The miners' strike and the left
Already such actions have resulted in heavy fines on the union and freezing of their assets by the courts after their re-
Prospects for the New Year fusal to pay.
A firm of accountants,
Price Waterhouse, have been appointed by the courts to take charge of the union's financial affairs. Other unions, like the
The British National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has entered 1985 aften ten months on strike with its will to win intact. Over 140,000 miners are still on strike despite a 'back-to-work' movement sponsored by the National Coal Board (NCB) employers and backed up by the
Thatcher government. Great obstacles face the miners in their fight for a victorious conclusion to their strike.
destroy the fighting capacity of the miners' union through legal action, as the key to opening a broader legal offensive against the whole union movement.
The leadership of the trade-union movement however are refusing to organise the type of solidarity action decided on in the September 1984
Trades Union Congress, which could have already won the strike if implemented.
The leader of the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock, has continued to attack rank-and-file miners for their violence on the picket lines.
this line, the left-wing leader, Tony Benn, has urged preparation of a general strike movement to support the miners.
Scargill, has likewise called for all out industrial action as the way to win
Steve ROBERTS
Scargill spelled out the facing the miners in a New Year's message to his members:
*The government and the National
Coal Board claimed last spring that the strike would be over by the summer.
Then they claimed it would be finished by September.
Then that it would be finished by Christmas.
past ten months they have backed their inaccurate predictions with a massive abuse of taxpayers' money. The economic costs of the dispute have been devastating.
*Thus far, £5 billion, desperately needed by the British people for housing, health care, public transport and services have been spent instead in an attempt to smash British miners fighting to save pits, jobs and communities.
'Our nation has also seen industrial growth halved and the pound plunged in value by over 20 per cent during the course of the dispute. Despite the massive costs, the damage done to the social fabric of our nation by the creation of a national riot police force and the loss of
77 million tonnes of coal production,
Mr Walker (the minister for energy) and his cabinet colleagues still refuse to allow the NCB to negotiate a settlement to the strike with the National Union of Mine-
"This refusal exposes the government's real intention which is to butcher the coal industry as it did British Steel and to smash effective trade unionism.
'But in the face of all the pressures and hardship, 144,000 NUM members are solidly on strike. No words of tribute can do adequate justice to the magnificent achievements of British
International Viewpoint 14 January 1985
The aim of the government is to
NUM president, Arthur miners and their families who are fighting with such courage and determination for a decent future.
"As we go into 1985, I call on them to remain firm and urge all NUM members not on strike to join their colleagues in this battle to save our nationalised industry, jobs and communities.
'It is a battle we will win. With all our numbers behind the union it will be won that much more quickly."
The appeal of the NUM president for miners who have returned to work was designed to counter the 'back-to-work' campaign, seen by the government as the way to end the strike. Back to work moves
The chairperson of the National Coal Board, Ian MacGregor, has said that he will consider the strike effectively ended if he calculates that more than 50 per cent of the miners have returned to work.
The implications of MacGregor's position is that he will then try to boycott dealings with the NUM elected leadership and instead deal directly with representatives of working miners.
This strategy combines with encouraging the development of a split in the NUM. In Nottinghamshire, local scab officials have pushed through amendments to the rules of their local area which delete the provision that the rules of the national union should have precedence over their local union constitution. denounced this decision as a move to split the NUM. At the same time, the strikers doubt whether the rank-and-file working miners really want to leave the NUM and set up an independent union, as happen-
National Union of Railwaymen, have now been ordered to appear in court to give details of money sent to the miners during the strike. Price Waterhouse have demanded that such solidarity payments should now be paid to them and not to
It is clear that all unions that have provided support to the miners are now seen as immediate targets for the government's
The two-million-strong Transport and General Workers Union was fined £250,000 by the courts for defiance of the new government trade-union legislation that makes secret ballots a condition for strike action remaining within the law. The fine was seized from the unions' funds after their assets were sequestrated by the courts.
The Labour Party is also under very serious attack. In the next year, the government will compel trade unions to hold ballots of their membership on whether they should be able to collect subscrip tions for a political levy. The political levy is used by the majority of trade unions to provide funds for the Labour Party. In Britain, where there is no state funding of political parties, the Labour Party is almost completely reliant on such contributions to fight elections and mainlevy the Labour Party would be crippled since no such restrictions apply to the funding of the bourgeois parties by big
Yet another attack on the Labour Party is in relation to local government. As the crisis of the inner cities has become a major political issue in Britain so the Labour councils which run nearly all Britain's major cities have swung to the left, in particular defying government legislation aimed to restrict their spending on social services. Representatives of local Labour councils decided on a strategy to break the law if necessary in their confrontation with the government, a strategy backed by the Labour Party conference in October last year. The key date for this confrontation is March 6, when the government's restrictions will become effective.
The miners have clearly seen this development as a crucial one to their fight. In an article in Labour Herald, a left Labour journal closely associated with the fight of local government against the Thatcher government, Arthur Scargill said:
*Any group of workers or section of the working class facing attacks by this
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BRITAIN,
government's economic policies should be supported
"They should be supported when they resist attempts to destroy the social services, the education and housing programmes which electors in local government have given a clear mandate to their coun cillors to carry through. thoroughly forms of action against this most repres sive government.'
Local Labour councils too have seen the miners' fight directly linked to their own. Many Labour councils in mining areas have indemnified miners against electricity and gas bills, waived council house rent and rates (taxes) and provided substantial regular payments to the solidarity funds for miners' families.
So, a political perspective is emerging for the strike of an alliance between the miners and local Labour councils and council workers. This will be a powerful boost for the miners since the Conservative Party is more deeply divided on the local government issue than any other, with senior figures like ex-Prime Minister Edward voting the government's meas ures in parliament.
However, the greatest obstacle to the miners' cause lies directly within the leadership of the labour movement. Labour elected with the support of a majority of the party's left wing in 1983, now faces calls for his removal because of his barely concealed hostility towards the miners' strike. In a New Year article in Labour Weekly, the party's newspaper, Kinnock blames the miners' strike for his failure to put the Labour Party ahead of the Tories in the opinion polls.
He has maintained a constant stream of criticism against the miners' for violence refusing to even visit a picket line for the first ten months of the strike. Kinnock has pledged himself to support only those actions of the miners that remain within the law.
As the Tory government's main tool for attacking the NUM has been through the courts, this means that Kinnock has consistently refused to stand up to the legal moves which not only threaten the NUM and other unions, but also his own party. In particular, Kinnock has expressed his unhappiness with the strategy being adopted by left Labour councillors in defying the law.
Kinnock has formed a united front with those trade-union leaders who have consistently blocked the implementation of the decisions of the Trade Union Congress of September 1984. In particular these decisions called on the unions with members in the power stations to actively support the miners by refusing supplies of coal and oil. There has been no serious attempt to implement this on the part of the majority of the unions involved and an outright refusal by the right-wing led electricians' union.
The government gratefully acknowledged their debt to Frank Chapple, the 6
Miners and their wives demonstrate for jobs (DR) retiring leader of the electricians' union, by making him a 'Lord' in the new year's honours list; earning him a seat in the unelected House of Lords, and a handsome attendance allowance of $48 per day!
There are many other aspirants to such titles in the trade-union leadership. In the past three months, in addition to the sabotage of the miners' struggle, important unions have accepted key parts of the government's trade union legislation, contrary to the policy of the trade-union movement as a whole, without any public rebuff from the TUC General Council. The majority of trade-union leaders are accepting the legislation as accomplished fact - all with the excuse that the trade-union movement must stay within the law.
In response to this class collaborationist policy of the right wing and centre trade-union leaders the left have begun to
Rank-and-file activists in the Labour Party organised a highly success-
Solidarity Conference on December 2, attended by over 1,700 delegates. (See IV, No 66, December 24, 1984.) The Broad Left Organising Committee, which aims to coordinate the various left oppositions inside the trade unions has called a major conference for March. Given this, even the Communist Party has had to mobilise its al most moribund trade-union tendency to provide a line for its militants who have generally played a conservative role in the dispute, collecting money for the miners, but refusing to extend other sectors of the working class and mobilise them in action on the picket
While Scargill and Benn will support and speak at these types of conferences, what is still lacking is a strong national unitary lead from the left. This is due to
Scargill fears that if he is seen to openly organise forces at the base of unions, this would increase the hostility of the bulk of the union leaders to the miners'
However, this does not take into account the positive effect on the cause that a strong conscious minority fighting throughout the labour movement could have in shifting the support of the trade-union movement to the left and therefore towards the miners.
Secondly, such a move to organise the left would have clear implications for the leadership question inside the Labour Party. The calls for the removal of Kinnock from the leadership of the Labour Party have largely come from rank-and-file activists in the party and the unions and from the far left.
The organisation of a national leftwing current would undoubtedly place the question of a challenge to Kinnock pointblank on the agenda, something which Benn has sought to avoid in the past period. Not only would this be the case at the national level, it would also start a battle at every level of the labour and trade-union movement to remove those elected officials who refused to support the miners' struggle and replace them with those who did.
The first round of this battle will start with the reselection of Labour MPs for the next general election. In many constituencies in mining areas, NUM members have joined the Labour Party in order to influence the direction of the Party, and their voice will no doubt be heard in the selection of future Labour
Ken Livingstone, the left leader of the Greater London Council, has given voice to this process through calling for a "Target Labour Government' campaign to be established which would have the objective of securing a Labour government committed to socialist policies and the election of a greatly increased number of MPs who would fight for such policies to be implemented. Such a move corresponds accurately to the political radicalisation engendered by the miners' strike the role of the Labour Party in
It is this process of politicisation and clarification on the left which today is the next step towards the construction of a leadership in the British labour movement which fights consistently to represent the interests of the working class. The building of such a class struggle left wing in the Labour Party and the trade unions is the path through which a leadership of a real 'party of labour' can be built, which unlike the present leaders of the British labour movement, not only supports each and every struggle of working people against the ruling class, but also opens the way towards overthrowing capitalism in Britain.
International Viewpoint 14 January 1985