Arthur Scargill

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Arthur Scargill
Born	11 January 1938 (1938-01-11) (age 71) Worsbrough Dale, Yorkshire
Occupation	Former Coal Miner Former General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers Leader of the Socialist Labour Party
Spouse(s)	Anne Harper (divorced 2001)

Arthur Scargill (born 11 January 1938) is a British trade unionist and political party leader. He led the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1981 to 2000. A left-winger, he was the union's President during the 1984-85 miners' strike, a key event in British trade union and political history.

After the emergence of New Labour, and the Labour Party's revision of Clause IV of its constitution, he broke with the Labour Party, and in 1996 founded the Socialist Labour Party. He is currently the party's leader.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Role in the National Union of Mineworkers 2.1 Election in 1981 2.2 Outspoken oratory 2.3 Secondary picketing 2.4 Miners' strike and union democracy 2.5 Controversial figure 2.6 Demise of the UK mining industry 3 Founding of the Socialist Labour Party 4 References 5 External links 5.1 News items

[edit] Early life

Scargill was born on Pantry Hill in Worsbrough Dale, Barnsley, Yorkshire. His father, Harold Scargill, was a miner and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. His mother Alice (née Pickering), a professional cook, had a stillbirth at the age of 25, and was told she was unlikely to have a live birth, and it was a surprise when she gave birth at 31. He was much doted on by his parents as a result of being an only child. His parents, both aged 25, had married on 30 January 1932 at the Barnsley Register Office.

He refused to take the Eleven plus and went to Worsbrough Dale School (now called The Elmhirst School). Scargill became a miner after leaving school at 15, working at Woolley Colliery from 1953.

Scargill soon became a left-wing political activist and was a member of the Young Communist League from 1955 to 1962, and then a member of the Labour Party between 1962 and 1996. Scargill became the leader of the Yorkshire division of the NUM in 1973 and continued in the post until 1981. In 1973, he was instrumental in organising the miners' strike that brought down Edward Heath's Government in March 1974. Scargill became president of the NUM in 1981, with Mick McGahey as vice-president.

[edit] Role in the National Union of Mineworkers

[edit] Election in 1981

During his period as President of the Yorkshire region of the NUM, Scargill became popular with sections of the left. Miners saw him as honest, hard-working and genuinely concerned with their welfare.^[1] In the 1981 election for NUM President, Scargill secured around 70% of the vote. One of the main planks of his platform was to give more power to union conferences than to executive meetings on the grounds that the former was more democratic. This had great implications for regional relations in the NUM; executive committees gave the same number of votes to a large region such as Yorkshire as it did to a small region such as North Wales. The small regions, with the exception of Kent, were less militant. Scargill's platform gave greater scope for the approval of militancy within the union.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Outspoken oratory

Scargill was a very controversial figure for his outspokenness and the tactics he used. He is also noted as a fiery and emotional orator with audiences sympathetic to his cause.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Secondary picketing

The use of flying pickets in the 1972 and 1974 strikes brought remarkable concessions to the miners and made him the most feared man amongst the British Conservative right.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Miners' strike and union democracy

His stand both for the future of the mining industry and the communities dependent on it and against the policies of the Thatcher Government led to his leadership of the 1984–1985 miners' strike. This ended in a shattering defeat for the miners and saw a split in the union (see also Union of Democratic Mineworkers). The strike is generally seen as a major defeat for the trade union movement generally.^{[citation needed]} After the miners' strike, he was elected to lifetime Presidency of the NUM by an overwhelming national majority in a very controversial election where some of the alternative candidates claimed that they were given very little time to prepare.

The media characterised the 1984-5 action as "Scargill's strike", believing that he had been looking for an excuse for a strike since becoming union president. This portrayal may not be wholly accurate, as the strike began when miners walked out in Yorkshire, rather than when Scargill called for action. Scargill's decision not to hold a ballot of members was seen as an erosion of democracy within the union, but the role of ballots in decision-making had been made very unclear after previous leader, Joe Gormley, had ignored two ballots over wage reforms and his decisions had been upheld after appeals to court were made.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Controversial figure

An objective assessment of Scargill is difficult, given his close association with one side of a very divisive conflict in British politics, the 1984-1985 miners' strike. His opponents would be likely to characterise him as a marginalised politician out of touch with popular politics, ignorant of basic economic fundamentals, losing a long and ultimately futile miners' strike, splitting the National Union of Miners, and destroying the international competitiveness of deep-mined coal. His supporters would be unlikely to accept any part of that assessment, other than the objective fact that the strike ended in defeat for the miners. They would suggest that the strike was necessary, the split in the National Union of Mineworkers as being the fault of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, the decline in the coal industry as being the result of a government whose priority was attacking trade unionism, and his unpopularity compared to more centrist left-wing politicians as being a result of his willingness to stick to his principles even if they were unpopular.^{[citation needed]} It has been said that the strike was a battle between two bloody-minded class warriors, each refusing to give an inch in sticking up for their own class.

[edit] Demise of the UK mining industry

On the appointment of Ian MacGregor as head of the Coal Board in 1983, Scargill stated, "The policies of this government are clear - to destroy the coal industry and the NUM."^[2]. During the strike itself, Scargill continued to claim that the government had a long-term strategy to destroy the industry, and that it listed pits it wanted to close each year. This was, however, denied by the government.

He stepped down from the £67,000 per annum leadership of the NUM at the end of July 2002, to become the Honorary President, on a £41,600 per annum pension. He was succeeded by Ian Lavery.

[edit] Founding of the Socialist Labour Party

He founded the Socialist Labour Party on 13 January 1996, although officially launched on 4 May 1996, after the Labour Party abandoned the original wording of Clause IV in its constitution. His breakaway party has had little success in the polls. Scargill himself has become more politically outspoken, defending Stalin;^[3][4] Scargill had long criticised Poland's Solidarity trade union movement for its destabilisation of socialism, as he saw it. He has contested two parliamentary elections — in the 1997 general election against Alan Howarth, a defector from the Conservative Party to Labour who had been given the safe seat of Newport East to contest. In the 2001 general election, against Peter Mandelson in Hartlepool. He lost on both occasions gaining just 2.4% of the vote in the Hartlepool election. As of May 2009, he is the number 1 candidate for the Socialist Labour Party for one of London's seats in the European Parliament.^[5]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Arthur Scargill

• National Union of Mineworkers
• Socialist Labour Party website
• History of the Scargill family name
• Barnsley Hall of Fame

[edit] News items

• Remembering the strike in 2009
• Hit by a suitcase in March 2004
• Independent August 2002
• Independent May 2001

Political offices
Preceded by Sam Bullough	President of the Yorkshire Area of the National Union of Mineworkers 1974–1981	Succeeded by ?
Preceded by Joe Gormley	President of the National Union of Mineworkers 1982–2002	Succeeded by Ian Lavery