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In this Dispatches (Channel 4, 1987-) programme, director Ken Loach and
reporter-producer Lorraine Heggessey defend miners' leader Arthur Scargill
against allegations made by the Daily Mirror and ITV's The Cook Report
(1987-98), including financial misconduct during the 1984-85 miners' strike.
Building upon the Lightman inquiry's findings that the stories' key claims
against Scargill were "entirely untrue", Heggessey disproves the existence of a
damning mortgage, challenges witness testimony with forensics and interviews,
queries witness payments, visits the Soviet Union to track allegedly missing
money and questions the role of intelligence services. The reports' anger about
alleged strike support from Libya is contextualised alongside the government's
increased Libyan oil imports (trading with 'the enemy without' to defeat 'the
enemy within').
Future BBC1 controller Heggessey held newspapers to account in Hard News
(Channel 4, 1989-98) and here 'doorsteps' reporters to challenge their methods
and ethics. After querying the journalistic value of Roger Cook's doorstepping
and his punch-throwing interviewees, Heggessey doorsteps Cook himself, itemising
his report's failings and alleging fabrication in one of his other reports.
Like earlier Ken Loach work, 'The Arthur Legend' questions media depictions
of the strike and airs working-class voices critical of union and Labour Party
positions regarding labour interests. Interviewing and defending Scargill
produced none of the controversy Loach endured with the unbroadcast Questions of
Leadership and Which Side Are You On? (Channel 4, tx. 9/1/1985), which perhaps
indicates the extent of the strike's defeat. Loach's later cinema renaissance
included this programme's collaborators Barry Ackroyd, Jonathan Morris and
Rebecca O'Brien.
Subsequent revelations supported the programme's belief that Scargill was
smeared. In The Guardian in 2002 and 2003, former Mirror editor Roy Greenslade
apologised to Scargill and expressed his belief that the Mirror was "duped by a
secret service plot"; a key witness challenged by Heggessey was "named in
parliament as an MI5 agent".
Dave Rolinson
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1. Sensational (2:24)
