Arthur, king of coal, has abdicated from his shrinking empire

After 21 years as leader of the miners, the man who took on Thatcher has quietly shut the door on his controversial career

There was no response to a loud rap with the miner's lamp knocker which adorns his front door and inquiries came to nothing at the 19th century fortress that is the citadel of his fiefdom.

Nearly 20 years on from the epic struggle with Margaret Thatcher that saw the man lionised as the labour movement's mightiest fighter, Arthur Scargill retired with barely a whimper yesterday.

After 21 years as president of the National Union of Mineworkers, Mr Scargill has drawn his last monthly pay cheque of a £67,000 salary. But the manner of his departure seemed a metaphor for his diminishing empire that has been shrinking particularly fast of late.

In the last year alone, Mr Scargill's native Yorkshire has heard that both Selby, British coal mining's biggest complex that was hailed as a panacea for profitability 20 years ago, and Pontefract's Prince of Wales colliery – the nation's oldest pit – are going to close.

Mr Scargill inherited 250,000 members when he won a pithead ballot to succeed Joe Gormley in 1981 but estimates now place his union's membership at anything between 2,600 and 5,000 – and it's any guess how many of those are working. TUC bodies representing chiropodists boast more members and the NUM is at substantial risk from takeover now its old warhorse has gone. He waged his last fight over equal pay supplements worth £1,000 per year of service for the coalfields' former cleaners and canteen staff and, in another demonstration of his once-mighty union's lack of clout, he lost.

But it was never like Arthur to go quietly. Even last year, as he fought against Peter Mandelson as a Socialist Labour parliamentary candidate in Hartlepool, he was complaining that the media "deliberately wants to black out Arthur Scargill." (References to himself in the third person were one of many idiosyncracies.)

Back then, he was still dining out on past glories, the finest of which was his help for Mr Gormley in the defeat of Ted Heath's Tories with a mighty army of 180,000 members in the 1972 and 1974 strikes.

Buoyed by that achievement, Mr Scargill went on to shake up the NUM's aged high command by insisting he would brook no compromise in simultaneously defeating the coal mine managers and bringing down the mighty Margaret Thatcher.

His tactics proved disastrous. By refusing to ballot workers before the strike of 1984-85, he, in effect, helped create the breakway Union of Democratic Mineworkers, that broke the NUM's monopoly and sank it. He was offered a compromise deal in September 1984 but it wasn't in his nature to accept it and and he lead his men to defeat in March 1985.

The pub stewards, lorry drivers, bin men and unemployed of Barnsley who never returned to mining when Barrow, Barnsley Main and Rockingham closed in the early 1990s say "King Coal" was right to fight on against Maggie. "He were King in them days and his voice had a meaning for thousands," said Neal Wragg, the steward at the Ward Green Working Men's club, a mile from Scargill's home at Barnsley.

"You can't knock what he did. There were principles in it," said one of the many club's regulars who, all these years on, are still generally disinclined to give their names when talking publicly about "Arthur."

In the Edmonds Arms at nearby Woolsborough – Mr Scargill's regular for a time – Ronald Hutchinson, told a proud story about the day the former leader "walked his men" from picket line to picket line. "There were fields full of [stockpiled] coal to stop him. He never stood a chance."

Mr Scargill's staff were even more adoring. "Mr Scargill never wanted us to speak to anyone. It had to be him," said an office employee at NUM HQ on Barnsley's Huddersfield Road. "But if you're asking me, he was great. He could have been anything – lawyer, doctor, politician - but he took up the cudgels for the workers instead."

Yet to those who came to know him well, the Scargill bloody-minded streak seems to have remained a problem. Mr Wragg, 39, took up politics with Mr Scargill, spending three years as a Socialist Labour Party activist before standing for election in Barnsley council's Park ward. But Mr Scargill was "too hard" so he packed it in. "He wouldn't listen to your views. He'd say: 'It has to be just like this.' I just didn't fancy that," said Mr Wragg.

Legacies of the same trait litter Yorkshire. Sheffield council wants to buy the empty building that Mr Scargill had bought as an opulent headquarters in the 1980s and was forced to vacate amid industrial defeat after just five years.

But it has faced an almighty battle to get the union leader around a negotiating table to talk about giving up the building that has been empty for eight years and is an impediment to city centre regeneration.

The dispute is still not resolved, though there is said to be some progress after the Yorkshire's regional development agency threatened a compulsory purchase order.

Mr Scargill might have been part of the mines since the age of 15, when he started work at Woolley colliery near Wakefield, but his use of NUM branch block votes earlier this year to retain the title of honorary president for 10 years, on a £1,000 a month "consultancy" fee, is also a matter of some disgust to many.

"It's an outrageous attempt to keep a hold on power for as long as possible," said Kevin Barron, a former miner and Labour MP for South Yorkshire's Rother Valley, who was expelled from the NUM 10 years ago after making attacks on Mr Scargill.

The departing chairman was unmoved. "It's an honorary presidency, no different from Nelson Mandela in South Africa, who was a miner and is honorary president of the NUM in South Africa," he said at the time. (Mr Scargill has become fond of comparing himself to Mr Mandela, whose portrait hangs in headquarters.)

Mr Scargill's more moderate Northumbrian successor Ian Lavery – a district council chairman and Labour Party member – has already declared his readiness to meet ministers and pit owners when he steps into the Barnsley HQ, where the nicotine-stained walls still recall the early 1980s.

The outgoing leader's presidency salary, allied to a pension worth two-thirds of his annual salary, mean he will be not be destitute as he strolls the lawns of his £200,000 stone-clad home, Treetops, where he has lived for 13 years, 10 yards from the M1.

He has been presented with two, wrapped leaving gifts (one is apparently a photograph) and has announced his intention to write an autobiography.

But even he would probably admit to a yearning for the old "King Coal" days.

Evidence of it was to be found yesterday at HQ, where leaflets promoted "The illustrated 1984/85 diary of a Yorkshire Miner" and at his home, where the window sills yielded up a large supply of stickers bearing the words "Save our Pits."

Scargill's career

* Arthur Scargill started work as a pit apprentice at Woolley colliery near Wakefield in 1953 and quickly became part of the NUM branch committee.

* Membership of the NUM stood at 180,000 when Mr Scargill took over as leader in 1981. It now stands at 2,600.

* At the height of the 1984 miners' strike he gave his verdict on his nemesis and her US ally: "[That] most dangerous duo, President Ray-Gun and the plutonium blonde, Margaret Thatcher."

* After Tony Blair took over as Labour leader, Mr Scargill formed the Socialist Labour Party in 1996. Launching its 2001 General Election manifesto he said: "When someone says we never want to go back to the 1970s, we say 'we do, the quicker the better'."

* Last January he proposed a new post of honorary president of the NUM, saying: "It's no different from Nelson Mandela, who is honorary president of the NUM in South Africa."