As in the case of Jack Jones last week, it reports (with a combination of inanity and relish) various distortions and lies in order to character assassinate Mick McGahey, the late Vice President of the National Union of Mineworkers.
No one should be surprised.
The extent to which the security services and their media hirelings colluded to undermine the heroic leadership of the NUM during the Great Miners Strike of 1984/85 is well documented. Seumas Milne’s book is recommended as a seminal investigation into the murky world of MI5 and Police Special Branch infiltration and surveillance:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Enemy-within-Thatchers-Secret-Against/dp/1844675084
Mick’s son Mick McGahey Jnr is a well respected NHS worker and UNISON activist in Scotland where he is Lothian Health branch secretary. Mick pulled no punches in rebutting the lies of the spooks:
“This is a load of nonsense. He certainly didn’t need the NUM to fund his drinking habits, he was well paid by the NUM to do that himself,” he said. Mick is reported as saying that his father knew he was under surveillance and would dupe the authorities by giving false locations for protests: “as far as the telephone calls are concerned, that is why on certain occasions you would get 800 policemen turning up at Cockenzie power station and 1,000 pickets at some other power station!…... I don’t find any of this stuff hurtful, it’s just fabrication, these guys live in a fantasy world. My only concern is that any government would spend public resources in that way”.
Who can doubt that a new generation of trade union leaders are being subject to similar monitoring and misrepresentation?
There has been enough evidence in recent times – from the spate of victimisation of local union representaives to the construction industry blacklisting revelations – to suggest that employers, the political elite and the state no less regard trade unionists as the ‘enemy within’ than did Thatcher during her 1980’s anti-union heydays.
For UNISON Active report on Jack Jones read:
http://unisonactive.blogspot.com/2009/10/jack-jones-cold-warriors-besmirch-man.html