BRITAIN
«The only
alternative
to mass action is abject surrender"
AT THE end of August, members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) voted 3-1 in a national ballot for industrial action against British Coal's proposal to implement a new Code of Discipline.
A national overtime ban is starting on September 21, and miners in Yorkshire have already begun to take action. THERESA YORK
E ARLIER this year, on July 17,
over 30,000 members of the NUM in Yorkshire and Kent went on strike against the vicious Code of Discipline imposed by British Coal (the state-owned mining industry, formerly NCB).
A few days earlier six miners at Frickley in South Yorkshire were suspended under the new Code. Immediately, all 900 Frickley miners walked out, manding their reinstatement. Pickets were sent out to other mines and, by the third day of the strike, all 15,000 South Yorkshire miners had joined the fight.
On July 21, after a series of Yorkshire Area NUM meetings, the Frickley miners were persuaded to lift their pickets and return to work, pending the result of a national ballot. The Frickley miners argued that the union should act immediately, and that the national ballot was not calling for all-out strike action.
The decision to hold a national ballot on the question of the Code of Discipline was taken at the NUM's annual 8 Sarill had called on miners who were conference in July. President Arthur International Viewpoint • September 28, 1987
"fed up with harassment and intimidation at local and area level" to "not only support this resolution [for a ballot], but translate it into positive action throughout the coalfield."
The Code of Discipline is designed to let management ride roughshod over the workforce, to undermine the NUM under threat of dismissal. Under the Code any mineworker, including local union officers, can be dismissed for taking industrial action.
Strikes in 110 mines in the last year
The reactions of the media to the strikes against the Code were shock and surprise. Before the NUM conference, ruling class pundits had been gloating over what they thought was a union that had been smashed by the defeat of the year-long strike against pit
But this view of the NUM and its national leadership is not shared by management of British Coal and the Thatcher government.
In May this year, British Coal boss Sir Robert Haslam complained that miners went on strike thirty times more often than the average British
In 1986-87, 28 per cent of all strikes in Britain were in the mining industry. Strikes had taken place at 110 out of the 125 mines. Two-thirds of these stoppages took place in the Yorkshire coalfield in the north of England — the largest area employing one-third of Britain's miners. It is this level of militancy that measures such as the Code of Discipline are designed
Opening the NUM conference, Scargill did not shrink from the difficulties facing the union following the reelection of the Conservatives for a third term in government. Since the end of the 1984-85 strike, 70,000 jobs had been lost, 42 mines closed and a
Despite this Scargill stated: "Our union continues the long struggle for victimized miners, against pit closures, job losses, and for decent wages and conditions. We continue because there is no other choice. The only alternative to mass class action is abject surrender, and that is no choice at all."
Scargill put the attacks facing miners in a historical context, explaining that British Coal management, and successive Labour and Tory were following a "secret strategy document" drafted in 1974 by director Wilfred Miron. It contained four central
• A production-based "bonus incentive scheme" negotiated at individual unit level, designed to destroy unity and create splits between areas, further weakening national collective bargaining.
• Huge capital investment in "sunrise technology", to maximize available machine-time, increase reliability by "system monitoring" maximize output and control of product quality. New technology, coupled to a unit-by-unit viability study, would determine where to invest and where to cut back.
The Tory government's insistence in pursuing its nuclear power programme would also be a governing factor. The concentration ot capital into the "central coalfields" of Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire is tive for privatization.
• A break from national collective bargaining around issues of wages and
This began with the incentive bonus scheme in 1977, whereby miners' wages are determined by the amount of coal produced. Bonuses now account for between 18 and 25 per cent of miners' pay, a higher proportion than for any other major group of workers.
Destruction of the 5-day week agreement, to be replaced with flexible requiring miners to work 6/7 days per week, 9 hours per day, leading where possible to 24-hour 7-day con-
Fight against six-day working
The introduction of bonus schemes was one of the factors that gave rise to a company union, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) based in Nottinghamshire, during the miners' strike two years ago. Scargill reported that the UDM had slumped to below 20,000 members, and that the NUM had recovered support, and now organized 25 per cent of Notts miners.
In the weeks running up the union's conference, British Coal tried to open up further splits. It announced that a £90 million new investment at Margam colliery in South Wales, first proposed in 1974, would only go ahead on condition that the NUM abandon the fiveday working agreement won in 1947. Backed by the Thatcher government, British Coal claimed that Margam would not make sufficient profit unless new machinery was worked six days a week, in nine-hour shifts around the
Leaders of South Wales NUM, supported by Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, argued that if six-day working 1. See "After eight years of the "Thatcher revolution' " TV 121, June 1, 1987; and "Tory "landslide' with only 42 per cent of the vote", IV 124, July 13, 1987.