Miners under new attack
British Industry! The employers, displaying more class consciousness than these union leaders, refused.
These unions have refused any assistance, with their leaders openly calling for the defeat of the miners. Other unions with important memberships in
The British miners' strike is now in its most critical phase. On the one hand, diminishing fuel stocks are bringing ever closer the prospects of power cuts.
Leading government figures have always said that the moment the first power cuts start, the miners will have won.
On the other hand, precisely when victory is within reach, the labour bureaucracy is refusing to give the miners effective solidarity action or political support.
Steve ROBERTS
The latest phase of the strike began with the order of the law courts to seize the funds of the National Union of Mine-
The seizure of the funds came as a result of a legal action taken by two strike-breaking miners.
the courts to declare the strike non-official. The judge said that the strike was illegal. The union was then found to be fin contempt of the court ruling after Arthur
Scargill declared that the strike was and
The union was fined £250,000 in a move that was widely welcomed in rulingclass circles as a concerted bid to destroy
After a similar fine was imposed on the print workers' union a year ago, the
NUM had taken the precaution of transferring all its £8 million funds abroad, ironically enough using the exchange control regulations that Thatcher had introduced for her friends in big business!
The courts ended up with only £8,000 towards their target. However, the funds cannot be used for day-to-day business and the union is now entirely reliant on donations made to the Miners' Solidarity
Fund (see page 13).
This action is only one of a number now being brought by scab miners with the backing of big business under Thatcher's anti-trade union laws.
the miners are not the only section of the
British working class under threat.
In recent weeks there have been a rash of major strikes in Britain's car industry.
Britain's carworkers have gained dence from the miners' strike and from
Workers at Austin-Morris car plants who voted for strike action at mass meetings found their unions pulled in front of the courts under laws which require a secret ballot to be taken before strike action is legal. No other country in Western
Europe requires similar pre-conditions for strike action.
The action taken by the courts over the Austin Morris strike presages the future for the unions if the miners are defeated.
international Viewpoint 26 November 1984
The government is starting to claim victory in the strike, basing itself on the numbers of miners returning to work. The numbers of 'back to workers' took a sharp increase at the beginning of November as the coal board employers offered over 81,000 to every miner who returned.
With miners' huge debts, some could not resist the
The absolute numbers of those returning to work remains small in the vast majority of areas.
For example, on November 10, there were only 3.5 per cent of NUM members back at work in Scotland, 0.4 percent in Yorkshire, 0.2 per cent in the northeast and less than 0.1 per cent in South Wales
The back to workers have been used as an excuse by the police to attack picket lines trying to stop them returning. TUC prepares sell-out
Some of the worst police violence of the strike has taken place in the first weeks of November especially at the Corcolliery in South Yorkshire, where one man returning to work was used by the police to confront and batter
Getting these miners back to work also will make it easier in the future for the police to gain access to coal stocks at the pit-heads - stocks which are now becoming desperately needed by power stations and industry as the cold weather begins to bite.
It is the running down of the stocks and its effects on power generation that give the miners their greatest prospect of the Trades Union Congress, the 10-million-strong federation of Britain's major unions, has not delivered the solidarity promised by its September conference which overwhelmingly voted to support the miners.
The resolution passed at that conference voted that those unions with members in power stations would propose to their members to refuse to accept new supplies of coal or to allow stations to switch from coal to oil and to assist the miners in other ways. The electricians' the power stations also have not given the type of support necessary to effectively support the miners.
Indeed members of these unions, like this year's chairperson of the TUC, a member of GMBATU, one of the biggest power station unions, have instead come forward to call for a deal to be imposed on the miners by the TUC and the coal employers - over the heads of the NUM leaders.
This has been the fear of NUM leaders from the beginning of the dispute, when they refused to ask the TUC for help for fear that just such a deal would be the
Although the statement was refuted by other leaders of the TUC, it was clear that this was the strategy now favoured by TUC and Labour Party leaders.
The miners struck back by calling a series of national solidarity rallies in the main mining areas and inviting Neil Kinthe leader of the Labour Party, and Normal Willis, the general secretary of the TUC, to speak to them.
In his most open act of treachery yet citing 'other engage Kinnock's refusal was met with fury within the Labour Party. Some 45 left-wing Labour MPs signed a statement protesting at Kinnock's lack of activity in support of the strike.
Kinnock was unabashed, however, comparing Arthur Scargill's leadership of the miners' strike to a 'Gallipolli' (a reference to the massacre of British and empire troops during the first world war in Turkey which was attributed to disastrous "generalship'.) When asked whether he thought the strike was crumbling, Kinnock replied that he would 'wait and see'.
The fury over Kinnock's statements was compounded by the fact that, after having been elected on a left ticket at the Labour Party conference of 1983, Kinnock has now moved firmly to the right playing a key role in a recent purging of the left in the party leadership, following the party conference of October.
At this conference Kinnock was completely routed in his attempt to denounce miners' violence on the picket lines and the conference voted without reservation to support the strike.
However, these denunciations of miners violence were repeated by Norman Willis, when he did appear at one of the miners' rallies. Willis was almost drowned out by heckling and shouting at a rally he attended in South Wales, in an explo-
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sion of anger from miners who have seen two of their numbers killed and over 8,000 arrested by police action on the picket lines.
Victory lies within the reach of the miners. Thatcher and the state have shown that they cannot smash the miners or their union. The 'only' obstacle is the treachery of the TUC and Labour Party this obstacle may yet prove to be decisive as it did when the British miners struck in 1926 and a great general strike movement in their support was derailed and sold out by the TUC.
The degree to which the left in the unions and Labour Party can rise to the level of the occasion to defeat the betrayers will determine the fate of 1984's organized a meeting. In a very lively dis cussion with a well-informed public, there were continual comparisons of the experiences in the miners' strike and the 35-hour week strikes, in particular as regards the role of the police.
The local women's committee officially adopted the miners' wives committee in St. Helen's, Stuttgart's twin city, and appealed to the local IG Metall to do like.
leaders.