Arthur Scargill
| Arthur Scargill | |
|---|---|
Scargill in 2010
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| Born |
11 January 1938 Worsbrough Dale, West Riding of Yorkshire, England |
| Occupation | Former coal miner Former General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers Leader of the Socialist Labour Party |
| Spouse(s) | Anne Harper (m. 1961; div. 2001) |
Arthur Scargill (born 11 January 1938) is a British trade unionist and politician who was president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1982 to 2002. Joining the NUM at the age of 19 in 1957, he became one of its leading activists in the late 1960s. He led an unofficial strike in 1969, and played a key organising role during the strikes of 1972 and 1974, the latter of which helped in topple Edward Heath's Conservative government.
A decade later, he led the union through the 1984–85 miners' strike, a major event in British labour history. It turned into a confrontation with the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher in which the miners' union was heavily defeated. A former Labour Party member, he is now the leader of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), which he founded in 1996.
Scargill was born in Worsbrough Dale, Barnsley, West Riding of Yorkshire. His father, Harold, was a miner and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. His mother, Alice (née Pickering), was a professional cook. He did not take the Eleven-Plus exam and went to Worsbrough Dale School (now called the Elmhirst School). He left at 15 to become a coal miner at Woolley Colliery in 1953, where he remained for 19 years.
Scargill joined the Young Communist League in 1955, becoming its Yorkshire District Chair in 1956 and shortly after a member of its National Executive Committee. In 1957 he was elected NUM Yorkshire Area Youth Delegate, and attended the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow as a representative of the Yorkshire miners. In 1958, he attended the World Federation of Trade Unions youth congress in Prague. In a 1975 interview with New Left Review Scargill stated:
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