The World - News from Jan. 25, 1988

Miners’ leader Arthur Scargill narrowly retained the presidency of Britain’s National Union of Mineworkers after a hard-fought challenge from the union’s more moderate wing, election officials said. Final results showed that Scargill, a Marxist, defeated right-wing candidate John Walsh by 40,383 to 34,675 in Friday’s vote by the union’s 90,000 members, it was announced in Sheffield. Scargill, 50, became a symbol of resistance to Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when he led the miners through a bitter yearlong strike in 1984-85 against planned mine closures by the state-run National Coal Board.