THERE are no deep mines left in the Durham coalfield. The final colliery in the area, Wearmouth, closed in 1994 as Margaret Thatcher’s long dreamed of mass pit closure and privatisation scheme gained traction under John Major.

Former opponents of the miners’ strike of 1984-85 were heard angrily muttering “Arthur was right,” forced to concede that Scargill’s warnings of the closure of over 75 mines — met with derision and scorn by the media at the time — were not only eerily prescient but enacted with devastating aplomb.

By the final undignified ousting of Thatcher in 1990, it was obvious that she had presided over a decade of soaring unemployment and destruction of industry, as Britain ceased being a country that made things and instead became one of stock markets, shareholders and imports.

Boasting in her memoirs about the outcome of the ’84-85 strike, Thatcher gushed that she’d ensured that the miners “lost face and were seen to be defeated and rejected by their own people.”

As ever, she was kidding herself. The only way to uphold her version of events was to ignore the facts — the National Union of Mineworkers remained, and the moral victory went to the miners.

Everything the NUM revealed about the government plan for the destruction of their industry was correct. The miners were right.

As for “rejected by their own people,” Thatcher could not have been further from the truth.

Today sees the 131st Durham Miners’ Gala, described by Dennis Skinner MP as “the country’s biggest annual expression of working-class solidarity, pit communities continuing to march behind brass bands and banners despite the extinction of coalmining.”

Far from being “defeated” and “rejected,” the trade union movement will celebrate unity, comradeship and resilience this weekend, qualities which mining communities have always displayed in abundance, and which the Tories continually fail to comprehend.

When government minister Anna Soubry declared last week during a parliamentary debate that she “never understood why there has been such an over-sentimental attachment to working underground” she missed the point entirely, but then what else can we expect from the party which exemplifies Oscar Wilde’s famous quote about knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing?

Ed Miliband, in the same debate, said of Britain’s miners: “Theirs is a legacy of hard work, solidarity and comradeship for which they deserve respect and admiration.”

Respect and admiration is something sadly lacking in this Tory government, unless you’re a banker, a royal, or a member of the aristocracy of course.

It is difficult to find any respect or humanity in the recent announcement that Hatfield Colliery will be imminently closed, despite previous assurances that the pit would remain operational until 2016.

To many with mining connections, the announcement had almost seemed inevitable after the result of the general election that saw the return to power of the first Tory majority in 18 years.

For Alan Spencer, general secretary of Nottingham Area NUM, the closure of Hatfield is “yet another way to prove the Conservatives intend on finishing the job Thatcher started over 30 years ago, and put the last nail in the coffin of the coal industry in the UK.”

As in the early ’80s, the government is claiming the decision is purely for economic reasons. However, as with the so-called “uneconomic pits” of 1984, look a little deeper and this argument falls flat.

“If the government had given the £12 million to keep the colliery open until 2016, over £14 million would have been paid back in taxes, national insurance and VAT revenue,” explains Spencer.

Britain still burns coal, and will continue to do so for at least the next decade, therefore the closure of Hatfield seems to be purely for ideological reasons.

“Last year we burned over 40 million tons of coal, and a further 10 million in blast furnaces for industrial processes,” Spencer continues, “80 per cent of that was imported — half of the imports came from Russia, closely followed by Colombia.

“In recent years, the government has started to invest in carbon capture and storage at Drax power station in Yorkshire, yet instead of utilising our secure indigenous supply of coal, we will be importing it across the globe along with its increasing carbon footprint.”

Any argument that the Hatfield closure was necessary for environmental reasons is also highly questionable, if not an outright lie.

The premature closure of Hatfield Colliery is simply an extension of Thatcher’s vicious and vindictive war against the mining industry, waged against the NUM to avenge the Heath defeat of 1974.

Successive governments, Labour included, have done little to halt the continued blows to the mining industry, former coalfield communities and ex-miners themselves.

Showing his true-blue colours last week, David Cameron mocked Skinner, who is a former miner, during Prime Minister’s questions, after the Beast of Bolsover rightly shamed the PM over his treatment of the Hatfield issue.

“He hasn’t got the guts to help those miners. He took £700m out of the mineworkers’ pension scheme and he’s not given a penny back.”

Talk of the miners’ “missing millions” was rife in certain sections of the press during the early 1990s, as Thatcherites sought to smear the NUM leadership with talks of fantasy mortgages paid off with union cash.

The real scandal of the missing millions is ongoing to this day, with the Treasury siphoning off large wads of money from miners’ pension schemes while ritualistically dismantling an industry that could provide job and energy security for at least the next decade, not to mention the funds that could be recovered in taxes.

Skinner pressed the government to use some of the £700m taken from the pension fund in 2014 to “save the three pits in question.”

Spencer agrees with this sentiment — “could not a fraction of the £6 billion taken from our pensions schemes be used to not only keep the last three pits open but to invest in the millions of tons of coal reserves below our feet?”

Perhaps inevitably, this latest government decision has challenged what’s left of the mining industry to stand up and be counted.

Spencer feels there’s still a fight left to be had. As in 1984, miners will not surrender without throwing every iron into the fire.

“Let’s not forget those who lost their lives in the mines, let’s not forget the proud traditions, values and community spirit of the miners of this country. It’s still not too late to keep the coal industry and a proud workforce.”

It is those qualities described by Spencer that ensured Thatcher was denied her dream of finishing off the NUM in the 1980s.

The miners marched back to work in March 1985 with their union bloodied but intact.

The NUM survived mass pit closures and privatisation, the ugly lies of co-ordinated press attacks on its leadership and the continued raiding of the pension schemes of its members.

And that’s perhaps the biggest point that Soubry missed with her ridiculous “over-sentimental” comment.

The mining community in this country, and the wider trade union movement as a whole, is built upon the positive principles of shared endeavour, comradeship and unity.

The ideological standpoint from which Soubry views the world is instead built on negative forces, the destructive capitalist notions of greed and selfishness, held up as virtues by Thatcher and repeatedly failing to deliver the kind of united, dignified and enduring spirit exemplified this week at the 131st Durham Miners’ Gala.

There are no deep mines left in the Durham coalfield, yet the culture of the coalfield remains, as thousands of trade unionists will prove as they march through Durham with banners held high for the 131st time. Thatcher is dead — the National Union of Mineworkers lives on.