Placed inside a wreath of red roses, the handwritten inscription said it all.

"The miners were demonised by Margaret Thatcher as the enemy within. We shall remember we came from the bowels of the earth to demand our rights, bloodied but unbowed."

A lone piper played a familiar lament to the memory of the miners who had died in accidents at Monktonhall Colliery during its working life, and to all other miners who lost their lives in mining accidents in the community of Newton Parish. In the driving rain, bunnets and scarves shielded the friends and families of those who had perished.

As the funeral of Margaret Thatcher was taking place in London, wives, sisters, daughters and grand-daughters stood proud with the former East Lothian miners to remember their own dead.

They had chosen this day for the ceremony because they wanted the world to remember that Monktonhall, along with Bilston Glen and countless other mines in Scotland, England and Wales had been closed down by the Conservative government after the miners' strike of 1984-85. Two thousands miners at Monktonhall and 2400 at Bilston Glen lost their jobs.

"We're here to remember absent friends, not to mourn Margaret Thatcher, because she was an evil woman to the miners," said ex-miner George Cameron. "This is a big day for us. We want to demonstrate our solidarity, to show that even though she is gone, we are still strong.

"It's being said that in death Thatcher has divided opinion. Well there's no division of opinion up here; nobody liked her and nobody has a good word to say about her."

Minutes before, in the nearby Newton Parish Cemetery, the mood had been more jubilant as a champagne toast was proposed to absent members of the National Union of Miners.

A glass of his favourite rum and Coke had been placed at the headstone of Cranston Peacock, president of the Monktonhall Miners' Club. Cheers went up as mourners were reminded that Freddie Forbes, a former miner who led the Monktonhall strike, had said on his deathbed: "I always said she'd see me out, but wherever I'm going she'll not be there." Someone in the crowd quipped: "Maggie's in hell and she's shut down three furnaces already."

Joining the celebrations was Janet Connachan of Prestonpans, whose father, two brothers and husband had all been miners. "I'm glad to see her gone. What she did devastated miners' families.

"People went into the mines at age 14 and when they were closed down they had no other work. Families had to live on £20 a week or less during the strike. The hardship split them up. I know people who still ignore each other in the street because they went back to work during the strike and are thought of as scabs," she said.

"I hope our children will learn about this in history classes so that nobody forgets what Margaret Thatcher did to us."

The formalities over, it was up to the Danderhall Miners' Welfare and Social Club – the venue of the soup kitchen during the strike – for a party. Bottles of whisky, purchased almost 30 years ago and saved for Thatcher's funeral, were finally opened.

As John McCullagh's I'll Dance On Your Grave, Mrs Thatcher played over the public address system, one reveller shouted: "Will they have enough coal to burn her? All the pits are shut."