AROUND THE WORLD of a move by the state to crush part which in the first place working people, means the miners.
Among the other trade unionists attending the meeting who spoke in the
Socialist miners and wives discuss their strike Steve ROBERTS
Miners and miners' wives from all over the British coalfield gathered for an international solidarity meeting in Lancashire, north-west England on October 20.
Among the 300 people who attended the meeting, organised by Socialist Action newspaper, were trade unionists and socialists from Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Ireland, France and the USA.
Eighty miners registered for the meeting and thirty members of miners wives' support committees. They came from all the major coalfields including Scotland, South Wales, Lancashire, Kent, South Nottingham, South Yorkshire, South Staffordshire and Leicester.
In addition there was a contingent of miners and wives from Bold colliery who were hosting the meeting in their miners' institute. Colin Lenton, a member of the Bold NUM committee explained why the branch had extended its facilities for the meeting in his welcoming speech to those present:
'We feel that it's the least we can do. Without Socialist Action and the organisations in France, Belgium, Holland and other countries we wouldn't have come through the strike in the way we have.'
The meeting opened with a discussion on the development of the miners wives' movement. Valerie Coultas, chairing the session for Socialist Action, said that the British labour movement was witnessing the rise of a new women's movement centred on the miners' wives and the fight of the Greenham Common women against the placing of Cruise missiles. The action of the miners' wives was not only changing the consciousness of men in the miners' union, but throughout the whole labour movement.
Sue Bence from the Kent Miners' Wives Action Committee of Aylesham explained how her group had been formed.
'We formed a group before in the 1972 and 1974 strikes. But at that time it was mainly to collect and distribute food.
'But this time, on day two of the strike, eighty women met and decided we would organise a peaceful demonstration to Nottingham, because we were incensed by the media-supported 'back-to-work campaign being organised by the so-called 'petticoat pickets'. 26
Lorraine Johnson from Bold said that the miners' wives had proved more effective in gaining support than the male members of the NUM. Ann Jones from South Wales said the miners wives movement had shown that 'there was more than one determined woman in this country!'
Judith Woodward, of the Women's Action Committee in the Labour Party, spoke of the way in which miners' wives were joining the Labour Party and the role of the NUM in backing increased women's representation in the Labour
There was loud applause for the speech of Anita Grey, a supporter of the Greenham Common peace women. She said that the Greenham women were fully behind the women and men in the dispute. In particular she saw the fight against nuclear power as a strong link between the peace movement and the miners.
The final speech was that of Kip Dawson, a woman member of the United Mine Workers of America and of the Socialist Workers Party (USA).
She said that militant workers in the USA were increasingly looking to two places for inspiration. The first was to the miners' strike in Britain. The second was the struggle of the Nicaraguan people.
'If and when intervention [in Nicaragua] comes, we will not stand idly by. Like the sisters of Greenham Common we will fight to oppose our government."
The session ended with Ann Jones explaining that the miners' wives were now organised nationally with a conference in November.
The second session of the meeting was on perspectives for winning the strike. Pat Hickey, the industrial correspondent for Socialist Action, the discussion by to the desperate measures that the Thatcher government were preparing against the miners through the courts.
Phillip Sutcliffe, a member of the Kent miners' executive, received laughter and applause when he introduced himself as 'Kay Sutcliffe's husband'. (Kay is a leading member of the miners wives movement.)
He explained that the £200,000 fine against the union and the threatened sequestration of the NUM's assets was session was Roy Butlin of the National Union of Railwaymen from the Coalville Freight Depot in Leicestershire. He explained that in Coalville, the main mining town of the area, out of 2,500 miners only 30 were on strike. The rest were producing 135,000 tonnes of coal which was not being moved by the 150 members of his union branch to power stations.
As a result, British Rail management had sacked three of his members on spurious charges. He finished with an appeal to the miners present. I know that 330 miners have been sacked in the dispute so far and that you will not go back until they have been reinstated. But I want you to add three railworkers to that number - sacked for solidarity with the miners.'
Three striking miners from Leicestershire, South Staffordshire and Nottingham then spoke to thunderous applause from the delegates. In all these areas striking miners are in a small minority. All spoke of the daily harassment and violence suffered by the strikers which goes unreported in the press.
Many miners called for Neil Kinnock, the leader of the Labour Party, to get off the fence, and start supporting the miners and for the TUC to start delivering on its promises at the 1984 congress.
John Ross, the editor of Socialist Action, spoke of the political developments in the strike, particularly how the miners had moved to support other groups under attack from the Tories in cluding women, blacks and gay people on the principle that 'an injury to one is an injury to all'.
He said that this was also the principle being used by the underground members of Solidarnosc in the mines in Poland, who had sent messages of support to the British miners and condemned the strike-breaking role played by the Jaruzelski regime.
This growing internationalist consciousness was reflected in the final session on international solidarity. Dennis Pennington, from Bold NUM, spoke of the way in which his ideas had changed during the strike. He had toured abroad to raise support for the strike as the guest of the GIM, German section of the Fourth International, and POS/SAP, Belgian section of the Fourth International.
'Before I used to think of myself as a miner - and a Lancashire miner at that, not even a British miner. But now I see myself as a worker, part of the interna-
International Viewpoint 12 November 1984
ised one tour for British miners and had ing directed against them.
tional working class.'
Finn Jensen, a member of the miners' solidarity movement in Denmark spoke next explaining that not only had they raised nearly £100,000 for the miners, but they had been able, through dockers' action, to stop the shipment of Polish coal from the port of Aarhus.
Anneka Meijsan, an electro-mechanical worker and shop steward from the Rotterdam support committee, spoke of the work of her committee and of her party, the SAP (Dutch section of the Fourth International). She saw the main job of her committee as countering the lies put out by the pro-government media in the
The miners' strike was very important because of the way in which the Lubbers' government identified with the Thatcher project.
They were also exploring all possible ways of preventing the shipment of coal from Rotterdam to Britain and said that she would be discussing with the miners present the best way of going about it.
A pledge to stop the coal from Antwerp in Belgium came from a carworker active in the miners' solidarity campaign and a member of the POS/SAP, 'even if we have to shovel it into the water he said. He was one of the three Belgian trade unionists present at the meeting.
Brian Phelan of the Irish organisation, People's Democracy spoke from platform to describe the solidarity activities and sentiments for the NUM strike that existed throughout Ireland. He finished his speech by telling miners that the only thing Irish workers wanted in return was for the NUM to demand British
One miner who already supported the troops-out position was Wayne Frost, a miner from Armthorpe colliery, who had been present at the Belfast demonstration where Sean Downes was killed as a result of being hit with a plastic bullet. Wayne said the way in which police were being used in the miners' strike was more and more similar to the way they were
Nigel Bevan, a young South Wales miner, said that he had joined Socialist Action's fight in the Labour Party, because through the strike he saw the need for internationalism in practice.
The session finished with speech from Alain Krivine of the LCR (French section of the Fourth Interna-
Krivine said that the miners' strike was of central importance te all European workers. It was the highest point so far of the new wave of workers' struggles that had developed against austerity and militarist policies of Western European governments in 1980-
The miners' victory would be a victory for all workers like those in West Germany who had fought for the 35-hour week and the Italian workers who had fought for defence of the sliding scale
In France, too, it would be considered as a victory by workers who are fighting against the betrayal of the left parties since 1981. The LCR had already organInternational Viewpoint 12 November 1984 supported the solidarity campaign of the CGT (CP-dominated trade-union federation) in France. Now they were organising a second tour
The meeting finished with the sing. ing of the Internationale. ticipants were then invited to a special social organised by the miners of Bold. Over 900 people attended the social and £1,000 was raised through collection and
Defense of
Basque national movement The first extraditions of Basque nationalist refugees from France on September 26 were part of a combined offensive against the Basque liberation movement by the Social Democratic governments in Paris and Madrid.
In response to this general offensive, aimed at rolling back the gains Basque people have made since the death of Franco, a very broad united front has developed, representing a full spectrum of nationalist and principled opinion in the Basque country.
The Basque resistance around an Open Letter to the Peoples and Nations of the World (for the text and list of signers, see IV, No 61, October
On October 11, a rally for the Open Letter campaign was held in
Miguel Romero described it as follows in the October 19 issue of Comthe paper of the section of the Fourth International in the Spanish state:
"More than 300 persons filled a hall of the Eurobuilding Hotel in Madrid for the presentation of the Letter to the Peoples and Nations of the World' and to take part in a rally to discuss and denounce the repression to which the Basque country is being subjected.
"It was a modest rally by comparison with what we want and need to do. But it was a useful one, a fraternal assembly marked by friendship for Euskadi and the determination to do something.
"We raised the Ikurrina [the Basque
*enemy territory,' sinister luxury hotel...where we obliged to meet at a big expense because the associations that should have given us a place, if they lived up to their name, barred us from their facilities.
"There was every sort of person in the hall...young people, old people, party activists, independents, intellectuals, professionals, trade unionists, priests — people who have different ideas about the statute of autonomy [for the Basque country], the KAS Alternative [the minimum program of the radical nationalists], or negotiated solution to question but agreed about the need for in Madrid for democratic rights in solidarity with the Basque people against the repression be-
"All the participants shared the feel ing of disillusion and indignation with respect to the policy of the Socialist Party government. The "Open Letter" represents a stimulus, an example of something that we want to do in the spec ial and difficult conditions here in Madrid."
Joseba Goni explained the campaign for the "Open Letter."
"Goni described the work that was necessary to collect a quarter of a million signatures for the Open Letter from all parts of the Basque country [the total population of the Basque area in the Spanish state is only about
"The short discussion demonstrated that there is a real determination on the part of a still relatively small but growing number of people to respond to this assault on democratic rights. It was shown already a few weeks ago in the Days of Protest Against Tor-
"The important thing is to keep up the action. For this immediate proposals
"To send a bus from Madrid to the October 20 demonstration in
"To organize protests on all levels against the 'antiterrorist bill.
"To remain on the alert against any threat of new expulsions or extraditions so that we can respond immediately the delay there was in Seporganize a new rally in a bigger and more appropriate place. we are convinced that there are many hundreds of people in Madrid ready to stand by Euskadi, even if it means op Democratic premier]."
Trotsky still banned in Hungary The last issue of the Hungarian review Mozgo Vilag (The World in Movement) was seized on September 15. The 15,000 copies printed were destroyed. Reason: the review had published a historical article on Leon Trotsky's role in the formation of the Red Army and during the Civil War. It is thought, in Budapest, that this repressive measure was taken as a result of a direct intervention by the Soviet embassy.
The review Mozgo Vilag already had a brush with the authorities a year ago. At that time its editor was dismissed and replaced by two journalists, one from the CP daily paper, the other from its theo-
This was an attempt by the party apparatus to reassert ideolog ical' control over a journal that is very influential among students and intellecand supposedly directed by the
EL SALVADOR.
policy, a reduction in the salary of the
President of the Republic, the ministers, the Legislative Assembly members and all
Likehigh-ranking government officials.
wise, a reduction in the salaries of colon-