FORMER miners’ leader Arthur Scargill weighed in on developments in Greece yesterday following the removal of finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.

Mr Varoufakis’s removal followed the Greeks’ vote on Sunday to reject the austerity measures being imposed on Greece as a condition of loans to pay off debts to speculating banks, now largely held by other eurozone countries.

Mr Scargill told the Star it was the Greek people who should decide who spoke on their behalf, not the European Union or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

He compared the situation with his own position in 1984 when National Coal Board chairman Ian MacGregor refused to negotiate with him as the then president of the National Union of Mineworkers.

“The decision to remove Yanis Varoufakis by the Greek prime minister is the result of pressure from the bureaucrats of Brussels or the IMF, irrespective of whether Varoufakis agreed to resign,” said the Socialist Labour Party leader.

“There should have been no decision other than to say he has been authorised by the Greek people to negotiate on behalf of Greece.”

Remembering Mr MacGregor’s refusal to negotiate at the behest of PM Margaret Thatcher, he said: “Michael McGahey, the vice-president, and Peter Heathfield, secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, looked at him and said: ‘If you do not speak to Scargill you speak to nobody,’ and for 15 minutes nobody spoke in the meeting until finally MacGregor had to speak.

“McGahey said: ‘We select who speaks for us, not you’.”

Mr Scargill called on Mr Tsipras adopt the same line and tell the EU and IMF there would be no talks if they were unwilling to negotiate with the people’s representative.

He added that it had been suggested that pressure from other European finance ministers had been applied for Mr Varoufakis’s removal “because it will make it easier to negotiate because Varoufakis is a man of principle.”