National Archives: Plans to stop miners' union smuggling Soviet roubles into Britain during strike Margaret Thatcher was so concerned that she raised the issue with Mikhail Gorbachev when he visited Britain in 1984, although the future Soviet leader pointedly said he was "not aware" of Moscow donating any money to Mr Scargill's cause. The NUM became desperate for funds after its assets were frozen by a judge in October 1984 as a result of its failure to pay a fine imposed by the High Court for contempt of court. The Government was worried about reports that the union was being bankrolled by the Soviet Union and even seeking financial support from Colonel Gaddafi's Libya. Roger Windsor, the NUM's chief executive, travelled to Libya in October 1984 to seek help for the strikers. Mr Scargill said that the visit was a "normal" part of a series of contacts with overseas supporters, and claimed that the purpose was to hold discussions with Libyan unions rather than the Gaddafi regime. But Peter Walker, the energy secretary, dismissed this as "implausible" and said the contacts who set up the trip were connected with Libya in "less desirable ways," minutes from a meeting of Ministers show. However, it was the considerable donations to the NUM from sources in the USSR that most alarmed Number 10. Minsters were alerted by MI5 to the Soviet financial lifeline for the miners in early November 1984. Later that month a secret Government document noted a report in The Morning Star, the British socialist newspaper, that the union had received more than $1.1 million from "our Soviet comrades." Sir Geoffrey Howe, the foreign secretary, viewed this as "a matter of some concern" and demanded that the Soviet Embassy in London give a "clear account" of Moscow's role in the transfer of aid from Soviet miners to the NUM. A Foreign Office aide wrote to Charles Powell, the prime minister's foreign affairs adviser: "Our belief, which we are checking with our embassy in Moscow, is that it would be most unlikely that the Soviet miners' union could have been given access to convertible roubles without express Soviet official permission... The Soviet Government has, to some extent, been involved. Mrs Thatcher's top civil servant, Sir Robert Armstrong, the Cabinet Secretary, set out detailed plans to foil Mr Scargill's attempts to keep foreign donations to his union secret from the High Court. He said in a November 1984 memo to Robin Butler, the prime minister's principal private secretary: "If a representative of the NUM could be detected entering this country with a suitcase full of banknotes, it might be possible to arrange for him to be stopped and searched by Customs. They would have no power to impound the notes, but they would inform the Inland Revenue and the police of any suspiciously large volume of banknotes which they detected. Such a discovery might well leak. Members of the media were also enlisted to put pressure on the NUM to reveal the source of its income, the document discloses. Mrs Thatcher's complaint that Mr Scargill's union was being assisted with "finance from outside" met little sympathy when she held private talks with Mr Gorbachev at Chequers in December 1984, the files show. Official minutes of the conversation note: "Mr Gorbachev said it was not the Soviet Union who was helping in this way. The Soviet Union had transferred no funds to the NUM. After a sideways glance from Mr Zamyatin [an aide], he amended this to: 'as far as I am aware...' The Prime Minister should blame Britain and not foreign communists for the situation. Das Kapital [by Karl Marx] had been written in London.