Arthur Scargill remains country’s finest orator and ‘greatest’ ever union leader for leading NUM miners – Yorkshire Post Letters

INTERESTING to read Jayne Dowle and her take on Arthur Scargill and ther 1984-85 Miners’ Strike (The Yorkshire Post, February 14).

Why Arthur Scargill’s comments shouldn’t be dismissed in conversation around levelling up - Jayne Dowle

I don’t know if Jayne was born then but I certainly was after being made redundant in 1982. Like thousands of others, not in mining as my forefathers, but in engineering destroyed ‘at a stroke’ by asset strippers.

However miners had the greatest union leader and orator this country has ever produced – Arthur Scargill. All he ever wanted were for his men and women to have a job. Even the Labour Party never backed him so he and his members took the only action they knew after Thatcher refused to negotiate, and that was the withdrawal of their labour.

Of course there is more to it than that, but also remember the past Labour governments actually closed more pits than Thatcher, and subsequent Tory governments, whilst also destroying swathes of communities. Scargill was right almost 40 years ago as is being now proved to our cost with the latest sky high energy costs whilst we are sitting on billions of tonnes of the black stuff whilst relying on Russia to keep us warm. Remember modern mining was safer than ever, much of it due to Arthur Scargill.

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