Up to 2,000 people and media from across the country descended on Goldthorpe on Wednesday as a symbolic 'funeral' where an effigy and coffin labelled with the word 'scab' were set alight to mark Margaret Thatcher's death.

Ex-miners and anti-Thatcher protesters congregated at the Comrades' Club on High Street before the coffin, pulled on a cart by a pit pony, was paraded to the Rusty Dudley pub on Barnsley Road.

In a carnival atmosphere, banners from NUM branches at Hickleton Main and Barnburgh pits were paraded through the street in front of the crowd and coffin.

Members of the crowd chanted 'Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, dead, dead, dead' and 'miners united, will never be defeated' before the effigy was placed on top of a mock funeral pyre made of sofas and carpet rolls and adorned with lumps of coal.

Many were dressed as miners with blackened faces and wearing NCB jackets, while others carried placards which read 'coal not dole' and 'Thatcher the milk snatcher'.

Former miner Mark Cresswell, 50, of Thurnscoe, worked as a rope-man at Goldthorpe Colliery for 15 years.

He said: "Apart from when my children were born, this is one of the best days of my life.

"Goldthorpe was a proper mining village and she ruined communities like ours."

Anne Scargill, ex-wife of former union boss Arthur who led the 1984 miners' strike, marched alongside the protesters.

She said: "We've waited a long time for this day in the mining community - after what she did to us in '84 and '85, I can understand it.

"I remember we got a woman prime minister and thinking 'she's going to be okay' but she started on the unions, miners and families.

"Here in this community we are still suffering from the effects of her legacy.

"I didn't watch the funeral, I'm glad I'm here instead of down there, with all this frivolity and carnival like atmosphere."

Another miner, who did not want to be named, said: "She tried to break us, tried to starve us but we stuck together.

Garry Hawley, 23, of Stuart Street, Thurnscoe, attended on behalf of his father Stephen who worked at Goldthorpe Colliery.

He said: "I think people have done the right thing. I wasn't around in the miners' strike, but I remember the struggle my family went through.

"I think what she did has had a big effect and we're still feeling those effects.

"Now there is nothing for anyone, no work anywhere."