Arthur Scargill

[PauloBarnesi]

BBC running a programme on Scargill’s use of money at the NUM 

 

Seems that what ever divide of the political line you are on, power does strange things to you.

 

Scargill used Thatcherite policy to try and buy council flat

 

Former miners' union leader Arthur Scargill tried to use laws introduced by Margaret Thatcher to buy a council flat in London, the BBC has found.

In 1993 he applied to buy the flat on the prestigious Barbican estate under the right-to-buy scheme championed by Thatcher, his political enemy.

News that he tried to exploit a flagship Conservative policy has angered current miners' union leaders.

One former Yorkshire miner said: "It's so hypocritical it's unreal."

The rent on the flat was paid to the Corporation of London by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), of which Mr Scargill was the then president.

After Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in May 1979, the legislation to implement the right to buy was passed in the Housing Act 1980.

The sale price of a council house was based on its market value but also included a 33% to 50% discount to reflect the rents paid by tenants and encourage take-up. The policy became one of the major planks of Thatcherism.

Evidence of Mr Scargill's attempt to buy the Barbican property under the scheme is contained in legal documents obtained by the BBC's Inside Out programme.

The papers relate to a court case last year in which Mr Scargill lost the right to stay in his London flat for life at the expense of the NUM.

Arthur Scargill (centre) was the figurehead of the National Union of Miners (NUM)

The 76-year-old told the BBC that had he succeeded in buying the flat he would subsequently have transferred its ownership to the union.

He said this would have saved the union a substantial amount of money and provided it with an asset.

However, his application was refused because the flat in the Barbican Estate's Shakespeare Tower was not Mr Scargill's primary residence.

Continue reading the main story “Start Quote

I think if it had been made public before then there'd have been a huge outcry”

Jimmy KellyFormer Yorkshire miner

He did not mention in his application that the flat was paid for by the NUM and it was established in the Barbican court case that, from 1991 until 2008, the NUM's national executive committee did not know it was paying for the flat.

NUM general secretary Chris Kitchen said: "The fact that Scargill tried to use Thatcher's right-to-buy scheme is bad enough, but there is no evidence it would have been signed over to the NUM for the benefit of the members.

"We just have his word which 10 years ago would have been enough for me, but not now.

"Unfortunately the perception I had of Arthur the great trade unionist, socialist, just is nothing like the reality as to the man that I know now and that I've been at loggerheads with for most of my term of office."

Former Scargill loyalist Jimmy Kelly, a miner at the Edlington Main pit near Doncaster in the 1980s, said he was astonished to learn of the attempt to buy the Barbican flat.

"It's so hypocritical it's unreal," he said. "It was Thatcher's legislation, actually giving council tenants the right to buy their own houses.

"I think if it had been made public before then there'd have been a huge outcry. I think people would be astounded by knowing that.

"During the strike there was nothing better than him [scargill], we'd have followed him to the end of the world and, in effect, we probably did."

The really sad thing is that the members of the NUM are the one who suffer.

[tonyh29]

Ahh Scargill the man who won the miners strike but didn't realise  it and turned it into a crushing defeat

 

 

A union leader in it for the money ..who'd have thought it

 

We are all in this together was never more apt  ... now let me get my chauffeur to take me back to my Barbican flat 

[thetrees]

I read the title and thought that he had gone to join Maggie.

 

But then he would have only passed her on the stairs as he made his descent.

[Jon]

I read the title and thought that he had gone to join Maggie.

 

But then he would have only passed her on the stairs as he made his descent.

So, assuming they both start(ed) from terraferma, means that they're both off to hell, but Arthur's going there quicker? 

[bickster]

Ahh Scargill the man who won the miners strike but didn't realise  it and turned it into a crushing defeat

 

 

A politician in it for the money ..who'd have thought it

 

We are all in this together was never more apt  ... now let me get my chauffeur to take me back to my Barbican flat

corrected for accuracy

[bickster]

Oh and the only think really wrong with the right to buy scheme was that councils were actively prevented from re-investing the money into new housing stock.

One of the reasons were in this mess right now with ludicrous house prices. Nothing wrong with being able to buy your council house as long as the money was reinvested in more council houses. It wasn't though because the 1980 housing act specifically prevented it - that was the real lunacy of the woman

[tonyh29]

going OT'ish  and I know you didn't mention them  .... and at the risk of "ah but "  ..  i've included figures to show some perspective as much as anything , what with house prices still increasing 

 

Official data shows that the Blair and Brown governments built 7,870 council houses (local authority tenure) over the course of 13 years.

 

Thatcher's government supervised the building 2.63 m  houses  , but only  18.9% were LA or 'council' properties.

 

To look at it another way, New Labour built an average of 562 council houses per year. And Thatcher's Conservatives?

 

41,343.

 

 

to be honest looking at the graph the biggest decline in council house builds seems to have came about in the period 1975 to 1979  ( and also 66 -72)  , followed by another one 83 - 93 all be it not as steep a decline ( the biggest decline of that period being shortly after John Major took office    )

Edited January 15, 2014 by tonyh29

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Oh and the only think really wrong with the right to buy scheme was that councils were actively prevented from re-investing the money into new housing stock.

One of the reasons were in this mess right now with ludicrous house prices. Nothing wrong with being able to buy your council house as long as the money was reinvested in more council houses. It wasn't though because the 1980 housing act specifically prevented it - that was the real lunacy of the woman

Something which is missing from the article and would make a layman think it all a bit of political posturing.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

I thought he was a musician.

[bickster]

going OT'ish  and I know you didn't mention them  .... and at the risk of "ah but "  ..  i've included figures to show some perspective as much as anything , what with house prices still increasing 

 

Official data shows that the Blair and Brown governments built 7,870 council houses (local authority tenure) over the course of 13 years.

 

Thatcher's government supervised the building 2.63 m  houses  , but only  18.9% were LA or 'council' properties.

 

To look at it another way, New Labour built an average of 562 council houses per year. And Thatcher's Conservatives?

 

41,343.

 

 

to be honest looking at the graph the biggest decline in council house builds seems to have came about in the period 1975 to 1979  ( and also 66 -72)  , followed by another one 83 - 93 all be it not as steep a decline ( the biggest decline of that period being shortly after John Major took office    )

How many of the Witches houses built were in her first term i.e. before the 1980 Housing Act? And how many in the last term? i.e. after the 1980 Housing Act would have been in full effect? Given that Brown and Bliar were Thatcherites with red ties I don't really see what it has to do with anything anyway. How many were built under Major btw? and did any of his policies change the landscape further?

Methinks your simplistic analysis misses out some huge gaps in thinking before its even worthy of consideration. I don't know the answers to the questions but I think anyone making your point in the spirit of fairness should at least know the answers otherwise its a completely redundant analysis.

Edit: bah I see you've answered some of them, that'll teach me to go to the shop before I press send!

[MakemineVanilla]

But surely the staggering hypocrisy is that of a Tory government which chose a market solution to the provision of social housing and enforced it, based on the logic of their ideology that there was nothing more efficient than the free-market, and are now pretending that the outcome is the fault of those who need state subsidy to have somewhere to live?

 

That is the disgusting cowardly lie: they forced people into the private market, got rich from the housing bubbles they created, and now blame the victims for the situation they themselves brought about.

 

This amounts to a bigger fraud than the ideologically unsound action of a union leader, a much greater evil and a substantially greater moral failure.

 

It is hypocrisy of criminal proportions and an insult to every decent 'one nation' Tory who voted for this bunch of crooks and liars.

[colhint]

That's got to be some sort of record hasn't it. A topic about Scargill,  then 11 posts until  Tories are Bastards

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

I don't think it needs to be reinforced, really.

 

But just for good measure, the Tories are words removed.

[rendelc]

Bless him . You can't beat a bit of champagne socialism.

[tonyh29]

 

going OT'ish  and I know you didn't mention them  .... and at the risk of "ah but "  ..  i've included figures to show some perspective as much as anything , what with house prices still increasing 

 

Official data shows that the Blair and Brown governments built 7,870 council houses (local authority tenure) over the course of 13 years.

 

Thatcher's government supervised the building 2.63 m  houses  , but only  18.9% were LA or 'council' properties.

 

To look at it another way, New Labour built an average of 562 council houses per year. And Thatcher's Conservatives?

 

41,343.

 

 

to be honest looking at the graph the biggest decline in council house builds seems to have came about in the period 1975 to 1979  ( and also 66 -72)  , followed by another one 83 - 93 all be it not as steep a decline ( the biggest decline of that period being shortly after John Major took office    )

How many of the Witches houses built were in her first term i.e. before the 1980 Housing Act? And how many in the last term? i.e. after the 1980 Housing Act would have been in full effect? Given that Brown and Bliar were Thatcherites with red ties I don't really see what it has to do with anything anyway. How many were built under Major btw? and did any of his policies change the landscape further?

Methinks your simplistic analysis misses out some huge gaps in thinking before its even worthy of consideration. I don't know the answers to the questions but I think anyone making your point in the spirit of fairness should at least know the answers otherwise its a completely redundant analysis.

Edit: bah I see you've answered some of them, that'll teach me to go to the shop before I press send!

 

the same fairness you showed to Thatcher when you singled her out 

 

and in terms of fairness I also pointed out that Major showed the biggest decline 

 

but now you are back from the shops you already know that

[tonyh29]

That's got to be some sort of record hasn't it. A topic about Scargill,  then 11 posts until  Tories are Bastards

 

we even managed to skip Phase 1 "Deflection" and get straight to Phase 2 "Tories are Bastards"   

[bickster]

That's got to be some sort of record hasn't it. A topic about Scargill,  then 11 posts until  Tories are Bastards

How on earth did it get left out of the OP?

[bickster]

Interesting timing by the Knights of St Margaret to start this Scargill "smear". It's been known about for some time, the NUM vs Scargill thing was a story a while back but just after the cabinet papers got released that proved that what he was saying at the time was correct, this comes out, hmmmm.

For the record I'm no fan of Scargill but it doesn't mean that what he said during the miners strike wasn't spot on in terms of what the Witch was up to. He was a hypocrite (AKA a politician) in many respects but his version of what was happening during the strike has proved to be much closer to the truth than the Witch and her cronies ever admitted.

But to be honest this is like kicking an ageing dog with cancer around the gutter for the fun of it.

[blandy]

Aye, Bicks. You can tell where it's come from, because of what they put in the headline.

The headline being that he did something (or tried to) that was made possible, legal, available by a change to the law introduced by a Gov't he opposed.

That's like saying that Tony Blair only bloomin went and travelled on a Virgin train the tories had privatised, or that a Tory MP only went and paid his workers the minimum wage, even athough he opposed it's intoduction by Labour, the filthy hypocrits.

The actual story is that, as you say, he looks like he tried to fiddle his union out of something. But I guess that a Union being the victim of some tory authorised act, then taken advantage of by a bad egg kind of doesn't fit the bill quite as tidily.

Scargill's not IMO a nice piece of work, but he was right about what the witch was trying to do.

[tonyh29]

To be fair Blandy I think you can tell where the story came from by the clue of "BBC" in the OP

But from Bicks post I see we reached the "deflection" phase even if it was out of sync