Arthur Scargill loses fight to have union pay for flat for life Former miners' leader Arthur Scargill has lost his fight to have the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) continue to meet the costs of his London flat for his lifetime. The NUM had asked Mr Justice Underhill at London's High Court to declare that it has no such continuing obligation to 74-year-old Mr Scargill, its president for 20 years until July 2002. The union also successfully disputed Mr Scargill's fuel allowance at his Barnsley home and payment for the preparation of his annual tax return - but not the cost of his security system in Yorkshire. After the ruling, NUM general secretary Chris Kitchen said that it was "regrettable" that it had to bring the case. Mr Scargill said that the judgment was "perverse" and flew in the face of all the evidence. He said: "There can be no doubt that 30 years ago I was given an entitlement to a property by the union and that entitlement continued during my retirement, as it had done for all my predecessors including Lord Gormley and, after he died, his widow Lady Gormley." On the question of an appeal, he said: "I shall talk to my lawyers about what the best course of action will be, but I think any independent observer will regard this as yet another judgment with the anti-Scargill feeling about it."