Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [214]
The Government’s relationship with the police and the courts was an even more sensitive issue during the strike. Britain had no national police force: the police were organized into fifty-two local forces, each headed by a Chief Constable who had operational control. Authority was divided between the Home Secretary, local police authorities (made up of local councillors and magistrates) and Chief Constables. Inevitably during the miners’ strike this tripartite system of policing was put under considerable strain: challenges to the rule of law posed by violence on the scale that took place during this strike clearly needed to be dealt with, swiftly and efficiently, at national level. Accordingly, the National Reporting Centre (NRC) — originally set up in 1972 — was activated in Scotland Yard, allowing the police to pool intelligence and to co-ordinate assistance from one force to another under the ‘mutual aid’ provisions of the 1964 Police Act. However, the tripartite system survived a good deal better than the Labour Party’s hysterical denunciations might have suggested. Problems did arise in financing the extra police costs under this system, but these were resolved by steadily taking more and more of the burden on to the Exchequer.
Mob violence can only be defeated if the police have the complete moral and practical support of government. We made it clear that the politicians would not let them down. We had already given them the equipment and the training they would need, learning the lessons of the 1981 inner-city riots. More recently the police had shown themselves skilled in tackling violence masquerading as picketing when pickets from the National Graphical Association (NGA) had tried to close down Eddie Shah’s newspaper in Warrington in November 1983. On that occasion the police had made it clear that force of numbers would not be allowed to prevent people from going to work if they wished to do so. They had also for the first time made effective use of powers to prevent a breach of the peace by turning back pickets before they arrived at their destination.
Another prerequisite of effective policing is that the law should be clear. Early in the strike Michael Havers made a lucid statement in a written answer to the Commons, setting out the scope of police powers to deal with mass picketing, including the power (mentioned above) to turn back pickets on their way to the picket line when there are reasonable grounds to expect a breach of the peace. These common law powers long predated our trade union legislation, and were matters of criminal rather that civil law. In the second week of the strike the Kent NUM challenged those powers in court, but they lost the case. The prevention of large numbers of pickets assembling to intimidate those who wished to work would be vital to the outcome of the dispute.
The relationship between government and the courts was, if anything, more sensitive still. It is right that people should have been vigilant on this question. The independence of the judiciary is a matter of constitutional principle, though the administration of the courts falls properly within the sphere of government responsibilities. As the incidents of violence accumulated it became a real concern to us that so few of those charged had been brought to court and convicted. It is vital if the rule of law is to prevail that criminal