The enemy within: MI5, Maxwell and the Scargill Affair
- London: Verso, 1994
- 344p.
The British coal industry in the 1980s and early 1990s was one of the safest and most advanced in the world. It was also staffed by many members of one of the most militant and effective trades unions in the country, led by Arthur Scargill. Following damaging strikes by miners, successive Conservative governments sought to break the power of the National Union of Mineworkers. This book describes the extent to which government was prepared to use internal security, the police, the media, and large sums of public money to achieve achieve its objectives, in the process effectively closing the British coal industry. The campaign against the miners was probably one of the most extensive secret internal campaigns since the Second world War.