Video: How ex-miners burned and spat on Thatcher’s effigy

In scenes in stark contrast to the solemnity of the service at St Paul’s Cathedral, the open coffin carrying the effigy was paraded through the village on a horse and cart before being carried to a piece of waste ground near the high street and set alight.

There were loud cheers and shouts of “scab, scab, scab” as the fire took hold while a man dressed as the devil held up a plaque that read “the Devil has come for Thatcher the children’s milk snatcher”.

Former miner Tony Hiles, who worked in the local pit and picketed throughout the 1984-5 miners’ strike, was among those watching.

He said: “I’m not a bitter man, I don’t hate people. But I have no feelings for her. I couldn’t care less that she’s died.

“Margaret Thatcher decimated all this area. We had eight pits in a five-mile radius. The town used to be buzzing, in the villages everyone would go out. And she shut every single one. There’s nothing left.”

Robbie Conroy, of Doncaster, a miner for 32 years, added: “The working class has been slaughtered by this woman.

“There’s young people here who weren’t alive when the strike was on but the feeling is still here.”

In nearby Grimethorpe, the response to Lady Thatcher’s funeral was more restrained but the sentiment was just as clear.

On the old pit winding wheel, at the northern entrance to the village, one banner read “Thatcher died naturally but she murdered our pit” while another on a footbridge over the main road at the other end of Grimethorpe carried the slogan “No tears for Thatcher”.

A small banner outside the working men’s club simply said: “At Last”.

Inside, former miner Jim Sellars, 52, was in full mining gear complete with a blackened face.

He said he had come to drink to the memory of his father, also a miner, and not to watch the ceremony.

“We have to pay for our own funerals so why didn’t she pay for hers?” he said.

“It’s £10m that could be put into the community.”

Yorkshire was not alone in witnessing protest at the legacy of the former Prime Minister.

In Scotland, a pub in the village of Logan, East Ayrshire near the ex-mining town of Cumnock, held a party to mark the passing of Lady Thatcher.

There were celebrations too among ex-miners who gathered in the former Durham coal mining town of Easington Colliery.

In Liverpool, a bookshop sold party packs that included black balloons and party poppers bearing the logo: “Still Hate Thatcher”.

Along the funeral procession route itself there were pockets of protest over the suitability of the occasion and the cost to the public purse.

The protests were largely peaceful although there were some angry exchanges between admirers and critics of Baroness Thatcher.

Rebecca Lush Blum, 41, used the social networking website Facebook to organise one of the larger protests which saw a group turn its back as the procession made its way to St Paul’s.

“Margaret Thatcher brought division,” she said. “She made the rich richer and the poor poorer. We had one of the highest levels of unemployment under Margaret Thatcher.

“I don’t want to celebrate her legacy in this way. I want to remember and respect all those who suffered under Margaret Thatcher.”

However, the actions of the protesters were dismissed by Cabinet Minister Ken Clarke, Health Secretary towards the end of Lady Thatcher’s time in office, who said she had “changed the country on a scale which no other prime minister came near”.

“She was a huge national personality so I think it was entirely suitable.

“I thought the arguments about the funeral were childish, quite frankly.

“As were some of the supposed celebrations of her death – they were rather tasteless, adolescents making silly points.”