NUM wins legal battle over Scargill’s London apartment

The NUM had asked Mr Justice Underhill at London’s High Court to declare that it has no such continuing obligation to 74-year-old Mr Scargill, its president for 20 years until July 2002.

The union also successfully disputed Mr Scargill’s fuel allowance at his Barnsley home and payment for the preparation of his annual tax return – but not the cost of his security system in Yorkshire.

After the ruling, NUM general secretary Chris Kitchen said that it was “regrettable” that it had to bring the case.

Mr Scargill said that the judgment was “perverse” and flew in the face of all the evidence.

He said: “There can be no doubt that 30 years ago I was given an entitlement to a property by the union and that entitlement continued during my retirement, as it had done for all my predecessors including Lord Gormley and, after he died, his widow Lady Gormley.”

On the question of an appeal, he said: “I shall talk to my lawyers about what the best course of action will be, but I think any independent observer will regard this as yet another judgment with the anti-Scargill feeling about it.”

Mr Scargill has occupied the Barbican apartment, rented from the Corporation of London, since June 1982 – and the rent and associated expenses were paid by the union until 2011, except for a period between 1985 and 1991 when he met them.

The case was based on documents dating back 30 years and the identification of what terms were agreed between himself and duly authorised representatives of the NUM.

The judge rejected Mr Scargill’s argument that having the union pay the rent on the flat was a replacement for the benefit given to his predecessors – who all had houses bought for them in or near London which they were entitled to occupy before and after retirement at a very low rent or very reduced purchased price – and therefore was also a lifetime benefit.