English Politician who led the National Union of Mineworkers for twenty years, beginning in 1982. First a member of the Labour Party, he founded the Socialist Labour Party in 1996.
He worked as a coal miner for nearly two decades and, at the age of seventeen, joined the Young Communist League in his native Yorkshire.
He was responsible for leading two pivotal miners' strikes: one in 1937 and another in the mid-1980s.
His marriage to Anne Harper ended in divorce in 2001.
He was a strong opponent of the government of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
