The tragedy of Arthur Scargill

Submitted by AWL on 18 September, 2019 - 11:48 Author: Jim Denham
scargill

Arthur Scargill emerged from semi-retirement from politics to speak at a meeting of the Communist Party of Britain’s wretched little pro-Brexit front organisation Leave Fight Transform (LeFT) in Brighton on 11 September, alongside Eddie Dempsey (the man who said Tommy Robinson supporters were right to hate the “liberal left”) and other assorted xenophobes, nationalists and social conservatives.

According to the Morning Star Scargill said that “every single MP who wants us to go back into Europe should be opposed.” That would be the majority of Labour MPs, then, Arthur?

It’s easy to mock Arthur Scargill.

These days he only gets to speak at the crankiest of Stalinist events. 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. Yet he was a decisive figure in the great strike of 1984-85.

There are those on the would-be “left” who will willingly attempt to defend people accused of rape, individuals who beat their partners, those who think there is vast Jewish conspiracy against Corbyn, and elements that think trans people are mentally ill.

Scargill seems to have almost no one to advocate for him. Not even many of the Stalinists he hangs round with. Perhaps they’re embarrassed by this reminder of how the Stalinist and reformist left squandered the power and influence it once had in British politics.

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.

We may criticise some of the tactics he used in the 1984-5 miners’ strike, but we cannot dispute that he gave real leadership and was serious about wanting to defeat the Tories.

In March 2014, ex-miner John Cunningham attended the memorial meeting for the two Yorkshire miners killed in the strike, Davy Jones and Joe Green. This event is held every year at the Barnsley Headquarters of the NUM and acquired particular poignancy that year as it coincided with the 30th anniversary of the strike.

John wrote in Solidarity:

“Arthur Scargill was in attendance but it was noteworthy (and significant) that he remained a peripheral figure being greeted by only a few of those attending. He was not addressed or greeted from the platform, though as Honorary Life President of the NUM it might be expected, as a courtesy if nothing else, that his presence would be acknowledged. Scargill, once the hero of the miners, now cuts a rather sad, isolated figure and this is a complex post-1985 story.

“At the risk of paraphrasing, Karl Marx once wrote that the great figures of history appear first as tragedy and then as farce. However, if the outcome of the 84-5 strike can be regarded, at one level, as a tragedy, then Scargill’s post-85 trajectory can only be viewed as an even deeper tragedy.

“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. Riddled with Stalinist politics and practice and some of the worst sectarianism imaginable, it has no meaningful existence today”.

Back in 1983 (even before the great miners’ strike) the forunner of Solidarity (Socialist Organiser) condemned Scargill’s attacks on the independent Polish union movement Solidarnosc, but also identified the root cause of Scargill’s tragic error (nationalism) and denounced the hypocrisy of many of his critics within the labour movement:

“It’s no news that Scargill has a scandalous attitude to Solidarnosc. …[he fails to see that] the working class is a world class. The motto, ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’, applies world-wide. Yet Arthur Scargill clearly sees class struggle as just British workers versus British bosses.

“That’s why he can write one third of the world’s workers — those who live in the Stalinist states — out of the class struggle, allotting them no role but to support their ‘socialist’ rulers…

“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. He is looking for ‘socialism in one country’, and since that is impossible he ends up with a recipe of ‘capitalism in one country’”.

That is what we need to remember these days when we think of Scargill. His nationalist backwardness on Brexit (and immigration, to judge by a letter published in the Guardian on 29 August 2017) cannot be forgiven. We also remember his relatively principled role within the UK labour movement of the 1970s and 80s.

Which makes his present-day role (such as it is) in politics all the more tragic.

Comments

Submitted by Educated Scot (not verified) on Wed, 20/05/2020 - 16:24

Having read the above (barely, don’t like reading lies) I felt the immediate need to respond, if anything to comfort myself. I then thought of things rather differently. Articles like the above, years later are actually a compliment to Arthur. It only demonstrates the individual and threat he was. Absolute nonsense on all accords above.

Submitted by Mike Finch (not verified) on Sat, 11/07/2020 - 20:11

The Labour Party was opposed to membership of the EU to begin with wasn't it, so what happened, are its current membership more enlightened. In any case, the will of the people has decided the UK will leave, we have even had a General Election over the matter. 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.

Submitted by David Baxter (not verified) on Thu, 24/09/2020 - 18:13

Clearly, Scargill did fall out of favour with the Socialist movement, perhaps because it became evident that he was only happy when he was in the limelight. He was a destructive force, in the Labour Party, and in the NUM. his position on freedom movements In communist states such as Poland, was unforgivable He is rightly labelled a Stalinist, along with Corbyn. He used the NUM for his own advancement, and ended up thinking he was bigger than the Union and everything else. As for the EEC/EU, his anti- stance was in keeping with Labour Party Policy. Don’t forget that Labours manifesto at Kinnock’s last election included a policy of leaving the bloc, and who knows what t was under Corbyn. However, In , He was right. 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. 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.

Scargill had the ability to do great things; Pity he got in the way of his own opportunities, and could not see Communism as a failed ideology that blighted every country in which it held sway. It was not , and will not ever be the liberator of the working Class, but their oppressors. His legacy is one of shame and ignominy. Nothing good about it. The 84/5 miners strike brought great hardship, but achieved nothing. His one man mission to bring down the elected government, for a second time, and destroy Thatcherism was not only not accomplished ,it only served to strengthen the Conservative Government and Thatchers dominance of the political landscape for over a decade. This article, far from being full of lies, hit the nail, well and truly, on the head. On any measure, Scargill was a failure who brought hardship down on those who followed him, now a pitiful figure. 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.

Submitted by Cliff Peters (not verified) on Thu, 03/12/2020 - 20:02

If like me you lived through that period of the early seventies, constant strike action, the mid seventies when Britain effectively went bust aided by constant strikes and was branded  ‘sick man of Europe’ going through the ‘winter of discontent’ where it seemed everybody was on strike, building up to the miners strike in 84/85, you look back and struggle to convince even yourself that we allowed such selfish destructive idealism to ruin the lives of so many in this country.

I could write a million words and not be able to adequately describe the misery, hardship and dispare these ‘leaders’ bought upon the people of this nation.

If being ignored is the ultimate retribution for scargill, then he is a lucky man, for if he had espoused his views in some of the countries with 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.

Sadly, all these new political halfwits who think it is smart to ignore the pieces of history that doesn’t suit them, banging on about the way ‘they’ see the future ignoring the fact it should be the way ‘we all’ would like to see it, should remember the silent majority is just that, ignore it of forget it at your peril.

In conclusion to my little rant, unions were formed for the betterment of its members, not to be used as a personal vehicle for selfish political dogma.
 

 

 

 

Submitted by Karl Karlsson (not verified) on Mon, 14/12/2020 - 12:28

Love him or hate him a lot that Mr Scargill and the Minors stood against in the 1970/80s has now come to fruition, the uprise of Thatcherism, greed is good, stand on your neighbour to get a head! you only have to look at the current state of our country after Cov19 to realise that we have no industry left! Vast majority of people work retail or as Barristers selling fancy coffee to people on the way to work in offices,  most of them on single hour contracts working in retail parks or business parks built on the ground of old mine, steelworks and potteries that used to employ tens of thousands of men and now employ the best part of 100. If anyone of them has any cause for complaint they are simply showing the door because they have no unions to speak for to stand up for the rights of any working man or woman in this country. After the Miners were beaten into submission in 1984 and the rest of us cheated and swindled by that government and successive government afterwards. I really do not care what you think of Mr Scargill today, where else is a man supposed to go after he was betrayed by the system and vilified by the media to a gullible population, a media that was run by the government of the day. At very lease Mr Scargill was a leader of man and lead them unlike our current prime minister who couldn't lead a pack of sheep out of a field even though he resemble one.

Submitted by Brian M. Leahy (not verified) on Sat, 23/10/2021 - 14:17

Would JD care to say why he writes in such a vindictive and aggressive style?

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