The Enemy Within - Seumas Milne
THE ENEMY WITHIN by Seumas Milne
Margaret Thatcher branded Arthur Scargill and the other leaders of the 1982-5 miners' strike `the enemy within`. With the publication of this bestselling book a decade later, the full irony of that accusation became clear. There was an enemy within. But it was not the National Union of Mineworkers that was out to subvert liberty. It was the secret services of the British state - operating inside the NUM itself.
Seumas Milne revealed for the first time the astonishing lengths to which the government and it's intelligence machine were prepared to go to destroy the power of Britain's miners' union. Using phoney bank deposits, staged cash drops, forged documents, agents provocateurs and unrelenting surveillance, MI5 and police Special Branch set out to discredit Scargill and other miners' leader. Planted tales of corruption were seized on by the media and both Tory and Labour politicians in what became an unprecedented savage smear campaign.
'The most important expose of contemporary political Britain I have read'. 'Journalism owes Seumas Milne a debt for elevating the craft of fine reporting... above vicious untruth.'
John Pilger, New Statesman
The enemy within is priced at £10 per copy (including delivery), or £8 if collected in person from the Miners' Offices, Barnsley.
