Arthur Scargill is due to resign today after 20 years as the leader of the (British) National Union of Mine Workers.
Despite great courage he was beaten by Mrs Thatcher's attack on the miners. The Union, which was said to have 250,000 members in 1981, is now said to have only 5,000. In 1996 Scargill set up the Socialist Labour Party in opposition to New Labour. The latter won a landslide victory at the 1997 election. Scargill attracted some criticism for allegedly using autocratic methods in the SLP. Eventually it became one of a number of participants in the Socialist Alliance which contests parliamentary and local elections, getting a few percentage of the vote. Chris Burford London BBC Report> Mr Scargill was a rousing orator Arthur Scargill retires as president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on Thursday after more than 20 years in the job. The left-winger will retain the title of honorary president and will receive £1,000 per month for the next nine years for acting as consultant to the union. The decision to pay Mr Scargill the money has reportedly left some miners complaining that they had not been properly consulted. The prominence of Mr Scargill has faded as the coal industry suffered closure after closure. It was his claims of a coal board hit list of collieries to be closed that fuelled the 1984 miners strike, when he went head-to-head with the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Mr Scargill ultimately had to call the strike off, but his predictions over the future of the coal industry were later proved to have been accurate. Former Labour MP Tony Benn paid tribute to Mr Scargill whom he said was the "most vilified" man he had ever met. "When you look back on it Arthur will be seen as a man of principle who stuck by his members," he told BBC TV's Breakfast. "The man was vilified and all he did was to defend the miners, the mining communities and so on." The quiet end to Mr Scargill's career is in stark contrast to the prominence he held as the leader of the UK's biggest union. As he packs up his desk on his last day he does so with the knowledge that just a few thousand people remain employed in the coal industry. The union claims to have 10,000 members still. There will be no farewell party to mark Mr Scargill's departure. When the union's executive met earlier this month they voted their thanks to Mr Scargill and presented him with two presents - one was believed to be a wrapped photo. Ian Lavery - a 39-year-old miner from the North East who is taking on the new role of NUM chairman - said Mr Scargill deserved "tremendous credit". "He is a remarkable man and has been a remarkable trade union leader," he said. "Anyone else who has been through the mill as he has would not have survived. "He has seen off Mrs Thatcher and John Major and deserves tremendous credit for what he has tried to achieve for miners over the past 50 years." Unlike Mr Scargill, Mr Lavery is a member of the Labour Party who is prepared to meet government ministers and pit owners to discuss the industry's future. He is the chairman of the Wansbeck district council's cabinet and his aims in his new job are to sustain the existing coal industry and get compensation payments speeded up. Investment failure? "We need a commitment from the government about the size of the coal industry, which is not a lame duck industry by any means. "We produce the cheapest coal in Europe, yet we are allowing private companies to close mines because they are not prepared to invest." Mr Scargill created his own political party - Socialist Labour - in 1996 but it has failed to make any electoral in-roads. He ran against former cabinet minister Peter Mandelson in the 2001 election but failed to unseat the New Labour moderniser.
