Arthur Scargill, the controversial British politician and trade union leader, is coming to Galway at the end of this month to address a public meeting hosted by the James Connolly Forum.
Mr Scargill was born in Yorkshire in 1938 and went to work in the coal mines at 15. He was a member of the Young Communist League from 1955 to 1962, before joining the British Labour Party.
He was the Yorkshire president of the National Union of Mineworkers from 1973 to 1981 and was a key figure in the miners strike which helped bring down Edward Heath’s Tory government in March 1974.
In 1981 he became the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. During this time the Thatcher government was intent on closing most of the mines, regarding them as unprofitable. This lead to the long and bitter miner’s strike of 1984/85, one of the key events in British post-war history.
Despite the strikes ending in defeat, Mr Scargill remained popular with large sections of the miners and retained his position as NUM leader until 2002, when he became honorary president. In 1996 he founded his own Socialist Labour Party.
Mr Scargill will address the meeting on the topic of Trade Unions Must Defend Working People on Thursday February 25 at 8pm, upstairs in Monroe’s Tavern.
