Former coalminers join fellow museum staff in strike over pay which is due to last until mid-September
“Who’d have thought we’d be doing this again?” Arthur Scargill said earlier this week, raising a laugh from the ex-miners standing in the picket line outside the National Coal Mining Museum.
Staff at the Wakefield museum, many of them former coalminers, have walked out in a dispute over pay, and were joined on Thursday by the now 87-year-old former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers.
Alongside him was Russ Kear, 60, who has worked as a guide at the museum since the UK’s last coalmine, Kellingley colliery, in North Yorkshire, closed in 2015. He began working as a miner at the age of 16, at Sharlston colliery, near Wakefield, before moving to Selby coalfield, and later, Kellingley.
He said many of the museum’s staff, particularly those who have gone on strike, are former miners.
