she did to the industry. Featherstone, where I was born and bred, never recovered from the closure of the pits, neither did areas around Castleford and Barnsley.

"She did fight for what she believed in and in hindsight some of what she said was right. My view on some things she stood for has changed over the years, but I still resent her for what she did to mining."

Fryston pit shut in 1985 - one of around a dozen Yorkshire collieries to close that year - and has been entirely demolished.

Irvin Dickinson, a former mine worker at Acton Hall Colliery between 1968 and 1980, said: "From a personal point of view, her politics were an absolute disaster for the north of England.

"She started off with the steel works, takingon the unions and closing steel works down, and it was the same with the coal mines, which was predominantly a northern industry.

"There's still such strength of feeling among certain generations in the north and in places that have simply never recovered from her policies.

"She was just so alien to my political and social views, but those who saw her point of view would say she was the saviour of Britain."

Colleagues of Arthur Scargill, the former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, who clashed bitterly with Mrs Thatcher during the 1984/85 miners' strike, said he was unlikely to make any comment.