GSS, your passion renders you almost incoherent. But I see here the classic signs of a locked mindset. You are determined to see only one side of a huge saga involving not one but many decisions, and seem utterly incapable of hearing anyone but yourself.

Many in the NUM had no time for Scargill and supported the strike only out of loyalty to the principle that a picket line should not be crossed. You pasted acres of text into an unrelated thread just to show us what we already know: that power corrupts. But instead of using Greatrex's behaviour to bismirch all UDM members, you might have given just a little bit of space to more contemporary events - specifically Scargill's disgusting avarice, as seen in his grubby litigation to screw his own union (now smaller than the National Association of Stable Lads) for every penny he can get.

Scargill's crass folly in agitating the NUM into a strike exactly when Thatcher wanted it - spring on the way; coal stocks at an all-time high - visited huge deprivation on thousands of his members, to the extent that 30 years later many are still feeling the effects. Yet Scargill thinks that even ten years after he retired, the union's remnants should be funding his City of London apartment; all the fuel he can burn at his other home in Barnsley; a £12,000 car allowance, and even - for Christ's sake - his phone bills. And he's been in the courts most of this year making sure he gets his just deserts.

Oh, you've picked a wonderful hero, GSS.