NUM Leader: Let Thatcherism be buried alongside its founder

Pallbearers carry the coffin of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher into the Palace of Westminster Credit: REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett

Margaret Thatcher has been allowed to continue her legacy of dividing the country in death as she did in life with the granting, at the cost of the British taxpayer, her wish for a state funeral in all but name. How magnanimous of her not to insist on a fly-past by the Royal Air Force.

To end her life in the Ritz hotel shows the world she helped to create is far from equal.

Her policies, under the guise of economic reform, were a vindictive attack on the trade unions and anything that represented a socialist conscience.

She will never be forgotten or forgiven for the devastation she brought to the mining communities. She never understood (or maybe she did) that it was not the unions she was destroying but ordinary working class union members' lives and those of their families and communities.

NUM national secretary Chris Kitchen Credit: Dave Higgens/PA Wire

Next year marks the 30th anniversary of the Miners' Strike of 1984/85 and we have still to see what the true cost was for the dispute.

Margaret Thatcher has gone but Thatcherism still remains - let common sense prevail and bury it with her.

This is an opinion piece written by Chris Kitchen, National Secretary of the National Union of Mineworks, and does not represent the views of ITV News.