Thatcher’s unsung hero who broke the miners’ strike – but always stayed in the shadows

David Hart accurately predicted that the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) would lead its men “back to work with no settlement” – Matthew Ford

Smoking a Rafael Gonzalez cigar, David Hart – novelist, property developer, bon viveur and Machiavellian political advisor to Margaret Thatcher – sits in his suite at Claridge’s.

It is October 1984, at the height of tense negotiations during the miners’ strike which threaten to destabilise the Government. The telephone rings and on the line is the Energy Secretary Peter Walker.

He is not happy. “Mr Hart, you cannot run this strike from a suite at Claridge’s,” shouts an irritated Walker. “Well, I seem to be doing alright so far,” replies the secretive éminence grise. He replaces the receiver and returns to his Cuban cigar.

The influence of the mysterious Mr Hart during the year-long dispute – arguably the most serious challenge to Thatcher’s premiership – has been buried in the archives.

But as the 40th anniversary draws near, declassified documents and new sources reveal how this shadowy yet flamboyant figure played a pivotal role in breaking a strike that represented a threat to democracy.

They also expose how unofficial advisors can run deniable political operations and provide secret counsel outside the parameters of Whitehall.

When the National Coal Board announced the closure of uneconomic pits in February 1984, Arthur Scargill, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), made two fatal tactical errors.

Arthur Scargill, president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), at a protest rally against pit closures in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire in May 1984 – Bryn Colton/Getty Images

First, he politicised the dispute rather than focusing purely on the loss of jobs and damage to local communities. “This is a colossal act of vandalism by a monetarist Tory government,” he declared.

Secondly, he refused to hold a national ballot which would have legitimised strike action.

As the violence on the picket lines escalated, the role of the working miners became crucial to undermining the strike. But the Government could not directly support them and lacked credible intelligence about their activities.

This is when Hart entered the fray, marked by the experience of meeting the wife of a working miner who had suffered a nervous breakdown after flying pickets threw bricks through her window. The woman shook with fear. Hart was enraged and realised if the working miners could be mobilised, the strike could be defeated.

Hart soon began touring the coal villages, although on the surface his presence was bizarre. The wealthy Old Etonian with a high-pitched cut-glass accent resembled a central European spy from a John Buchan novel.

As he stepped out of his chauffeur-driven Mercedes, he distributed snuff to the working miners, striking a strange kind of bond.

Demonstrators in support of the coal miners’ strike outside the Trades Union Congress conference in Brighton in 1984 – Terry Fincher/The Fincher Files/Popperfoto via Getty Images

From these forays, he sent vivid dispatches to the Prime Minister about how miners were “very angry with Scargill” for not holding a ballot. Thatcher read his reports carefully and underlined sections.

“He did have some real and accurate intelligence,” she recalled. But inside 10 Downing Street her officials were wary of Hart. “He was a self-promoting Scarlet Pimpernel figure,” Andrew (now Lord) Turnbull, the Private Secretary for Economic Affairs, tells Channel 4 in a new documentary about the strike, which airs tonight.

His colleague Stephen (Lord) Sherbourne was equally sceptical. “I told Hart he can always feed intelligence through me but that visits to No 10 can create dangers,” he told the Prime Minister.

But Thatcher retained the channel to Hart as she liked to listen to what Turnbull described as “the voices” – outsiders who provided an alternative to official advice. “She liked dangerous people and Hart was one of them,” observed Tim Flesher, a former Downing Street official.

So who was the intriguing Mr Hart? Born in 1944, his father founded Henry Ansbacher merchant bank, affording the family an affluent upper-class lifestyle. After Summer Fields prep school, Hart attended Eton but was a wilful, rebellious pupil.

He refused to comply with the dress code and his persistent insubordination resulted in his expulsion at the age of 16. It was this disdain for authority which later influenced his libertarian politics.

A protester holding a placard outside the headquarters of the National Coal Board at Hobart House in Grosvenor Place in 1984 – P. Shirley/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

After directing hippy avant-garde films in the 1960s, Hart entered the commercial property world. He borrowed family money, purchased buildings and then resold them at vast profits. “He was brilliant,” his brother Tim told me. “He had no discipline but had a lot of charm, charisma and could influence people.”

He also lived a life of ostentatious opulence. He bought a 2000-acre farm in Somerset, four properties in London staffed with butlers and maids, kept two mistresses, ran up vast bills for cigars and wine and travelled everywhere by helicopter.

By 1975 he had accumulated staggering debts of £959,229 (more than £7 million today) and filed for bankruptcy. “You give the impression you have lived in cloud-cuckoo land,” said the official receiver.

Hart’s enraged father summoned his wayward son, allegedly declaiming: “I will not pay off your debts or help you financially but no English gentleman should live without a butler so I will pay his salary.”

Hart’s brother Tim disputes this story but David Hart retained a butler for the rest of his life. He resumed his property business, paid off his debts partly with his inheritance, bought a country house in Suffolk, and held court at Claridge’s wearing a Savile Row suit and an Old Etonian tie.

By 1980, Hart was a libertarian Conservative. “I am a classical anarchist,” he said. “If you leave people alone, voluntary societies will grow up to do everything, even national defence. The state will wither away and people will find themselves living harmoniously. This is my ideal.” He also hero-worshipped Machiavelli, describing him as “the greatest political advisor there has ever been”. The Prince was his bible.

During a dinner at St Ermins Hotel, Hart met Thatcher and regarded her as a kindred spirit. He sent her contributions for speeches and she wrote many thank you letters. In 1982 she told him his ideas were “all based on the things in which I believe”.

After the 1983 election, Hart encouraged her to be more radical. “Time to sell off the NHS,” he wrote and concluded with characteristic hyperbole: “The war against the tyranny of the state is as important to our national survival as the war against Hitler.”

For Hart, the miners were intimidated into strike action. He mingled with the crowds at rallies addressed by Scargill. “I could not escape thoughts of Nuremberg. The stink of fascism,” he reported to Downing Street. He regarded any negotiated settlement as a defeat and depicted the dispute in typically apocalyptic terms by quoting his mentor Machiavelli: “There is no avoiding war. It can only be postponed to the advantage of the enemy.”

A member of the picket inspecting the police outside the Orgreave Coking plant near Rotherham during the miners’ dispute – PA Wire

The Prime Minister understood the working miners were her secret weapon and Hart’s covert support was welcome even if she did not sanction it. “By operating in an unofficial capacity and in the shadows, he was able to do things Mrs Thatcher would have wanted to carry out if she had been in a position to do so,” Peter Young, a political aide to Hart during the strike, tells Channel 4.

The absence of a national ballot played into Hart’s hands. He set up the National Working Miners Committee which distributed propaganda and placed advertisements in the national press. “Don’t let Scargill tear the union movement apart. Help us fight for freedom and democracy,” declared one.

Funded by John Paul Getty (£120,000) and the industrialist Hector Laing (£100,000), the working miners sued the NUM and a High Court Judge ruled the strike was illegal without a ballot.

Scargill refused to accept the judgement and so Hart’s lawyers brought contempt proceedings against him. The court order was issued on the first day of the Labour Party conference in Blackpool.

But it needed to be served on Scargill that same day or its validity would expire. Hart stepped in like a political SAS officer. He chartered a helicopter from his country estate in Suffolk, flew to London to collect the legal process server, and then landed him in Blackpool.

After obtaining a fake press pass, Hart sneaked the process server into the conference hall so he could serve the court order on an enraged miners’ president and tipped off photographers. Meanwhile, Hart nervously patrolled the corridors outside.

Scargill ignored the fines for contempt and so three weeks later the High Court ruled the union’s money and assets should be frozen. The sequestration starved the strikers of funds and sapped their energy.

Young socialists marching with banners in 1984 to support striking miners – Alamy Stock Photo

“The NUM leadership is in poor shape,” Hart reported back to the Prime Minister. “Many tiny legal ropes are increasingly restricting its freedom. Like Gulliver.” The noose was tightening around Scargill’s neck and by early 1985 the trickle of miners returning to work had turned into a flood.

In a final dispatch to No 10, Hart accurately predicted that “the NUM will lead its men back to work with no settlement”. Amid the Government’s victory, ministers denied Hart’s activities were officially or unofficially authorised.

But Thatcher acknowledged his role by hosting a private dinner attended by the working miners to thank them for their contribution. And Hart could not resist drawing attention to his relationship with ‘The Lady’, as he called Thatcher.

In his novel The Colonel, the hero, a thinly-veiled autobiographical figure, says: “I am an eagle over England at last. In my highest flight, I look down and know the Prime Minister is mine”.

Historians dispute the extent of his influence. “This accurately expressed Hart’s longing, though not really very close, to fulfilling it”, writes Charles Moore, the biographer of Thatcher. But it is difficult to deny Hart’s contribution to breaking the threat of militant trade unionism.

Police in anti-riot gear escort picketers away from their position near the Orgreave Coking Plant near Rotherham in South Yorkshire – PA Archive

After the strike Hart resumed his political activities and in 1988 took over a private intelligence operation based on a news sheet called ‘British Briefing’. Edited and compiled by Charles Elwell, the formidable former MI5 officer, the privately circulated magazine focused on what Hart described as “the enemy within”, notably left-wing Labour MPs.

Its declared purpose was “to provide information about the threat to parliamentary democracy and the rule of law by Communists”. For at least a year, British Briefing was funded by Rupert Murdoch who donated £150,000 and promised further payments of £40,000 over three years. The press baron said the donations were “for consultation and research”.

During John Major’s premiership, Hart was out of favour, although Malcolm Rifkind appointed him as an unpaid special advisor while he was Defence Secretary.

“He knew a lot about defence procurement,” Rifkind told me, “and played a key role in the ‘Frontline First’ policy which enabled us to cut defence spending without it affecting the fighting capability of the armed forces.”

There was time for one final extraordinary adventure. In 2002, Hart established close ties with Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi opposition, and discussed how to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The issue was operational. Hart went rogue and consulted Simon Mann, the mercenary whose company Executive Outcomes had been successful in Angola and Sierra Leone.

Children and young people in Nottinghamshire demonstrating in April 1984 – John Birdsall/Alamy Stock Photo

“One plan was for Executive Outcomes to be reborn under a new name,” Mann told me. “We would train up Chalabi’s army of 20,000 volunteers and then accompany them into action. We would take over an Iraqi city which was well clear of Baghdad but within the zone of air supremacy of allied air forces, operating outside of Iraq.

“Saddam would then face an impossible choice – come after us and risk being annihilated from the air or leave and tolerate the presence of a foreign force in his own land. Hart told me he discussed this plan with Tony Blair and his staff and they liked certain elements but disliked others.”

It was the type of risky operation Hart was known for. But it was his final mission. A year later, he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and died in 2011 after a long and painful illness.

His friends argue Hart never received the recognition he deserved for his role in breaking the miners’ strike.

But Thatcher’s controversial advisor preferred to stay in the shadows and often quoted his hero Machiavelli – “It is far safer to be feared than loved”.

Miners’ Strike, 1984: The Battle for Britain on Channel 4 starts Jan 25 at 9pm

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