If being ignored is the ultimate retribution forscargill, then he is a lucky man, for if he had espoused his views in some of the countrieswith which he wanted to align us, his best outcome would have been breaking rocks but more likely he would have disappeared never to be heard of again. He is best known for leading the UK miners' strike (198485), a major event in the history of the British labour movement. Having read the above (barely, dont like reading lies) I felt the immediate need to respond, if anything to comfort myself. This was to begin the argument of whether the actions of Thatcher and the state during the strike led to its failure. Thereafter Scargill led the NUM through the 19841985 miners' strike. . [26], There is a prevailing view that Arthur Scargill, the NUM National President, called the strike. London, 1984. However, Lawson then goes on to say The violent tactics used by the NUM pickets reopened the issue of Who governs Britain?. [44] Thatcher, Margaret. The Guardian. If it wasnt for Thatchers continued support for the Nottinghamshire miners, the strike would have had their support which may have been vital in the success of the strike. Margaret Thatcher. In this example the file must be in public_html/example/Example/. [8] Nigel Lawson, who takes a clear mainstream media view on the Miners strike and even admits the left-wing majority on the NUM executive insisted, however dubiously, that Rule 43 of the union allowed for a strike without a ballot[9] showing that although many people didnt agree with it, including him, it was actually permissible. [38], Film director Ken Loach subsequently made "The Arthur Legend" as part of Channel 4's Dispatches series. Downing Street Years. [37] The prosecution brought by the Certification Officer was rejected in July 1991 on the grounds that it would be inappropriate to use the material provided in confidence to Lightman's enquiry. However, another reason that many people blame Scargill for the downfall of the miners is due to the fact that Scargill authorised the flying picket strategy in order to stop miners going to work. [17] Still the Enemy Within (2014). IMDb. The same nationalism explains why Arthur Scargill, alongside his industrial militancy, supports a not-at-all-militant programme of import controls, withdrawal from the EEC, and siege economy. "Analysing the British miners' strike of 19845.". However, Wakefield also mentions the betrayal he felt by the Nottinghamshire miners who continued to work by saying The lads are in good spirits even if the majority of scabs are working. Page 151. Historian, John Campbell, described the battle at Orgreave; They were beaten back by even greater numbers of mounted and heavily armoured police[41]. Do you have a 2:1 degree or higher? Another important factor in the failure of the miners strike was Thatcher and her governments actions during the strike such as using the police force. The myth of workers' control The myth of workers' control by Arthur Scargill, Peggy- Kahn Filter Results Shipping Eligible for Free Shipping Expedited Shipping Available Item Condition Seller Rating Other Options Change Currency + Add to Wishlist All All Copies ( 0 ) Currently there are no copies available. As for the EEC/EU, his anti- stance was in keeping with Labour Party Policy. Arthur Scargill: We Could Surrender or Stand and Fight. The Guardian. His father, Harold, was a miner and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. March 07, 2009. [57] Scargill supported the 2022 United Kingdom railway strike, joining an RMT picket line in Wakefield on 21 June 2022. So that was my initial introduction into socialism and into political militancy. He was the President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1981 to 2002 and has served as leader of the Socialist Labour Party, a political party he founded, since 1996. In the event, it turned out to be the exact blueprint that the government followed[21]. [25] Thatcher, Margaret. However, if it had gone the other way the Yorkshire area would have come out and other areas would have to decide whether to give support. It can be argued that both Marxist and Mainstream Media view give credit to the fact that government preparations were a factor in the failure of the miners strike but they have opposing views on to what extent. In May 2009, he was a candidate for the Socialist Labour Party for one of London's seats in the European Parliament. He also stated regarding Brexit that "we should just invoke the first clause of Article 50 and that means we could leave the EU tomorrow". [20] Ridley, Nicholas. Lawson takes an objective view of the events as his book was published in 1993 after a very public dispute with Thatcher where he eventually resigned. [6] 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. Another important factor in the failure of the miners strike is the amount of support that it had. [34] Wakefield, Arthur, and Brian Elliot. Which makes his present-day role (such as it is) in politics all the more tragic. In 2012, the flat was valued at 1,500,000, and had 24/7 access to concierge services. After a Labour Party conference speech on energy policy by Richard Marsh in July 1967, Scargill said: I can honestly say that I never heard flannel like we got from the Minister he said that we have nuclear power stations with us, whether we like it or not. His application was refused because the flat in the Barbican Estate's Shakespeare Tower was not Scargill's primary residence. In 1973, Scargill was elected to the full-time post of compensation agent in the Yorkshire NUM. A former Labour Party member, Scargill is now leader of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), founded by him in 1996. It's easy to mock Arthur Scargill. Following these results, Thatcher urged Ian McGregor to fix the problem, she describes how time and time again he (Ian McGregor) and his colleagues were outmanoeuvred by Arthur Scargill and the NUM leadership[36]. [53] 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. 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. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d 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). [41] Campbell, John. London: Vintage, 2008. The Enemy Within", Verso 2014. Scargill was often accompanied by his then wife Anne Harper to speak at picket lines and to media appearances; Harper was simultaneously involved in founding and leading the National Women Against Pit Closures movement. "Scargill" redirects here. Therefore, we must conclude that whilst Arthur Scargills leadership was an important factor in the failure of the strike, it would be wrong to assume that this was the main reason as without the lack of support, especially from the Nottinghamshire miners, as well as the governments preparations, such as the stockpiling of coal, the miners strike might not have failed. Read online at https://workersliberty.org/node/34498, Submitted by AWL on 18 September, 2019 - 11:48, Letters: Hands off Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, Holodomor: the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33, Tubeworker (London Underground) (bulletin), Off the Rails (national rail workers) (bulletin), Off the Rails (national rail workers) (blog), Notts Off the Rails (Nottingham rail workers) (bulletin), On Guard (Sheffield rail workers) (bulletin). That is what we need to remember these days when we think of Scargill. The movement faced a huge confrontation from the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, and the union was eventually defeated. Therefore, Tony Benns argument is more convincing than Eric Evans as he takes into account the failures of the miners as well as giving credit to the amount of support the strike had as well. It was a major political victory for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party. Scargill, Solidarity and Workers Revolutionary Party ( Book ) Margaret Thatcher, face aux mineurs : 1972-1985, treize annes qui ont chang l'Angleterre by Pierre-Franois Gouiffs ( Book ) Accessed October 10, 2018. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3815426/. Page 70. A5 format. That violence strengthened the stature of the Coal Board and the Thatcher government. Page 345. Margaret Thatcher even described McGregor as lacking in guile as he was used to dealing with financial difficulties and hard bargaining and had no experience with dealing with trade union leaders[25]. [9] When Bullough (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. : A Review of Literature on the 1984/5 Miners' Strike.". He was also on the hard-left of the Labour Party, often disagreeing with Neil Kinnock who couldnt support the strike due to its illegitimacy after Scargills failure to call a ballot. Scargill led the union in the 19841985 miners' strike. Regardless, we have to be careful when using Arthur Wakefield as a source as his diary entries will reflect his heightened emotions after a day of striking that may not truly reflect the real situation. Yet he was a trade union leader who helped lead a strike that brought down a Tory government (1974) and correctly understood that Thatcher was out to smash the unions and that they needed to fight back. National Archives: Margaret Thatcher Wanted to Crush Power of Trade Unions.. I really do not care what you think of Mr Scargill today, where elseis a man supposed to go after he was betrayed by the system and vilified by the media to agullible population, a media that was run by the government of the day. 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. My mother was strictly non-political. Just click. Amazingly the electorate resent being told they're either racist or stupid or both, if the remain campaign had been more mature in it's approach, almost certainly a different decision would have been reached. Beyond Service: State Workers, Public Policy, and the Prospects for Tous les rsultats Google Recherche de Livres». RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L] It is rather ironic that his view on the EEC was shared by Tjatcher, deep down, and it is a Tory Govt that has taken us out. Test your website to make sure your changes were successfully saved. This view is supported to some extent by Labour minister Tony Benn, one of Thatchers fiercest critics, and historian, Seumas Milne who argued that the governments extensive preparations and actions during the strike led to its failure in 1984. Many of us started in the 1950s in the Young Communist League. Downing Street Years. Eric Evans described him as aggressive and charismatic, but vain and politically limited[42], therefore showing his limitations as the head of NCB. Scargill has so burnt his bridges with the NUM and the broad left of the labour movement that his name is never mentioned at Durham miners gala or at other miners strike commemorations. Dont forget that Labours manifesto at Kinnocks last election included a policy of leaving the bloc, and who knows what t was under Corbyn. The Myth of Control: Created by Mikail Chowdhury, Sana Soni. The myth of workers' control; More details; The myth of workers' control . I think if it had been made public before then there'd have been a huge outcry. The strike of 1984 was covered in detail by the press. Margaret Thatcher: From Grocers Daughter to Iron Lady. The Making of Neil Kinnock. Scargill, along with veteran left-wing Labour MP Tony Benn, campaigned to free strikers Russell Shankland and Dean Hancock from prison. He led an unofficial strike in 1969, and played a key organising role during strikes of 1972 and 1974, the latter of which played a part in the downfall of Edward Heath's Conservative government. EconBiz.Logger.enable_visibilityState_tracking(); Page 340. In stories told since the strike, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), Arthur Scargill, is strangely absent. The union is known for leading the longest as well as the most violent miners` strike in the history of British history. [18], Miners were split between those who supported the strike and those who opposed it (see Union of Democratic Mineworkers). [45] Milne, Seumas. Essay Writing Service. The Enemy Within: The Secret War against the Miners. He left school in 1953 at fifteen years old to work as a coal miner at Woolley Colliery, where he worked for nineteen years.[2][3]. The issue of Scargills leadership is argued as the main reason that the miners strike failed. Without them the power stations, even with the mix of nuclear and oil and the careful stockpiling, might have begun to run short and the government would have been in deep trouble[43] Therefore, showing that the lack of support from the Nottinghamshire miners was a more important factor in the failure of the Miners strike than government preparations. His post-1985 decision to try and build a political organisation the so-called Socialist Labour Party turned out to be a disaster and created nothing more than a pathetic, personal bandwagon which spluttered briefly before the wheels fell off. Here you can choose which regional hub you wish to view, providing you with the most relevant information we have for your specific region. It is also possible that you have inadvertently deleted your document root or the your account may need to be recreated. All work is written to order. You can try renaming that file to .htaccess-backup and refreshing the site to see if that resolves the issue. The strike started in Yorkshire, and he was not present at the delegate Council meeting in Barnsley. However, we have to be careful when using Thatcher as a source as she may be trying to give more credit to her successes and deflecting her failures onto other people such as Ian McGregor. Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales. This is given credence by the fact that Scargill authorised these violent tactics, which decreased public sympathy for the Miners which was actually their greatest asset[10]. *You can also browse our support articles here >. ." It is a world of despair, of ashes, and coldness, and darkness, and the setting acts as a . [31] Campbell, John. 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. Harpercollins Publishers, 2012. This source is reliable as Kim Howells was a member of the NUM at the time of the strike but still discredits Scargills tactics. Both the Marxist view and the mainstream media view gives credit to government preparations showing this was definitely an important factor in the failure of the strike. This article, far from being full of lies, hit the nail, well and truly, on the head. Page 161. Scargill, Arthur (1938- ) English trade union leader. At the time, Britain had 170 working. He then goes on to say with incidents of appalling violence on both sides showing that even Campbell who takes the mainstream media view is forced to acknowledge the unnecessary violence of the police force when facing the miners. I then thought of things rather differently. In 1974, he was instrumental in organising the miners' strike that led Prime Minister Edward Heath to call a February general election.[13]. [41], In 1993, Scargill tried to use Thatcher's flagship Right to Buy scheme to buy a flat on the Barbican estate in central London. She makes some bold accusations about when Scargill and his cohorts were accused of serious irregularities in the handling of union funds but this is unconvincing as it has never been proven true. BATTLE FOR BRITAIN; on the 25th Anniversary of the Miners Strike, NORMAN TEBBIT, Reveals Why He Believes Defeat Would Have Been the Death of Democracy.. Page 346. A dialogue box may appear asking you about encoding. 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 flat. Because of Scargills actions, the strike was illegal, poorly supported and doomed to failure given the level of government preparations. London: Fontana, 1992. That's what I believe". RewriteBase / Was this national or local? We also remember his relatively principled role within the UK labour movement of the 1970s and 80s. However, Evans fails to mention how campaigning in Nottinghamshire was successful and how the pickets won over many workers until the police eventually intervened. [35] The Truth of Nacods Shameful Sell-out. The Guardian. Andrew Marrs view on why the Miners strike failed is much more convincing as it gives credit to Scargills leadership skills while also saying not even he would be able to persuade every part of the industry to strike showing that Marr believes that Scargill was the best man for the job. This confirms the fact that Thatcher and Ian McGregor often didnt see eye-to-eye, an example of this is the issue with the NACODs strike. Redirects and rewriting URLs are two very common directives found in a .htaccess file, and many scripts such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento add directives to the .htaccess so those scripts can function. For addon domains, the file must be in public_html/addondomain.com/example/Example/ and the names are case-sensitive. Many people blame him for the failure of Miners Strike due to his poor leadership skills and bad judgement. [7] Scargill, Arthur. Accessed October 10, 2018. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3815426/. There was some controversy in February 1985 when Times journalist Paul Routledge engaged the Queen in discussion on the strike, and the Queen said that the strike was "all about one man", which Routledge objected to. Milne, Seumas. " It is reported that the police were getting between 600 and 1000 a week and many people believed that there just arent that many police available to move about. [43] 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. He also represented the Barnsley Co-op at Cooperative congresses. Another factor in the failure of the miners strike, in 1984, is government involvement. 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. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Written authorization is required for the purchase of tea and coffee. [1] Letwin, Shirley Robin. The strike gained momentum quickly and calling a ballot may have broken down this early support. [15] However, Scargill's statements in the years after becoming NUM president divided left-wing opinion with his support of the Soviet Union, most notably when he refused to support the TUC's positions on the Solidarity union in Poland or on the Soviet shooting down of the Korean Air Lines Flight 007. If you go to your temporary url (http://ip/~username/) and get this error, there maybe a problem with the rule set stored in an .htaccess file. I was for the EU then, and was critical of this stance, but I I then came to the out view, albeit for different reasons.l, and was fully behind Brexit. A household name in the seventies and eighties, it was easy to imagine the strike as a personal conflict between Scargill and his nemesis, Margaret Thatcher. [8] Beckett, Francis, and David Hencke. With Fay Hauser, Olivia Haller, Doris Morgado, Chrystee Pharris. Seumas Milne, who takes the Marxist view, supports Thatchers argument that government preparations werent sufficient enough to cause the failure of the strike. For more information, see The National Review (June 15, 1984 and April 5 . July 31, 2013. RewriteEngine On [17], 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 joined the Labour Party in 1962. [32] The documentary suggests that the claims against Scargill were untrue. Absolute nonsense on all accords above. Routledge, 1997. No plagiarism, guaranteed! Accessed October 12, 2018. Joining the NUM at the age of 19 in 1957, Scargill was one of its leading activists by the late 1960s. Would JD care to say why he writes in such a vindictive and aggressive style? This was seen as violent and was deemed illegal. Arrow, 1994. [36] Thatcher, Margaret. July 31, 2013. S.l. Therefore, when considering both sources, Letwins Thatcherite view isnt very convincing as the argument that the failure of the miners strike was due to Scargills bad leadership is based on factors out of his control like the timing of the strike and accusations that havent been proven. Page 70. On the 20th of July 1984, Thatcher gave a speech to the 1922 committee where she deemed the miners as the enemy within going on to say We had to fight the enemy without, in the Falklands. Arthur Scargill is a British trade unionist who was the president of the National Union of Mineworkers. [19] Morgan, Kenneth O.Britain since 1945: The Peoples Peace. September 09, 2018. "[40] Scargill complained to the Advertising Standards Authority who criticised the advertisement as "highly distasteful". Industrial Democracy in Italy: Workers Co-ops and the Self-management Debate Mark Holmstrom, Mark Holmstrm Snippet view - 1989. Accessed October 10, 2018. https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/37592/How the Miners Strike could have won. [6] Marr, Andrew. You've been found out. Milne explains how the strike was a last-ditch fight to defend jobs, mining communities and the NUM itself against a government prepared to bring into play unlimited resources and its entire panoply of coercive powers as and where necessary to break the union and its backbone of support[22]. Scargill has so burnt his bridges with the NUM and the broad left of the labour movement that his name is never mentioned at Durham miners' gala or at other miners' strike commemorations. Page 158. Happily, his saintly wife spent her time, during his period of madness, doing all she could to bring practical help and comfort to the hardest hit families. To export a reference to this article please select a referencing stye below: If you are the original writer of this essay and no longer wish to have your work published on UKEssays.com then please: Our academic writing and marking services can help you! In 1958, he attended the World Federation of Trade Unions youth congress in Prague. Scargill opposed civilian nuclear power and, during the first Wilson ministry, became highly critical of the government's energy policy. Accessed October 10, 2018. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3815426/. Page 39. It turned into a confrontation with the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher in which the miners' union was defeated. Still the Enemy Within (2014). IMDb. Many people argue that government preparations led to the failure of the strike. However, one of the most important factors in the failure of the miners strike has to be the lack of support especially from the Nottinghamshire miners and the falling through of the NACODs strike. 404 means the file is not found. 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.