Bernard Ingham: The lions led by a donkey who steered the coal industry towards destruction

After a year on strike, miners' families were on their knees. Worse was to come for scores of mining communities as mutilated pits failed to re-open. And the economy had once again taken a beating at the hands of union barons – this time by probably the most hubristic and incompetent trade union leader Britain has ever produced.

And for what? The mining industry was wrecked. Large areas of South Yorkshire were about to discover what happens to towns when the monopoly trade or industry collapses. And Margaret Thatcher was not just still in No 10; she had been cemented in there by Arthur Scargill and his union – or that part of it which knuckled under to his extremism.

Of course, Scargill and his henchmen had been able to indulge their lust for the glories of the eternal struggle between capital and labour. New class battles such as Orgreave had been written into the folklore.

Even to this day, Scargill, with a monumental disregard for the consequences of his actions, revels in the insurrection. First World War generals had nothing on him for sending the poor bloody infantry over the top to a certain demise.

For what was he – or more accurately, his miners – fighting for? Why, nothing less than a blank cheque from the taxpayer. Not a single closure of a pit so long as a nugget of coal could be mined from it. The Kremlin would have sent any Russian harbouring such a daft idea to the gulag.

The demand was so extreme that it meant only one thing: provided he could get his members on strike in support of it, it would be a useful cover or excuse for bringing down an elected government – and all the better for being Tory.

To cut a long story short, he failed in his attempt to get a rolling coalfields' strike without a ballot and split his union. It was only one of a catalogue of mistakes that contributed to the defeat of lions led by a donkey.

What can we learn from all this?

First, the miners themselves did what no government would have dared or wished to achieve in virtually eliminating coal as a major British industry. Now, the silly "Green" Left tries to close power stations burning largely imported coal in their determination to eliminate any carbon footprint. Yet we shall probably rue the loss of home produced coal, with or without carbon capture, such is our impending energy crisis.

Second, not even a Labour Government, financed by the trade union movement, felt able to undo Thatcher's union legislation or resuscitate the coal industry in the light of Scargill's folly. His was the ultimate in the arrogant abuse of power spanning decades by a union leadership corrupted by a prevailing popular sentimentality about organised labour, weak management and even weaker governments.

Third, Thatcher applied the smack of firm government, reinforced by careful preparation and a determination that the police should uphold

the law, that had been needed for years. That alone ensured future governments would not risk comparison by running away.

Fourth, like most people, Scargill and his gang completely miscalculated Thatcher's resolve. This was no doubt partly because she was female. Most union HQs were, like the House of Commons, male chauvinist piggeries, as I discovered as a labour correspondent and

as Barbara Castle's press secretary.

Fifth, some people never learn. If British Airways cabin staff are not "mindless militants" – as their leader claims – then they are impenetrably thick. This pampered shower are hell-bent on destroying a perfectly good national airline to no purpose whatsoever except perhaps flaunting their destructive power.

Sixth, Scargill and the BA bunch explain precisely why Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's governments have acquired a reputation for bullying and intimidation. Mafia methods kept the miners' strike going longer

than it might otherwise have done and, by all accounts, the BA dispute is powerfully stoked by bullying.

All political parties have their bullies but not in New Labour's institutionalised form. We all know where it comes from: from a union movement that lost its once noble and, yes, Christian-driven aim of elevating the working man to the viciousness of the mob.

Scargill never understood, assuming he ever thought about it, that right can never be firmly established by menace.