Union boss Arthur Scargill joins striking National Coal Mining Museum staff on picket

The firebrand former president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) stood with staff locked in a pay dispute with the National Coal Mining Museum for England.

Mr Scargill, who was arrested at the Orgreave pit in South Yorkshire in 1984 at the height of the miners' strike, was president of the NUM for 20 years.

He spoke to striking staff, which includes around 30 ex-miners who conduct underground tours of the former Caphouse Colliery in Wakefield

Staff rejected a proposed 4.2 per cent, plus 25p an hour, increase from the charitable board which runs the museum and are calling for a £2,000 across the board rise.

A statement on the museum's website said it had offered the maximum pay rise it could, which “equates to 6.8 per cent for the lowest paid”.

But officials from Unison said the pay offer was half the rate of inflation and members "had no choice" but to take action.

And ex-miners who now work as guides at the museum claim their hourly pay has increased by just £1.16 since 2008, to £10.35.

Museum guide Eric Richardson, who worked as a miner for 50 years, said: “We aren’t asking for a massive pay rise, we want something the museum can afford.

“We need it, due to inflation. We all go to the same supermarkets and the same garages to fill up our cars.”

Speaking on the picket line, he added: “We don’t want to be here.

“That (the museum) is where we want to be. We enjoy it and we’re all miners who want to pass on our experiences to the public and schoolchildren.

“We don’t want to be forced into taking industrial action.”

Mr Scargill first came to prominence in the early 1970s, when he wasninvolved in a mass picket at the Saltley Gate coking plant in Birmingham.

He went on to be elected president of the NUM from 1982 to 2002 and lead the union on mass walkouts as he clashed with then-PM Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s.

The strike is set to run until Sunday, October 30 and will be followed by strikes every weekend — the museum’s busiest time — and at Christmas if no agreement is reached.

The union's Wakefield branch secretary Sam Greenwood said 94.4 per cent of members, on a turnout of 87.8 per cent, voted in favour of action.

A spokeswoman for the NCM said: The museum, a charity, cares about thewelfare of its staff and volunteers and has offered the staff a pay rise which equates to 6.8 per cent for the lowest paid staff.

"We value the contribution of our people enormously and the sum of theproposal takes us to the maximum allowed within the Government Pay Remit.

"Even at this late hour we still hope that this situation can be resolved, particularly as the strike is timed for school holidays which will deny our visitors, many of them children, the chance to hear the story of mining and understand the contribution generations of miners made to our nation.”