On the picket line in South Yorkshire porters had driven back one group after another in British society, how she had dismantled British industry, broken unions, forced people to the edge of hunger.
"The miners knew that a test of
The British miners' strike is a growing issue in Sweden, which has traditionally had close contacts with Britain and where a Social Democratic
Internationalen, the paper of the Swedish secgovernment is in power.
tion of the Fourth International, has given special coverage to the strike, sending a correspondent to cover the developments on the spot. The following are reports from the heartland of the National Union of Miners.
Tom GUSTAFSSON
ARMTHORPE, SOUTH YORKSHIRE
(1) - It was an extraordinarily raw Thursday morning. It was still a long time before sunrise.
But almost all the workers assigned to picket duty outside the Markham Main mine were already there.
It was drizzling.
It was cold.
There
You could only see vague was dense fog.
silhouettes at the entrance to the mine.
The cops were also in place, that is the ordinary police. The riot police, thousands of whom are stationed in the region, were being kept in their barracks, at least for the moment.
How many times in the six-month-long strike had this scene been repeated?
Then it occurred to me.
This is really a good thing. The colder it is, the better.
The foggier, the better.
The closer we get to winter, the better it is for the miners.
Then the coal stocks will shrink a lot faster. Then the effects of the strike will be felt much more acutely.
There were about a hundred of us on the workers' side, an equal number on the police side. We stood in two lines facing each other without meeting at any point.
They had their helmets on to protect them from the rain.
We had sheets of plastic over our heads.
Naturally, there was a more comradely spirit on our side; there was room for three or four people under the sheets of plastic, maybe even for five, but then the rain would run down your back.
What is more, had control of a we covered bus stop.
There was room there for ten to fifteen people.
Just as the plastic was traded around, we took turns under the roof.
"A pound for my place," one or another person would shout out in the mist as we passed on our way to join the
That's what the talk was like.
dockers in Hull, about the TUC congress and its decision to support the miners.
"Now this resolution has to be translated into action - here and in all the mining towns, power stations, ports, steelworks," said Gordon Morris.
Morris is the representative of the miners at this pit to the coordinating committee for the Yorkshire district of
CORK
INT AREA
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GAVE strength was coming. They prepared for it. Fortwo years, people from the miners' union have been going around everywhere among the membership to explain things, to argue, to build up a front of resistance."
It was not so far from here, in Cortonwood, that the strike began.
"So, the miners said, it might as well be now, and they went on strike. strike built and built, and now it ha into a counteroffensive by miners' union. This was the only out, since it was clear that the gover ment and the National Coal Board adopted a tactic of shutting down after mine and eliminating tens of tho picket. There was a lot of joking and cracks, a lot of rough camaraderie. But there were Police violence on picket lines has caused two deaths (DR) also serious moments. People told the latest news about the fight against the strikebreakers, about the rally on Wednesday night, about those who were still suffering from injuries after the police ran amuck in Armthorpe last week, about how the strike was spreading among the 8
FUEIR LIVES the miners' union.
When I asked after him, a picket smiled wrily and pointed to a piece of welfare clubs There was room under "Gordon? That's him in the Gordon's piece of plastic. Of course,
1. Armthorpe has about 10,000 inhabitants. About 1,500 miners work in the Markham Main mine. They are all union members. About 250 of them have been arrested by the police once or several times during pickets or for "disturbing the peace." There are about 53,000 miners in Yorkshire as a whole.
International Viewpoint October 15, 1984
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ORTON OF MINE NATIONAL DIG DEEP FOR THE Miners
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and seen the British army in action there. He was part of the delegation of British miners who went to the North of Ireland to make contact with the oppressed popusands of jobs step by step. The miners also knew that they were ready to take up a decisive struggle for their future.
"Now, we have to reach out to other groups, '" Gordon Morris explained. Our piece of plastic had become a discussion club, where we felt very comfortable despite everything. It was an oasis of comradeship and warmth in the dank morning, two meters away from the police line.
"The outcome of the miners' strike will be decided by the support we can get from other unions, by we can stop all the scabbing, whether or not we can build a common understanding that what threatens the miners today is aimed in the longer run at breaking the resistance of the workers movement was the message that Gordon Morris wanted to get out.
But we also had something to tell.
We knew that strikebreakers were meals together. The food is prepared in the kitchen here with donated equip-
The women's committee is already hard at work. Besides taking part in the pickets and strike rallies, the miners' wives also take care of a load of practical tasks, that are quite essential to holding the strike front together.
All of this activity has broken down many of the barriers between men and women in the miners' community. Here nothing will go back to "normal" after
The wind of change has left nothing intact.
Suddenly, the discussion at the table
Derek needed a new chain for his saw - saw?
Another piece in the puzzle of this unusual strike organization fell into place Some of the miners are responsible for getting firewood from the town common for hard pressed families. That is why Derek needs a new chain for his saw, and that is why the treasurer for the union local has to find the money for it.
Here nothing is left to chance. People have held cut for six months and will hold on until they win, even if the strike goes on until next year. has to be perfect order, planning and
To see how all this is being done here in Armthorpe near Doncaster in South Yorkshire in the twenty-sixth week of the strike is the experience of a lifetime.