No Room at the London Flat for Arthur Scargill!

ARTHUR Scargill today lost his long running fight in the High Court with the National Union of Mineworkers to look after him with his running costs for his London flat for the rest of his life.  He will also lose his claim to fuel allowance at his Barnsley home and the NUM successfully disputed that it should pay for the preparation of his annual tax return.

Arthur Scargill has occupied the Barbican apartment - rented from the Corporation of London - since June 1982.  The rent and other expenses were paid by the union until 2011, except for a period between 1985 and 1991 when Mr. Scargill paid for this upkeep.

Now the London appartment, described to me as 'Arthur's knocking shop' by one NUM miner, and valued at £1.5m, has become too much for the NUM to shoulder because it costs the union £34,000 a year. 

The judge rejected Scargill's claims that the union's payment of the rent on the flat was intended to replace the benefit his predecessors had enjoyed and was therefore a lifetime benefit.  The judge said the claim was not reflected in the original minutes of the NEC, was not backed up by the contract Scargill signed, and pointed out that the union had continued to subsidise the mortgage on his Yorkshire home.  Arthur, for his part, claimed the judgement was 'perverse', and contradicts the evidence in the case.  The judgement will come as a relief to the NUM and the working miners.