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Arthur Scargill

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Arthur Scargill
Arthur Scargill speaks at a Socialist Labour Party public meeting in Pontypridd in 2010
Born (1938-01-11) 11 January 1938 (age 86)
Worsbrough Dale, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
Occupation(s)Former coal miner
Former General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers
Leader of the Socialist Labour Party
SpouseAnne Harper (divorced 2001)

Arthur Scargill (born 11 January 1938)[1] is a British trade unionist and politician who was president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1982 to 2002. Joining the NUM at the age of 19 in 1957, he became one of its leading activists in the late 1960s. In 1973, he was instrumental in organising the miners' strike that toppled Edward Heath's Conservative government in March 1974.

A decade later, he led the union through the 1984–85 miners' strike, a key event in British labour and political history. It was a confrontation with the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, and the miners' union was decisively defeated. A former Labour Party member, he is now the leader of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), which he founded in 1996.

Early life

Scargill was born in Worsbrough Dale, Barnsley, West Riding of Yorkshire. His father, Harold, was a miner and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. His mother, Alice (née Pickering), was a professional cook. He did not take the Eleven-Plus exam and went to Worsbrough Dale School (now called the Elmhirst School). He left at 15 to become a coal miner at Woolley Colliery in 1953, where he remained for 19 years.[2][3]

Early political and trade union activities

Scargill joined the Young Communist League in 1955, becoming its Yorkshire District Chair in 1956 and shortly after a member of its National Executive Committee.[4] In 1957 he was elected NUM Yorkshire Area Youth Delegate, and attended the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow as a representative of the Yorkshire miners. In 1958, he attended the World Federation of Trade Unions youth congress in Prague. In a 1975 interview with New Left Review Scargill stated:

I was in the Young Communist League for about six or seven years and I became a member of its National Executive Committee responsible for industrial work. The secretary at this time was a very good friend of mine called Jimmy Reid, and we're still close friends. A lot of other people on the National Executive at that time went on and became very respectable Labour MPs in Parliament. Many of us started in the 1950s in the Young Communist League. So that was my initial introduction into socialism and into political militancy. My father was a Communist. My mother was strictly non-political. But my father never forced me to be involved in politics at all.[4]

In 1961, he was elected a member of the Woolley NUM Branch Committee. Scargill joined the Labour Party in 1962. He regularly attended Workers' Education Association (WEA) classes and Cooperative Party educational programmes, and in 1962, undertook a three-year, part-time course at the University of Leeds, where he studied economics, industrial relations and social history. In 1965 he was elected Branch Delegate from Woolley to the Yorkshire NUM Area Council, and in 1969 was elected a member of the Yorkshire NUM Area Executive Committee. In 1970, he was elected a member of the regional committee of the Co-operative Retail Services in Barnsley and a delegate to its national conference. He also represented the Barnsley Co-op at Cooperative congresses. He joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and also actively opposed civil nuclear power.[citation needed]

Scargill became involved in the Yorkshire Left, a group of left-wing activists involved in the Yorkshire region of the NUM, its largest region. He played an important role in the miners' strike of 1972 and was involved in the mass picket at Saltley Gate in Birmingham.[5]

National Union of Mineworkers

Coal mining employment in the UK, 1880-2012 (DECC data)

Scargill was a leader of the unofficial strike in 1969, which began in Yorkshire and spread across the country.[6] He had challenged Sam Bullogh, the chair of the Yorkshire area's NUM, to act on the working hours of surface workers, given that the union's conference had passed a resolution that their hours be shortened the previous year.[6] When Bullogh (unwell at the time) attempted to rule Scargill as "out of order", he was voted out by the area's delegates and a strike was declared across Yorkshire on the issue.[6] Scargill saw this strike as a turning point in the union's attitude to militancy.[7]

His major innovation was organizing "flying pickets" involving hundreds or thousands of committed strikers who could be bussed to critical strike points to shut down a target. He gained fame for using the tactic to win the Battle of Saltley Gate in 1972, and made it his main tactical device in the 1984 strike. By 1984 however the police were ready and neutralized the tactic with superior force.

In 1973, Scargill was elected to the full-time post of compensation agent in the Yorkshire NUM. (The Yorkshire Left had already decided to stand him as their candidate even before the strike.) A few months later the president of the Yorkshire NUM died unexpectedly, and Scargill won the election for his replacement, the two posts were then combined and he held them until 1981. During this time he earned the esteem of significant sections of the left and the British working class, who saw him as honest, hard-working and genuinely concerned with their welfare, [8] and he was also respected for improving the administration of the compensation agent's post. In 1974, he was instrumental in organising the miners' strike that led Edward Heath to call a February general election.

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 were more democratic. This had great implications for regional relations in the NUM; the executive was described as dominated by "Gormley's rotten boroughs", since every region – even quite small ones – had one delegate, and the larger regions had only a few more (Scotland and South Wales had two delegates each, Yorkshire had three).

Scargill was a very vocal opponent of Thatcher's Conservative government, frequently appearing on television to attack it. On the appointment of Ian MacGregor as head of the NCB in 1983, Scargill stated, "The policies of this government are clear – to destroy the coal industry and the NUM".[9]

Miners' strike

Main article: UK miners' strike (1984–85)

The government announced on 6 March 1984 its intention to close 20 coal mines, revealing as well the plan in the long-term to close over 70 pits. Scargill led the union in the 1984–1985 miners' strike. He claimed that the government had a long-term strategy to destroy the industry by closing unprofitable pits, and that it listed pits it wanted to close each year. This was denied by the government at the time, although papers released in 2014 under the thirty year rule suggest that Scargill was right.[10]

Miners were split between those who supported the strike and those who opposed it (see Union of Democratic Mineworkers). Scargill never balloted NUM members for a strike; this 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.[11] The NUM had previously held three ballots on a national strike, all of which rejected the proposal: 55% voted against in January 1982, and 61% voted against in both October 1982 and March 1983.[12]

The media characterised the strike as "Scargill's strike" and his critics accused him of looking for an excuse for industrial action since becoming union president. Many politicians, including the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock, believed Scargill had made a huge mistake in calling the strike in the summer rather than in the winter.

The strike ended on 3 March 1985 following a NUM vote to return to work. It was a defining moment in British industrial relations, and its defeat significantly weakened the trade union movement. It was a major political victory for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party. The strike became a symbolic struggle, as the NUM was one of the strongest unions in the country, viewed by many, including Conservatives in power, as having brought down the Heath government in the union's 1974 strike. Unlike the strikes in the 1970s, the later strike ended with the miners' defeat and the Thatcher government was able to consolidate its fiscally conservative programme. The political power of the NUM and of most British trade unions was severely reduced.

Assessments

Many historians have provided interpretations and explanations of the defeat.[13][14]

  • Robert Taylor depicts Scargill as an 'industrial Napoleon' who called a strike 'at the wrong time' on the 'wrong issue', and adopted strategies and tactics that were 'impossibilist', with 'an inflexible list of extravagant non-negotiable demands' that amounted to 'reckless adventurism' that was 'a dangerous, self-defeating delusion'.[15]
  • Numerous scholars have concluded that Scargill's decisive tactical error was to substitute his famous flying picket for the holding of a national strike ballot. His policy alienated most of the Nottinghamshire miners, undermined his position with the leaders of the trade union movement, hurt the union's reputation in British public opinion, and led to violence along the picket line. That violence strengthened the stature of the Coal Board and the Thatcher government.[16]
"Many found Scargill inspiring; many others found him frankly scary. He had been a Communist and retained strong Marxist views and a penchant for denouncing anyone who disagreed with him as a traitor.... Scargill had indeed been elected by a vast margin and he set about turning the NUM's once moderate executive into a reliably militant group.... By adopting a position that no pits should be closed on economic grounds, even if the coal was exhausted – more investment would always find more coal, and from his point of view, the losses were irrelevant – he made sure confrontation would not be avoided. Exciting, witty Arthur Scargill brought coalmining to a close in Britain far faster than would have happened had the NUM been led by some prevaricating, dreary old-style union hack."[17]

In January 2014, Prime Minister David Cameron stated, "I think if anyone needs to make an apology for their role in the miners' strike it should be Arthur Scargill for the appalling way that he led the union." This was in the Prime Minister's rejection of Labour calls for an apology for government actions during the 1984-5 miners' strike. His comments followed a question in the Commons from Labour MP Lisa Nandy, who said the miners and their families deserved an apology for the mine closures.

Later years

Scargill, along with Labour MP Tony Benn campaigned to free strikers Russell Shankland and Dean Hancock from prison. The two men had been convicted of the murder of David Wilkie, a taxi driver, by throwing a block of concrete from a bridge onto his car. Scargill had condemned the killing at the time. Shankland's and Hancock's life sentences for murder were reduced to eight years for manslaughter on appeal. They were released from prison in November 1989.[18]

After the miners' strike, he was elected to lifetime presidency of the NUM by an overwhelming national majority, in a controversial election where some of the other candidates claimed that they were given very little time to prepare. He stepped down from leadership of the NUM at the end of July 2002, to become the honorary president. He was succeeded by Ian Lavery.

In 1993 Scargill tried to use Thatcher's flagship Right to Buy scheme to buy the flat on the Barbican estate in central London. His application was refused because the flat in the Barbican Estate's Shakespeare Tower was not Scargill's primary residence. Former Scargill loyalist Jimmy Kelly, a miner at the Edlington Main pit near Doncaster in the 1980s, said he was astonished to learn of the attempt to buy the Barbican flat. "It's so hypocritical it's unreal," he said. "It was Thatcher's legislation, actually giving council tenants the right to buy their own houses. I think if it had been made public before then there'd have been a huge outcry. I think people would be astounded if they knew that."[19]

On 25 August 2010, it was reported that Scargill had been told that he no longer qualified for full membership of the NUM under union rules that he had helped draw up, but was only eligible for "life" or "retired" or "honorary" membership – which did not carry voting rights.[20] In February 2012, Scargill won £13,000 in a court action against the NUM, primarily for car expenses, and for the earlier temporary denial of membership.

Scargill admitted there was 'bad blood' between him and the NUM general secretary Chris Kitchen, who said, "I honestly do believe that Arthur, in his own world, believes that the NUM is here to afford him the lifestyle that he's become accustomed to."[21] However, in December 2012, Scargill lost a similar case concerning rent on his flat in the Barbican, London. In 2012, the flat was valued at £1.5 million, and has 24/7 access to concierge services.[22]

For years the NUM had been paying £34,000 annual rent for the flat on Scargill's instructions, without the knowledge of NUM members or many senior officials; Scargill claimed the NUM should continue funding his flat for the rest of his life, and thereafter for any widow who survived him. Chris Kitchen said: "I would say it's time to walk away, Mr Scargill. You've been found out. The NUM is not your personal bank account and never will be again."[23] Kitchen says that Scargill "has had 30 years of decent living out of the union, and he's got a pension that's second to none. Had he done the humble thing and walked away with what he were entitled to, his reputation would still be intact... I've always said that if Arthur can no longer control the NUM, he'll try and destroy it. That's what I believe".[24]

Recluse

An article published in The Guardian in February 2014 stated that Scargill had become a recluse.[25] He was not attending any of the events to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the 1984 strike at the NUM.[25]

Following Margaret Thatcher's death in April 2013, ITN made Scargill several offers for a five-minute interview, with the final offer reaching £16,000, but Scargill refused all the offers and did not speak to any media organisation upon Thatcher's death.[25]

However, an article published in The Times in August 2015 stated that Scargill had spoken to the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union conference in June 2015, and that he was due to appear alongside Jeremy Corbyn at the Orgreave Truth & Justice Campaign in September 2015.[26]

Socialist Labour Party

In 1996, Scargill founded the Socialist Labour Party after the Labour Party abandoned the original wording of Clause IV – the nationalisation of key industries and utilities – in its constitution. He has contested two parliamentary elections. In the 1997 general election, he ran 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, he ran against Peter Mandelson in Hartlepool. He lost on both occasions, winning 2.4% of the vote in the Hartlepool election. In May 2009, he was the number one candidate for the Socialist Labour Party for one of London's seats in the European Parliament.[27]

After stepping down from leadership of the NUM, Scargill became active in the UK's Stalin Society[28] saying that the "ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin explain the real world".[29] Scargill had long criticised Poland's Solidarity trade union for its attacks upon the communist system in Poland, which Scargill saw as deformed but reformable.[30]

Elections

UK Parliament elections

Date of election Constituency Party Votes %
1997 Newport East SLP 1,952 5.2
2001 Hartlepool SLP 912 2.4

London Assembly elections (Entire London city)

Date of election Party Votes % Results Notes
2000 SLP 17,401[31] 1.0 Not elected Multi-members party list[32]

Welsh Assembly elections

Year Region Party Votes % Result
2003 South Wales East SLP 3,695 2.2 Not elected[33]

European Parliament elections

Year Region Party Votes % Result Notes
1999 London SLP 19,632 1.7 Not-elected Multi-member constituency; party list
2009 London SLP 15,306 0.9 Not-elected Multi-member constituency; party list

References

  1. ^ The Times 10 January 2009, Retrieved 9 January 2010
  2. ^ McIlroy, J. (2004) "Al Richardson (1941–2003): An Appreciation", Revolutionary History Vol.8, No.4 pg.3
  3. ^ "Socialist Labour Party". Archived from the original on 18 July 2003. Retrieved 28 June 2014. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  4. ^ a b Scargill, Arthur (in interview) (July–August 1975). "The New Unionism". New Left Review. I (92). New Left Review. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: postscript (link)
    Q: could you tell us how you became a militant trade unionist?
    A: Well, my initiation wasn't in the trade union at all. It was in the political movement ..."
  5. ^ Press Association (10 February 2012). "Arthur Scargill joins Battle of Saltley Gate 40th anniversary celebration". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 June 2014.
  6. ^ a b c Routledge, Paul (1994). Scargill: the unauthorized biography. London: Harper Collins. p. 58. ISBN 0-00-638077-8.
  7. ^ Routledge, Paul (1994). Scargill: the unauthorized biography. London: Harper Collins. p. 60. ISBN 0-00-638077-8.
  8. ^ "Books Review". Pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk. Retrieved 28 June 2014.
  9. ^ "1983: Macgregor named as coal boss". BBC News. 28 March 1983. Retrieved 25 February 2006.
  10. ^ "Cabinet papers reveal 'secret coal pits closure plan'". BBC News. 3 January 2014. Retrieved 3 January 2014.
  11. ^ Kalamidas, Thanos (11 January 2008). "An Arthur who wanted to be king". Ovi Magazine. Retrieved 23 November 2012.
  12. ^ Adeney, Martin; Lloyd, John (1988). The Miners' Strike 1984-5: Loss Without Limited. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. p. 169. ISBN 0-7102-1371-9.
  13. ^ David Howell, et al. "Goodbye to all that?: A Review of Literature on the 1984/5 Miners' Strike." Work, Employment & Society (1987) 1#3 pp. 388-404 in JSTOR
  14. ^ R.R. Darlington, "There is no alternative: Exploring the options in the 1984-5 miners’ strike." Capital and Class 87 (2005): 71-95.
  15. ^ Robert Taylor, The trade union question in British politics: government and unions since 1945 (Blackwell, 1993) pp 292, 298.
  16. ^ Geoffrey Goodman, The miners' strike (Palgrave Macmillan, 1985) p 48.
  17. ^ Andrew Marr, A history of modern Britain (Macmillan, 2007), pp 412-13.
  18. ^ "Blunkett told of 'Valleys drug menace'". BBC News. 1 October 2002. Retrieved 10 February 2011.
  19. ^ "Scargill used Thatcherite policy in bid to buy London flat". BBC News. 15 January 2014. Retrieved 28 June 2014.
  20. ^ "National Union of Mineworkers 'expels' Arthur Scargill". BBC News. 25 August 2010. Retrieved 25 August 2010.
  21. ^ Higgens, Dave (21 February 2012). "Arthur Scargill wins £13,000 union damages". The Independent. Retrieved 23 November 2012.
  22. ^ Wainwright, Oliver (7 October 2012). "Why Arthur Scargill is reluctant to leave his £1.5m Barbican flat". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 March 2016.
  23. ^ "Arthur Scargill loses London flat case". BBC News. 21 December 2012. Retrieved 9 April 2013.
  24. ^ Harris, John (28 February 2014). "In search of Arthur Scargill: 30 years after the miners' strike". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 March 2016.
  25. ^ a b c Harris, John (28 February 2014). "In search of Arthur Scargill: 30 years after the miners' strike". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 27 December 2014.
  26. ^ Webster, Philip; Jones, Callum; Cownburn, Ashley (1 August 2015). "Old comrades rub hands with glee at return of hard left". The Times. London. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
  27. ^ "List of candidates for the EU Parliamentary elections". Retrieved 19 May 2009.
  28. ^ Hari, Johann (10 June 2002). "Comrades up in Arms". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 20 January 2008. Retrieved 17 February 2014.
  29. ^ McSmith, Andy; Carrell, Severin (2 March 2003). "Stalin apologists drink to the memory of Uncle Joe". The Independent. London. Retrieved 9 April 2013.
  30. ^ "Scargill angers unions with Solidarity attack". The Glasgow Herald. 1983. Retrieved 9 April 2013.
  31. ^ "London Assembly election results, 2000". Retrieved 28 June 2014.
  32. ^ "Greater London Authority Candidates". Election.demon.co.uk. Retrieved 28 June 2014.
  33. ^ "National Assembly for Wales Election Results 1999–2007". Election.demon.co.uk. Retrieved 28 June 2014.

Further reading

  • Campbell, Adrian, and Malcolm Warner. "Leadership in the Miners Union-Scargill, Arthur Rise to Power." Journal of General Management 10.3 (1985): 4-22.
  • Crick, Michael. Scargill and the Miners (Penguin, 1985)
  • Gildart, Keith. "Two Kinds of Reform: Left Leadership in the British National Union of Mineworkers and the United Mineworkers of America, 1982-1990." Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas (2006) 3#2: 67-89.
  • Howell, David, et al. "Goodbye to all that?: A Review of Literature on the 1984/5 Miners' Strike." Work, Employment & Society (1987) 1#3 pp. 388-404 in JSTOR
  • Mackie, Phil. "Arthur Scargill and the Battle of Saltley Gate" BBC News 10 February 2012
  • Morgan, Kenneth O. "Gormley, Scargill and the Miners" in Labour people: leaders and lieutenants, Hardie to Kinnock (1987) pp 289-300.
  • Peter, Gibbon. "Analysing the British miners' strike of 1984–5." Economy and Society 17.2 (1988): 139-194.
  • Routledge, Paul. Scargill: the unauthorized biography (HarperCollins, 1993)
  • Wilsher, Peter, Donald Macintyre, and Michael CE Jones, eds. Strike: Thatcher, Scargill and the miners (A. Deutsch, 1985)
  • Winterton, Jonathan, and Ruth Winterton. Coal, crisis and conflict: the 1984-85 miners' strike in Yorkshire (Manchester University Press, 1989)
  • Seumas Milne. " The Enemy Within", Verso 2014.
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Trade union offices
Preceded by President of the Yorkshire Area of the National Union of Mineworkers
1974–1981 		Succeeded by
Jack Taylor
Preceded by President of the National Union of Mineworkers
1982–2002 		Succeeded by
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