The Enemy Within

Margaret Thatcher branded the leaders of the 1984-5 miners' strike as 'the enemy within' - a furtive political clique out to undermine democracy and liberty. Only now, with the publication of this remarkable book, does the full irony of Thatcher's accusation become apparent. For an 'enemy within' was at work inside the National Union of Mineworkers. But it was not a force hell-bent on the subversion of the British state. Quite the opposite - it was the secret service of the British state itself ... Suemas Milne has followed the war waged by successive Tory governments against Britain's miners with unrivalled doggedness and acuity in the Guardian newspaper. In these pages, he draws together the threads of a story which travels at an exhilarating pace from Sheffield and London, to Moscow, Tripoll and Dublin, recounting the astonishing lengths to which the intelligence services were prepared to go in their most ambitious counter-subversion operation ever mounted. Drawing on unique access to sources and informants from all sides, Milne exposes spying and dirty tricks against the NUM on an epic scale. Naming names and providing a wealth of never-before-published detail, he shows how MI5 was involved in a series of elaborate smears against Arthur Scargill and his closest associates, which drew in Labour politicians, Conservative ministers and the media empire of Robert Maxwell. Running operations against the NUM was the woman who now presents the 'new face' of MI5: Stella Rimington.