TRIBUTES have been paid to Henry Richardson, general secretary of the Nottinghamshire area of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) during the strike against pit closures of 1984-5.

Richardson was a tower of strength for the minority of Nottinghamshire miners who were loyal to their union during the strike.

Most of the Nottinghamshire coalfield — the second largest coalfield in Britain after Yorkshire — scabbed, betraying their fellow mineworkers whose jobs were under threat from pit closures.

Richardson picketed his own pits in an effort to persuade the Nottinghamshire miners of their folly — warning them that their pits would be next for closure if they did not stand with the mineworkers of Yorkshire, Scotland, South Wales and elsewhere in resisting the Thatcher government’s closures plan.

Richardson was on the picket line at Ollerton colliery in Nottinghamshire on March 15, 1984, when 23-year-old David Jones, a miner from Wakefield in West Yorkshire, was struck by a missile and killed. He was the first miner to die on the picket line during the strike, but not the last. On June 18 Yorkshire miner Joe Green was killed when he was run over by a lorry carrying scab coal into Ferrybridge power station in Yorkshire.

No-one was ever prosecuted over the two deaths — lasting injustices for their families and friends today.

Arthur Scargill, president of the NUM during the strike, said yesterday: “I was shocked to learn of the death of Henry Richardson, the NUM Nottingham Area general secretary, who in 1984-85 stood by the union he served with such loyalty and distinction.

“He was on the picket line with me at Ollerton the night that David Jones lost his life. He stood side by side with the miners who were on strike and with the NUM.

“He warned the miners in Nottinghamshire that if they crossed picket lines their pits would close and they would lose their jobs.

“He warned that the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers was being supported by the Tory government, a warning which was revealed in the government papers released under the 30-year rule in 2014.

“Henry will be remembered as a trade union leader who fought whilst others collaborated.”

Alan Mardghum, secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association, said: “He led Nottinghamshire’s miners with distinction and great strength through the most difficult time in their history.

“He always enjoyed coming to the Durham Miners’ Gala with the Notts banners.

“We are all deeply saddened at his passing and send our condolences to Henry’s loved ones.”

Tributes were also paid by the labour and trade union movement in Nottinghamshire.

Broxstowe Labour Party said in a statement: “Members of the Nottinghamshire labour and trade union movement were deeply saddened to learn of the death of Henry Richardson. Henry was the general secretary of the Nottinghamshire Area of the NUM, during one of the most significant periods of British social, political and industrial history — the great miners’ strike of 1984-85.

“At just fifteen years of age, Henry started his working life at Creswell Colliery on Monday, September 25, 1950 — a date etched in the memory of many; the day on which eighty miners perished in an underground fire.

“A class-conscious and politically developed young miner, Henry was elected branch delegate (pit representative on the NUM Nottinghamshire Area Council) and immersed himself in the work and culture of the NUM and was elected to the national executive committee in August 1983. Then in December of that year, he was elected a full-time NUM official.

“The year-long strike cleaved Nottinghamshire into two eternally hostile camps, with its majority choosing to work while the pro-strike Richardson battled valiantly to prosecute the NUM cause and fight off wave after wave of attacks from scab miners determined to see him ousted from his post.

“Eventually, the NUM was defeated in Nottinghamshire with the overwhelming majority of the Area’s 32,000 miners opting to side with the architects of the Spencerist breakaway organisation, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. Henry was eventually sacked by them on March 12,1985, just one week after the end of the strike.

“It was diabolical,” he said. “The whole meeting was a charade, a witch-hunt, nothing but a kangaroo court. The decision had already been made long before the meeting.”

“Down, but not out, Richardson, alongside NUM militants and ‘Loyal to the Last’ strikers Keith Stanley, Eric Eaton, Alan Spencer and others, set about rebuilding the NUM in Nottinghamshire. And a Herculean effort it was with nothing left on which to commence rebuilding.

Henry said: “They (the scab-led Union of Democratic Mineworkers) got everything. The Berry Hill HQ, the convalescent home at Chapel St Leonards and capital totalling £1.7 million. All awarded to the UDM by an unelected High Court judge. We’d got Eric and Keith running around trying to recruit back into the NUM — bloody heroes they were. They should’ve had medals, the shit they had thrown at them. Put on shit jobs, victimised, weren’t allowed an office even though we had as many members as the UDM at Thoresby colliery, but they never stopped fighting for the union.”

Henry remained the NUM’s general secretary in Nottinghamshire until his retirement in 1997.

Former NUM press officer Nell Myers said: “Arthur always held Henry in high political and personal regard for his courage in fighting not only for pits, jobs and communities, but for the NUM itself.”

In April, 2012, one of the leaders of the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers, Neil Greatrex, was jailed for four years for stealing almost £150,000 from the Nottinghamshire mineworkers’ convalescent home, a charity which cared for elderly miners. Greatrex was president of the UDM from 1987 to 2009.

Henry Richardson died on December 17. He was 85. His funeral took place on December 24.