Kinnock blames Scargill

Neil Kinnock, the former Labour Party leader, has blamed Arthur Scargill for some of the pit closures. On BBC's Breakfast With Frost, he said the president of the National Union of Mineworkers' leadership of the 1984-85 strike weakened miners so the Government could pick off pits 'in ones and twos'.

At a service in Sheffield to mark the end of Coal Week, Dr George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, appealed to the Government to help mining communities and warned that Britain could not afford to 'slam the gates on the skills of the miners'.