Who was Arthur Scargill's predecessor as President of the NUM
Arthur Scargill the government at the time, although papers released in 2014 under the thirty-year rule suggest that Scargill was right. Miners were split between those who supported the strike and those who opposed it (see Union of Democratic Mineworkers). Scargill never balloted NUM members for a strike; this was seen as an erosion of democracy within the union, but the role of ballots in decision-making had been made very unclear after previous leader, Joe Gormley, had ignored two ballots over wage reforms, and his decisions had been upheld after appeals to court were made. The NUM had previously held three ballots
Arthur Scargill Arthur Scargill Arthur Scargill (born 11 January 1938) is a British Marxist and trade unionist. He was President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) from 1982 to 2002. Joining the NUM at the age of nineteen in 1957, he 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 helped in the downfall of Edward Heath's Conservative government. A decade later, he led the union through the 1984–85 miners' strike, a major event in the