Legacy of bitterness among 
ex-miners

David Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association added: “There’s no sympathy from me for what she did to our community. She destroyed our community, our villages and our people.”

Darren Vaines, a former miner at Ackton Hall Colliery, near Pontefract, said: “She used miners as a political springboard. She knew what she was doing and it was a horrible way to go about it. They did it without any concern and we were just collateral damage.

“She left communities with nothing. It wasn’t just the miners who were affected but everyone who supplied the pit and the community as well.”

Mick Dickinson, who worked at Fryston Colliery near Castleford, said: “We have hate and resentment for what she did to the industry. Featherstone, where I was born and bred, never recovered from the closure of the pits, neither did areas around Castleford and Barnsley.

His brother, Irvin Dickinson, a former mine worker at Ackton Hall Colliery, said: “From a personal point of view, her politics were an absolute disaster for the North of England.

“There’s still such strength of feeling among certain generations in the north and in places that have simply never recovered from her policies.”