It was, of course, Arthur Scargill not Margaret Thatcher who had called the strike.
In 1984, the coal miners union of Arthur Scargill went on strike for nearly a year.
If it did exist, he added, Mr Scargill was entitled to have the benefit of it.
Mr Scargill does not disagree, but argues that this was not a subversive attack on the state.
Scargill was introduced at the 2012 rally as the "greatest trade union leader this country has ever seen".
BBC: Analysis: Arthur Scargill's silence over Thatcher death
This election Mr Scargill and his fellow-travellers will have to satisfy themselves with the joys of taking part.
The union's executive tried to call a national ballot a month later, but it was over-ruled by Mr Scargill.
Mr Scargill led a year-long strike of pit workers in 1984-5 as president of the National Union of Mineworkers.
In the years after the battle, the coal jobs all but disappeared, just as Arthur Scargill said they would.
Scargill, now 75, has refused all requests to comment on Margaret Thatcher's premiership and his epic struggle with her government.
BBC: Analysis: Arthur Scargill's silence over Thatcher death
Ex-miners' union president Arthur Scargill has reached an out-of-court settlement with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) over expense claims.
Speaking at the time, Mr Scargill said the leadership at the NUM in Yorkshire had taken "vindictive action" against him.
Although Mr Scargill has not commented publicly on his former adversary's death, Mr Capstick, himself a former miner, told ITV about his reaction.
The NUM had asked Mr Justice Underhill at London's High Court to declare that it had no such continuing obligation to Mr Scargill.
The hearing is due to take evidence from a number of witnesses, including Mr Scargill, and is expected to last for a week.
Mr Scargill was president of the NUM until July 2002 and led the union during the year-long miners' strike from 1984 to 1985.
The following spring the National Union of Mineworkers called a nationwide strike, despite the failure of their firebrand president, Arthur Scargill, to ballot his members.
That humiliating defeat may well turn out to be as historically significant for Germany's unions as Mrs Thatcher's victory over Arthur Scargill and the miners.
Former miners' leader Arthur Scargill has gone to the High Court to fight an attempt by his union to stop paying the cost of his London flat.
Earlier this year Mr Scargill, 74, sued the NUM Yorkshire Area Trust Fund over a range of expenses he said he was owed, which included a car allowance.
Personally, I was not at all surprised by Scargill's response.
BBC: Analysis: Arthur Scargill's silence over Thatcher death
Mr Scargill, 74, said he was given use of the rented three-bed Barbican flat for life when he became NUM president in 1982, a tenure that lasted 20 years.
Mr Hayes said the miners' leader Mr Scargill had failed to secure authorisation for the 1980s strikes via a ballot and had been confronted by a government which had stockpiled coal.
He said she was "fortunate in her enemies" in the likes of Arthur Scargill, the miners' leader, while her "judgement wasn't fully working" in bringing in policies like the poll tax.
The union also successfully disputed Mr Scargill's fuel allowance at his Barnsley home and payment for the preparation of his annual tax return but not the cost of his security system in Yorkshire.
If the far left put aside its differences and adopted a slightly less dogmatic approach to politics, Mr Scargill might yet find the election of 2002 a brighter prospect than that of 1997.
Mr Davidson said that the litigation, which will look at documents dating back 30 years, was concerned with identifying what terms were agreed between duly authorised representatives of the NUM and Mr Scargill.
The union paid rent and expenses for the flat - rented from the Corporation of London - until 2011, apart from a period between 1985 and 1991 when Mr Scargill paid for it himself.
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