Thirty years ago, British miners returned to their pits after a long and punishing strike. Some marched back under their union banners, accompanied by the brass bands that had long been the orchestras of the working class. The miners would be remembered for their resistance, but they went home in defeat.

In stories told since the strike, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), Arthur Scargill, is strangely absent. A household name in the seventies and eighties, it was easy to imagine the strike as a personal conflict between Scargill and his nemesis, Margaret Thatcher. Then he was criticized and despised; now he is almost forgotten.

This is largely because of his tense, often bitter, relationships with journalists, who write the first draft of much of our history. Only one biography of Scargill has ever been published, and it is little more than a character assassination.