100 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
material help, so covertly that CND’s leaders were unaware about
where such funds came from. Funds were made lavishly available
since it seemed possible that such organizations might win popularity
and erect obstacles in the way of the NATO plan for Pershing-2s.
The British Labour Party was another potential point of access to
political influence in Western Europe. On 10 October 1981 Michael
Foot and Denis Healey met Brezhnev in Moscow. Foot was courteous,
Healey so boisterous that he chipped in while Brezhnev was in mid-
sentence.^32 There had been discussion among Soviet officials about
how to address Foot, whether as ‘Mr’ or as ‘comrade’. Foot resolved the
problem for them by shaking Brezhnev’s hand warmly and, while
holding on to it, addressing him as ‘comrade’. Neither Foot nor Healey
mentioned Afghanistan.^33 The MP Stuart Holland went to Moscow
three years later on behalf of British Labour Party leader Neil Kin-
nock, who wanted to know the official Soviet standpoint on nuclear
disarmament before his own planned visit. The Kremlin had a strong
interest in encouraging Kinnock. This was a man who might become
Prime Minister and declare the United Kingdom a ‘nuclear-free zone’.^34
By the time of Kinnock’s visit the Politburo had come to a definite
policy: Soviet leaders would offer to reduce their arsenal of warheads
by the same number as the British agreed to remove; they would also
cease to point any of the remainder at the United Kingdom. A fudge
on the protection of human rights in the USSR was also agreed.^35
The Soviet leadership looked out for chances of destabilizing the
Western powers. This was handled with caution, for fear of aggravat-
ing relations with America and its allies, but the miners’ strike in the
United Kingdom in 1984 was an irresistible temptation. The Kremlin,
operating through the Soviet trade union movement, shuffled funds to
the National Union of Mineworkers through the Swiss Bank Corpora-
tion. Union president Arthur Scargill could see that the Thatcher
cabinet might make a fuss. Nell Hyett was his political adviser at the
time, and at a secret meeting with officials from the USSR’s London
embassy, Scargill asked for the money to be forwarded to Hyett’s
account at the Dublin branch of the First National Bank of Chicago.
When Scargill also grumbled that the United Kingdom remained able
to buy coal from abroad, Counsellor Parshin and First Secretary
Mazur pointed out that the USSR had ceased to supply coal or any
other fuel. Scargill denounced a large section of the British labour
movement. In his eyes, Labour Party leaders Neil Kinnock and Roy
Hattersley were purveyors of Tory propaganda, and Scargill declared a