Union of Democratic Mineworkers

The Union of Democratic Mineworkers is a British trade union based in Nottinghamshire, England, established in December 1984 by miners who continued working during the 1984-85 miners' strike.

The Nottinghamshire Miners' Association initially remained within the National Union of Mineworkers with elected officers including Roy Lynk and Neil Greatrex, the current General Secretary of the UDM.

In 1992, The Independent newspaper reported that officials from the UDM had advised ministers on how to cut miners' power - including attempting to weaken the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS).

The UDM was widely criticised in March 2004 after it was revealed that its top two officials received pay and benefits of over £150,000 each, despite membership having fallen to 1,431. On 3 April 2012, former president Neil Greatrex was found guilty of fraud from a miners' welfare fund.

Famous quotes containing the words union and/or democratic:

    If the Union is now dissolved it does not prove that the experiment of popular government is a failure.... But the experiment of uniting free states and slaveholding states in one nation is, perhaps, a failure.... There probably is an “irrepressible conflict” between freedom and slavery. It may as well be admitted, and our new relations may as be formed with that as an admitted fact.
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    He rejected, if he did not despise, democratic principles; advocated a government as strong, almost, as a monarchy.... He believed in authority, and he had no faith in the aggregate wisdom of masses of men.
    Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)