AT LEAST HE KNEW WHOSE SIDE LABOR WAS ON:

How Scargill begged the Kremlin to fund miners' fight with Thatcher (JASON LEWIS, 14th April 2007, Daily Mail)

Secret papers unearthed in a Moscow archive reveal how union boss Arthur Scargill tried to secure cash from the Soviet government at the height of the miners' strike.

The documents shed new light on the lengths he was prepared to go to to try to win his fight over pit closures.

Uncovered in the Communist Party vaults, the papers are the Russian account of one of the most contentious episodes of the bitter year-long dispute.

Mr Scargill, who is now retired but led the National Union of Mineworkers during the strike in 1984, has previously been accused of securing a secret slush fund from Russia and Colonel Gaddafi's Libya after Margaret Thatcher's Government froze his union's funds.

He has long disputed the claims. But the Russian documents show how he discussed ways Soviet money could be smuggled into Britain.

The papers make it clear that the money was signed off by the Russian authorities but it is unclear whether funds were ever transferred into the designated offshore accounts or if cash ever reached the NUM, its leaders or the striking miners.

Reagan and Thatcher don't get enough credit for breaking the unions, not least because it fed into Paul Volcker's war on inflation.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 15, 2007 12:00 AM