The document below was written by Margaret Thatcher’s Press Secretary Bernard Ingham on 7th March 1985 and can be found in the Thatcher Foundation archive.
The Tories efforts to break the NUM and destroy the coal industry had cost the Government many billions of pounds. Thatcher realised it would have to be mentioned in the forthcoming Budget by the then Chancellor Nigel Lawson.
The PR answer was a ‘Scargill Levy’ Ingham concluding that ‘Mr Scargill is clearly the most expensive trade union leader in history’. A significant compliment in the class war..
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