working. The strike came at a time when coal stocks were
exceptionally high, and the winter of 1984–5 was unseasonally mild.
These factors were undoubtedly important, though only elements
in an overall environment which was much more hostile to organised
labour than had been the case ten years earlier. After the Falklands
conflict and its landslide election victory in 1983, the Thatcher
government was near invincible, as the miners found to their cost.
Nevertheless, the public relations strategies employed by Scargill
and the NUM leadership demonstrated that even the ‘hard left’ of
British politics could, and should, engage in persuasive political
communication. Weakened by mass unemployment and draconion
anti-labour laws, the NUM and its partners in the trade union
movement were drawn more closely into the battle for public
opinion.
In the years following the miners’ strike, while Conservative
dominance of government and continuing high levels of

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