he failure of the miner’s strike in 1984 has been seen by many as the result of bad leadership of the head of the NUM, Arthur Scargill, the lack of support for the strike as well as giving credit to the government’s preparations. Thatcher, herself, advances this view in her memoirs ‘The Downing Street Years’ and echoed by many other Thatcherites such as Nigel Lawson, Shirley Letwin and historians such as John Campbell. This ‘Mainstream media’ view holds that the strike failed because of Scargill’s extreme beliefs and bad decisions. Because of Scargill’s actions, the strike was illegal, poorly supported and doomed to failure given the level of government preparations. On the other hand, the ‘Marxist/Left Wing’ view suggests that the strike was part of Thatcher’s wider attack on political consensus and suggest that the miners could have won the strike had it not been for the concerted, illegal government campaign to smash the miner’s union, something they had been planning for some time. This view is supported to some extent by Labour minister Tony Benn, one of Thatcher’s fiercest critics, and historian, Seumas Milne who argued that the government’s extensive preparations and actions during the strike led to its failure in 1984. Both the Marxist view and the mainstream media view gives credit to government preparations showing this was definitely an important factor in the failure of the strike. Arguably, one of the most important factors in the failure of the Miner’s Strike in 1984 was the leadership of the head of NUM, Arthur Scargill. Many people blame him for the failure of Miner’s Strike due to his poor leadership skills and bad judgement. Scargill’s first mistake was refusing to call a National Ballot after the strike started to gain support. The view that the failure to call a National Ballot, by Scargill, cost him valuable support is advocated by Shirley Letwin; “Nor did he bother to abide by his own unions rules which required that ‘a strike shall be entered upon as the result of a ballot vote of the members.’[1] This led to the miners losing the support of many, including Labour Party’s- Neil Kinnock, who felt emotionally disposed to support the miner’s but aware that it would be political suicide to do so[2]. Neil Kinnock even compared Scargill with a general who wanted>