The battle between Margaret Thatcher’s government and Arthur Scargill’s union is rightly regarded as a turning point in 20th century Britain. So it is no surprise that it has been revisited, reviewed and re-enacted in British TV documentaries and drama.

Having seen most of them and appeared in a few, ’Miners Strike 1984 – the Battle for Britain’ gets my vote as the best yet. This three part series for Channel Four, filmed and mostly directed by Tom Barrow for Swan Films, is being scheduled on Thursdays at 9pm and all the episodes are already available online .

The films focus on ‘three powerful stories’: the divisions in the Derbyshire village of Shirebrook where striking and working miners came to blows, the ‘Battle of Orgreave’ and the subsequent attempt to jail miners for ‘riot’ and the story of the businessman David Hart who once told Margaret Thatcher ‘victory is yours and yours alone’ and set out to make it happen for her. As Thatcher’s adviser on the black arts of propaganda he helped organise and fund the working miners committee which successfully campaigned to get striking miners back to work. 

While I was Editor of Channel Four News (C4N) the Miners Strike from 1984-5 was the story that first proved the value of a primetime hour of TV news every weeknight. We sent reporter Jane Corbin to live in Shirebrook and her work is revisited in the first part of the new series. We also sent camera crews to stand alongside the pickets at Orgeave, other news programmes chose to stand behind the police lines.  As for David Hart, the focus of the third part of the series, I met him once in strange circumstances..

In August 1984, five months into the strike, Channel Four News planned a live TV debate between the leaders of the National Coal Board (NCB) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). Such encounters were extremely rare but at C4N we had built a reputation for serious coverage of the issues and both sides had a degree of trust in us,  Arthur Scargill was quick to agree to represent the NUM and the NCB put forward their Director of Industrial Relations, Ned Smith, a former miner.  Scargill would be live from Leeds and Smith would be on a live link from NCB HQ in London. The C4N presenter, Peter Sissons, a former ITN Industrial Editor, was an obvious and perfect choice to chair the debate .

There was a lot of media interest in who would come out on top in the debate and the Government helped to brief Ned Smith.  As I went into work on 22nd August 1984 all seemed organised for the big event and I was certainly not prepared for a mid-afternoon call from the NCB Press Office: ‘Stewart, I think you’d better come round to the Coal Board. I can’t say any more at the moment’.

As I arrived at the NCB I caught sight of Ned Smith leaving the building, and from his body language it looked as if he was in a huff. I was told he was getting a train home. Not exactly what I was expecting a few hours before the biggest TV event of the strike so far. My assumption was that the live debate was off for some reason but surely the Coal Board wouldn’t just pull out at the last minute handing a PR victory to Scargill.  Wondering around the NCB offices half-hoping that someone might just turn up to appear live, I discovered that the Coal Board would be represented by none other than the Chairman himself, Sir Ian MacGregor. “I will do it myself” he told me.

A Scot by birth, a U.S citizen by adoption, an industrialist toughened by confrontations with American unions he had been recruited to sort out British Steel  and then assigned by Margaret Thatcher to confront coal. 

Half of me was delighted, C4N would pull off a real scoop,  MacGregor and Scargill exclusively together live. The other half of me was worried, a few weeks before I had made a film with MacGregor to present his view on the dispute. At the same time a young producer called Michael Crick produced a film with Scargill. It was no contest, Scargill was a much better performer than MacGregor who seemed to have trouble reading a script. I wondered if he was dyslexic.

As we approached transmission at 7pm I discovered that earlier that day there’d been a mighty row between MacGregor and Smith with multiple changes of mind about who would appear for the Coal Board. Now the hard reality was that we were about to go on the air with an inexperienced and unprepared TV debater on one side. No wonder Scargill seemed pleased when told of the change of opponent. But as MacGregor and I walked into the makeshift studio at the NCB, I realised the Chairman was not going to be without a bit of help.

For there stood a man I had never met before, who was never introduced, a mustachioed, balding figure clutching a set of cue cards. I later discovered he was David Hart, an adviser to both MacGregor and Thatcher. In the short time he had to prepare the Chairman Hart had hand-written phrases on his cue cards for MacGregor to read out  Hart himself said nothing, he just stood off camera shuffling his home made cue cards.

Once Sissons began the questioning MacGregor, sweaty top lip glistening under the TV lights , would sometimes look to the side of the camera to read what Hart wanted him to say but at other times was confident enough to fly solo. It was never in doubt that Scargill would navigate himself and be more fluent and so it turned out. Both men began each answer strongly but then got lost in the details, it was MacGregor who got most lost. The exchanges made it clear just how much they disliked each other.

To wrap up the debate Peter Sissons observed that the general public would conclude that these two men had no common ground whatsoever and would ask ‘what are we to make of it?’. Neither respondent had a convincing answer. 

The encounter made news for the fact that it had happened at all rather than what anybody said. It proved there was no way to bridge the gap other than for one side to eventually knock out the other. Seven months later as more and more of the striking miners became working miners the NUM gave up and went back to work. David Hart’s work was done, Margaret Thatcher had her victory.

Extracts from the debate are available to view on the Getty Images news archive website gettyimages.co.uk. To see the first extract type in 1447914031 and for the second extract type in 1447914076