Now that's another discussion entirely. If he was running the country at the time I'd sway that way.
You're right; it is another discussion, but the one can't exist without the other.
I remember a long conversation I had with an uncle of mine in the late 80s. He was a life-long trade unionist, eventually a high-ranking official in the AUEW (not sure what it's called now), TUC delegate and contemporary of Scargill. You can imagine that with that background, he was no fan of Margaret Thatcher, but the detailed and forensic explanation he gave me as to why the Miners' strike - and the long-term consequences of it - were, in his view, more down to Scargill than Thatcher shocked me to my core.
His work brought him into close quarters with Scargill many times, sufficient to see at first hand that the man was a poor tactician, even worse strategist, and had no negotiating skills at all, and was consumed by ego. He said that Scargill called the strike at the wrong time (late spring when coal stocks were at an all time high), in the wrong manner (no mandate from the membership), and based on the wrong argument (instead of accepting some mines must close in order to protect the rest, he argued, absurdly, none should ever close). He may not have been running the country at the time, but his over-riding objective in calling the strike was not to save the mines, but to try to bring down the government that
was running the country - and, like it or not (I didn't at the time), with a very large mandate.
My uncle finished the conversation by saying two things. Firstly, he could not have ever imagined that in an argument between a trade unionist and Margaret Thatcher, he would find himself having less sympathy for the trade unionist. Lastly, he said that the last people ever to reconcile themselves to Scargill's role would be the miners and their families. No one, he said, can ever accept that they have been betrayed and brought down by their own.