How the State, The Media and the Courts Tried to “Stitch Up Scargill”
This resource is dedicated to demonstrating how the British state in collusion with the media and the legal system attempted to systematically destroy the reputation of the President of the National Union of Mineworkers, Arthur Scargill, for his leadership in the 1984-85 miners strike.
It demonstrates the extraordinary lengths the British state will go in order to destroy the reputation of those, whose politics it dissapproves of.
The diagram below summarises how, following false accusations made in a media firestorm against Scargill in 1990, seven separate charges by seven separate bodies were brought against him, virtually all at once, in July of that year. Each one would be disproved, discredited or abandoned.
For the essential details, it is recommended that the four following programs are watched in the order listed:
The Cook Report Program #1.
The first of two programs made by Roger Cook in 1990 alleged that during the 1984/85 strike Arthur Scargill had used £25,000 of monies received from Libya to pay off a personal mortgage. Arthur Scargill didn’t have a mortgage; this false allegation was consequently declared entirely untrue by an inquiry.
The Cook Report Program #2
This is the second of the programs from the Cook Report.
Dispatches Program #1.
The first program made by Ken Loach, Lorraine Heggessey and Ken Capstick, refutes the allegations made the Cook Report, (and gives Cook a taste of his own medicine!)
Dispatches Program #2
The second of the Dispatches programs, presented by Callum Macrae, further challenges the false accusations in the Cook Reports, and raises the issue of British security services involvement in attacking Arthur Scargill.