Arthur Scargill, English miner, activist, and politician
Arthur Scargill (born 11 January 1938) is a British trade unionist who was President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1982 to 2002. He is best known for leading the 1984–1985 miners' strike, a major event in the history of the British labour movement.
Joining the NUM at the age of nineteen in 1957, Scargill 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 played a part in the downfall of Edward Heath's Conservative government.
A decade later, Scargill led the NUM through the 1984–1985 miners' strike. It turned into a fierce confrontation with the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher in which the miners' union was defeated. A former Labour Party member, he is now the party leader of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), which he founded in 1996.