Arthur Scargill at Woolley Colliery

Category	Labour
Dates	1953: starts at Woolley Colliery, aged fifteen. 1961: Woolley NUM branch committee. 1965: branch delegate to the Yorkshire Area Council. 1969: Yorkshire Area Executive. 1984-85: leads the NUM through the miners' strike.

Arthur Scargill, president of the National Union of Mineworkers through the 1984-85 strike, went down Woolley Colliery near Barnsley in 1953 at fifteen and worked there for nineteen years. Woolley's NUM branch was where he learned his union politics, rising from its committee in 1961 to the Yorkshire Area Executive in 1969.

A faded colour photograph of a man speaking from a long platform lined with Coal not Dole placards. — Arthur Scargill speaking at Islington Town Hall during the 1984-85 strike, behind 'Coal not Dole' placards Julia Manning-Morton, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The mining history in this record

Scargill was born at Worsbrough Dale near Barnsley, the son of Harold Scargill, a miner and a Communist. He left school in 1953 at fifteen and went to work at Woolley Colliery, opened in 1869 and one of the major pits of the South Yorkshire coalfield, and stayed there for nineteen years.

At Woolley he became active in the National Union of Mineworkers. He was elected to the branch committee in 1961, joined the Labour Party in 1962, studied economics and industrial relations part-time at the University of Leeds, and in 1965 became the branch's delegate to the Yorkshire Area Council, joining the Area Executive in 1969. His own pit, by one account, was far from militant.

People

Arthur Scargill, miner at Woolley and later NUM president. Harold Scargill, his father, a miner.

Legacy today

Woolley Colliery is remembered above all as Scargill's workplace. The pit has closed and its site has been built over with the Woolley Grange housing.

Recorded claims

Individual factual claims, each tagged with how solidly it's grounded and attached to the source(s) that support it. Where sources disagree, both are kept.

Arthur Scargill left school in 1953 at fifteen to work as a miner at Woolley Colliery, where he worked for nineteen years. (documented fact) ^1,2
He was elected to the Woolley NUM branch committee in 1961 and as branch delegate to the Yorkshire NUM Area Council in 1965. (documented fact) ²
In 1969 he was elected to the Yorkshire NUM Area Executive Committee. (documented fact) ²
His father, Harold, was a miner and a member of the Communist Party. (documented fact) ²
Despite Scargill, the miners at Woolley were far from militant. (documented fact, uncertain) ¹

Mines

Woolley Colliery — South Yorkshire
Arthur Scargill worked at Woolley Colliery from 1953, aged fifteen, for nineteen years, and served on its NUM branch committee and as its delegate to the Yorkshire Area Council.

Sources

(secondary) Woolley Colliery — Subterranea Britannica
(secondary) Arthur Scargill — Wikipedia

Record created: 4 October 2026 · Last researched: 4 October 2026