In the early 1990’s I was tasked by British Coal with organising the recruitment for the imminently opening North Selby Mine.

We preferred experienced transferees from closing mines, either locally or from further afield, like South Wales; but we also took on “Green Labour”.

I recall one occasion when I received a bunch of application forms which included two from Russia.  Bear in mind that the break-up of the Communist Eastern Bloc was underway by then but by no means completed.

What caught my eye about the Russian applications were the entries in the Employment History section.  Both were soldiers and both stated quite plainly that they were attached to a chemical weapons facility – dates, locations, the lot.

Now quite possibly Glasnost had extended to the former USSR (or CIS as it was then) and there was no issue in disclosing this.  But I doubt it.

Perhaps it was a cunning ploy to pass military disinformation to the West, hoping a minor British Coal apparatchik like myself would pass it up the beanstalk, from whence it would get to Special Branch and thence…Who knows? Hopefully wrong-footing the West’s military focus.

They were to be royally thwarted.  They seriously underestimated the doziness of British Coal apparatchiks (ie moi) who simply filed it in the bottom drawer.

It is, indeed, the Little People who win wars.