Quotes by Arthur Scargill

About Arthur Scargill:

Arthur Scargill is a British politician and trade unionist 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 cadres in the late 1960s. In 1973, he was instrumental in organising the miners' strike that toppled Edward Heath's Conservative Government in March 1974. A decade later, he led the union through the 1984–85 miners' strike, a key event in British labour and political history. It was a confrontation with the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, and the miners' union was decisively defeated. Coal mining almost disappeared as a major industry in Britain.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The labour movement had the best opportunity in 50 years to transform not merely an industrial situation and win an important battle for workers in struggle, but an opportunity to change the government of the day.

Arthur Scargill

Yet what you need is not marches, demonstrations, rallies or wide associations, all of them are important. What you need is direct action. The sooner people understand that, the sooner we'll begin to change things.

Arthur Scargill

The trouble with the Labour Party leadership and the trade union leadership, they're quite willing to applaud millions on the streets of the Philippines or in Eastern Europe, without understanding the need to also produce millions of people on the st...

Arthur Scargill

If you've got an industry where you've got massive investment, it doesn't matter whether you bring in alternative supplies. You still lose the money on that industry.

Arthur Scargill

All too often miners, and indeed other trade unionists, underestimate the economic strength they have.

Arthur Scargill

There's a feeling that strength is determined by the size of a union. That clearly is nonsense.

Arthur Scargill

Contrast that with the call of the Liberal Democrats in April, when they were prepared to call upon the British people to participate in a 24-hour strike. It shows how far to the right the Labour Party's gone.

Arthur Scargill

The trade unions and the Labour Party... failed miserably. Instead of giving concrete support, and calling upon workers to take industrial action, they did nothing.

Arthur Scargill

You may see the emergence of a new political party from the body of the trade union movement which represents a very clear-cut socialist alternative policy and which gives expression to the views of the trade union movement in parliament.

Arthur Scargill

Author Bio

  • NameArthur Scargill
  • DescriptionBritish trade unionist
  • BornJanuary 11, 1938
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionPolitician