Quote of the Day
"Came home and had Arthur Scargill to lunch. Today Derek Ezra, Chairman of the Coal Board, announced the closure of about fifty pits, with 25,000 miners' jobs going. This is what Arthur has been predicting for some time, having been bitterly attacked as a troublemaker by the right-wing members of the NUM. He was tremendously bouncy and cheerful." - Tony Benn, 11 February 1981
I think these few sentences demolish the view to which some still hold that Arthur Scargill's battle was initially one only about his concern to protect miners, not a political campaign. Twenty-five thousand of his own members were to lose their jobs, and Scargill's reaction that day was to be "tremendously bouncy and cheerful" that he has been proved right.
