His time at the top of the union saw not just the strike and his union's defeat, but the rapid decline of the British coal industry – not least in the early 1990s, when the-then trade minister Michael Heseltine announced that 31 of the UK's remaining 50 deep collieries were to shut.
"They don't want us, they'd rather import stuff wouldn't they?" As the miners left the colliery for the final time, it was clear that their friendships would continue for many years to come, as will the important democratic and social traditions that deep pit coal miners contributed to British life.
The company fell into a loss after geological and technical problems at its deep mine collieries at Thoresby in Nottinghamshire and Kellingley in West Yorkshire.
The company fell into a loss after geological and technical problems at its deep mine collieries at Thoresby in Nottinghamshire and Kellingley in West Yorkshire, which the company is addressing by switching production to new areas of reserves.
The last deep coal mine, Tower colliery, may have closed down last year, but its kind made the Industrial Revolution possible.
The event was to mark the end of deep coal production at Maltby Colliery 100 years after it first began there.
The lobby of the Kellingley colliery is thick with cameras as the last shift at the country's last deep coalmine comes to an end.
It's tangible in the bricks of terraced houses built for miners in the late 1800s, visible in land that used to be Lady Windsor Colliery but is now deep green and unruly, definitive in that – again, as with many traditionally working class areas – it used to be somewhere you lived, but now it's somewhere your house is.
At present, the business runs two deep mines, the Kellingley and Thoresby collieries – in North Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire respectively, producing 2m and 1.2m tonnes of coal last year – six surface mines in Butterwell and Potland Burn, Northumberland; Huntington Lane, Shropshire; Park Wall North, County Durham; Lodge House, Derbyshire and Minorca, Leicestershire.
Solsgirth Colliery was one of three deep mines in central Scotland that opened in the 60s to supply 6,000 tonnes of coal a day to the mighty Longannet power station.
