A SCAB union leader and convicted fraudster who backed the Tory government during the 1984-5 miners’ strike has died.

Neil Greatrex was a miner at Nottinghamshire’s Bentinck colliery during the year-long miners’ strike against pit closures.

He opposed the strike and encouraged the Nottinghamshire miners to work throughout the dispute, for which he won high praise from the Thatcher government and the Tory media.

Greatrex and his accomplice Roy Lynk assured Nottinghamshire miners that their pits would not be affected by closures.

Most Nottinghamshire miners scabbed, producing coal which helped undermine the strike.

Nottinghamshire was Britain’s second-largest coalfield after Yorkshire.

During the strike there were angry clashes as miners from Yorkshire and elsewhere attempted to picket the Nottinghamshire pits.

Police imposed illegal travel restrictions on Yorkshire miners, preventing them from entering Nottinghamshire.

In March 1984, Yorkshire miner David Jones, 23, was killed outside Ollerton colliery in Nottinghamshire.

He was hit by a brick hurled at the pickets. No-one was ever prosecuted over his death.

When the strike ended in March 1985, Mr Greatrex and Mr Lynk founded the scab Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) in a breakaway from the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

It had 25,000 members at its peak and was co-ordinated by Tory lobbyist David Hart.

In 2004 it was revealed that UDM senior officers were receiving pay and benefits of more than £150,000.

In May 2011, Greatrex appeared in court accused of stealing almost £150,000 from a Lincolnshire nursing home fund established to help sick and injured mineworkers. He was a trustee of the fund.

He used some of the stolen money to pay for improvements and a new kitchen at his home in Taversall.

He was found guilty and was jailed for four years.

In December 2012, he was ordered by Birmingham crown court to repay £200,000 to the fund.

Greatrex recently suffered a brain haemorrhage. His life support machine was turned off on Tuesday.

John Dunn is an ex-miner from Derbyshire who was battered from behind during the police riot at Orgreave in South Yorkshire during the strike.

“It would be a disgrace to call Greatrex a trade unionist,” he told the Morning Star.

“The depth of the treachery of Greatrex and his accomplices will go down in history as one of the greatest acts of betrayal of the miners, the trade union movement and the working class of all time.”