On 10 April 2025, the British proletariat lost another fighter for its cause. Anne Scargill passed away at the age of 83. Although her maiden name was Harper, which she had reverted to in 1998, to most who knew her she was still Scargill even after she and ex-National Union of Mineworkers president, Arthur Scargill, had split up.
Anne was pretty well-known around Barnsley, but she sprang to national (and international) prominence during the 1984-5 miners’ strike.
Anne and a group of like-minded women launched a campaign to save the mining industry. This idea spread rapidly in spite of a few objections from miners who didn’t really want their wives and girlfriends on picket lines etc. (These objections became very muted after the NUM executive committee gave the women their whole-hearted support.)
The miners’ wives support groups that arose from 9 March onwards around the country rapidly turned into the Women Against Pit Closures (WAPC) – an organisation that was not only born in struggle but threw itself wholeheartedly into that struggle.
WAPC members collected food in high streets, ran communal kitchens in mining villages and towns to feed miners and their children. They marched at rallies, spoke at trade union events around the country, attended picket lines in spite of police violence and took part in the occupation of pits to make sure scabs couldn’t get to work.
Anne was always in the forefront of these actions. Many of these women spent time in police cells, not to mention hospitals, like their striking menfolk. And by 1985, when the strike ended, most miners would marvel at the strength, bravery and tenacity of these women.
A march and rally was organised in Anne’s native Barnsley on 12 May 1984 by Barnsley WAPC, and 10,000 women from coalfields around the country joined them, making WAPC a national organisation and placing Anne firmly at its head. That Barnsley banner would be seen at so many events, including the annual Durham Miners’ Gala, and even from a distance you could always make out the flash of white-blonde hair of Anne in the front with comrades by her side.
Anne was a politically intelligent woman who had no trust in the Labour party as a saviour of workers. She had a beautiful warm smile and a friendly word for most, but those who earned her hatred (police, scabs, the judiciary, most Labour parliamentarians and their Tory mirror images) faced a scowl and a very sharp tongue.
WAPC didn’t wind up at the end of the strike. Its members would be seen for years afterwards championing the rights of immigrants and refugees, conducting support work for Cuba and campaigning against nuclear weapons.
When Michael Heseltine, the then Conservative president of the Board of Trade, announced plans to close up to 31 out of 50 remaining deep coal mines with the loss of 31,000 jobs, Anne became a key figure in setting up Greenham Common-style camps at threatened pits. She led marches and was arrested for chaining herself to the railings at the Department of Trade and Industry.
April 1993 saw Anne and other WAPC activists make national headlines by staging a five-day sit-in down the Parkside coal mine near Newton-le-Willows in Merseyside, remaining 2,000 feet below ground for four nights. She also helped found the Socialist Labour party (SLP) along with Arthur Scargill in 1996, standing unsuccessfully in a local election.
Anne was offered vast sums of money by the gutter press to ‘tell her side of her break-up with Arthur’ but always refused with the words “I’ve never, ever said owt. I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of pounds offered for my story, and I’m not washing my dirty linen in public.”
