Despite defeat miners resist of Scargill's base in the union.
But the most major threat now facing the union challenges its very existence. On October 19 miners in Nottinghamshire and South Derbyshire voted to break away from the NUM. In Nottinghamshire the result was 17,750 votes for the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM)
EIGHT MONTHS after the end of their historic strike British miners are, still counting the cost of defeat. The workforce which stood at
172,000 at the beginning of the strike has been reduced by 16,000.
Important motions were passed by both the Labour Party and Trades
Union Congress (TUC) demanding a future Labour government review all the cases of miners imprisoned and sacked, and pay back money taken from the miners union. But today six hundred miners remain victimised for their trade union activities and sixty are in jail. Most importantly of all the National Union of Mineworkers has been split by the establishment of the 'Union of Democratic Mineworkers'.
The split, which has been fully backed by the coal industry employers, is not only a deadly threat to the NUM, but to the unity of the
British working class movement as a whole.
STEVE ROBERTS
Since the end of the strike the
National Coal Board (NCB) has pushed home its attacks relentlessly, announcing its intention to close 29 pits with the loss of 10 million tonnes of production and 23,000 redundancies. Pit mergers will probably mean the loss of a further 1,500,000 tonnes of capacity. These measures are approximately treble the reduction in production announced at the beginning of the strike in March 1984.
But Andrew Glyn, an who has been advising rank and file miners on fighting closure, says that it would be a big mistake to conclude that if these closures by the miners the industry would stabilise.
Writing
Militant
Glyn predicts that the newspaper, closures and productivity drives in the pits could have the effect of reducing the number of miners from 180,000 before the strike to 115,000 in early
1987. Glyn thinks that this is only the first step towards a rationalised industry which earns sufficient profits to make it a tempting target for the privatisation drive of the Thatcher government.
Huge profits have been made for
City of London financiers through the sale of government holdings in telecommunications and through future sales of British Airways and the nationalised gas and water industries.
On October 30 the government
10 announced further sales of state assets in an effort to meet a decline runs in public expenditure.
But Glyn argues that the government's arguments for pit closures take no account of the costs of unemployment in terms of benefit payments and taxes lost. To close sixty pits would cost the government some £900 per year,
'two and a half times the required to keep them
Of course the government's considCentral to their efforts is the need to destroy the national Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the left wing leadership of its president Arthur
A series of trials since the end of the strike have attempted to add to the total of sixty miners who are in jail for sentences ranging up to life imprisonment. In most cases these trials have in acquittals as fabricated police evidence has disintegrated, such as those connected with the mass picketing of the Orgreave coke depot in May 1984. But two miners, Dean Hancock and Russell Shankland, were tried and found guilty of murder after the accidental death of a taxidriver who was driving scabs to work. Subsequently the charges have been changed to manslaughter and their with 6,792 against. In South Derbyshire 1,286 voted to break away and 1,260 voted
Durham area a further smaller group of workers voted by 90% to join the breakaway. The 72% vote Nottingham area contradicted estimates of NUM leaders who had predicted a close result, although the margin was the same as that during the strike. However in Leicestershire miners rejected affiliation to the UDM.
But despite the Leicestershire result the UDM does not intend to confine itself to local areas. Their project is to build an alternative to the NUM. This became clearer after miners at the Agecroft pit in Lancashire
325-190 to leave National Union. Agecroft was another pit where production continued during the strike. Similar ballots are due in other pits.
The new scab 'union' has the full support of the NCB. On the eve of the Nottinghamshire ballot the employ. ers offered the UDM a preferential wage deal in advance of the NUM claim. The UDM has declared itself in favour of the incentives scheme promoted by the Coal Board which gives rewards to pits with high productivity. The scheme, opposed by the NUM, has meant an increase of accidents in the pits as miners chase production as well as a heightening of the divisions between different geological conditions for the mining of coal. Two days after the recognition from the NUM in the area along with all its hard fought rights to organise in the Nottinghamshire
Responding to the ballot result Scargill said : "The decision by the Nottinghamshire and South Derbyshire miners will prove disastrous, I call on all miners to stay with the national union. that we can prevent pit closures and job losses while protecting wages and conditions. The NUM president refused to call the UDM a union, calling it only a "breakaway organisation'.
Scargill also called for the entire trade union movement to boycott the UDM and on the Labour Party International Viewpoint 11 November 1985
Miners amnesty campaign
FOLLOWING the pledge by this year's Labour Party and TUC conferences sacked or imprisoned during the miners' strike, campaign for amnesty has been given a new boost. A fringe meeting at Labour to refuse membership to any MP or councillor who joined it. For their part the UDM have said that they want to affiliate to the TUC and to the the
Labour Party.
For the TUC the UDM poses an
Party conference was organised jointly by the Campaign Group of left wing acute dilemma. It was the TUC who
MPs, the journal Trade Union Briefing with the support of the NUM itself.
major role in bringing played the about the defeat of the NUM, refusing
To support the NUM resolutions to the recent TUC and Labour Party to bring pressure on the power unions to support the strike by refusing scab
To raise support for the sacked and imprisoned miners and raise fund coal or alternative energy supplies to publicise the Amnesty Bill (introduced by the Campaign Group stations.
the electricity generating
The TUC bureaucrats have made no
Sponsors of the campaign include Ray Buckton, general secretary of the secret of their intense hostility to train drivers union, ASLEF; Jimmy Knapp secretary of the railworkers union,
Scargill and the militant alternative the NUR; Phil Davis, president of FTAT, the furniture workers union; Alan strategy he offers in contrast to their
Sapper of the ACTT, media workers; MPs Jeremy Corbyn, Bob Cryer, Joan own collaboration with the bosses
Maynard, Clare Short, Dennis Skinner, Tony Benn; and many others.
and government. At the same time campaign and what is being asked from international supporters write to; - 49 Milner Square, London N.1. [Monies they fear that recognition of the UDM to Miners Solidarity Fund, St James House Vicar Lane, Sheffield].
could spark similar movements at the base of their own unions.
If on the other hand the TUC refuses the UDM affiliation rights the dynamic the TUC itself.
At the TUC conference of September a major crisis erupted when a number of unions declared that they were going to continue their policy of breaking TUC policy and accept government money offered to unions who conducted postal ballots on their internal affairs.
Neil Kinnock's
Electricians' union leader Eric Hammond, the leader of the 'new realist' inside the TUC, to establish an alternative to the TUC if unions like his own were expelled from the confederation. Already the
UDM is linked to the right wing of the TUC through the Mainstream group of trade unionists. The TUC leaders fear that the UDM could be an important part of an alternative confederation to their own.
If anything Labour Party leader
Neil Kinnock faces an even sharper problem. Kinnock used the October
Labour Party conference as a platform to launch a massive attack on Scargill in a speech that was widely acclaimed by the media, despite the conference going on to back the NUM over the issue of a future Labour government reimbursing the union for the fines and costs it incurred in the courts during the strike and reviewing the cases of sacked and imprisoned miners. The speech marked the culminating point of a turn to the
Kinnock leadership, originally elected with left credencan affiliate to the TUC. But the
Nottingham area are extremely margi-
International Viewpoint 11 November 1985
The aims of the campaign are -conference.
for the NUM's National Solidarity Fun
For more details about the nal ones and could be decisive in the general election scheduled for 1987. Already two Labour MPs (Members of Parliament) with seats in the area have declared their support for the UDM. So Kinnock is desperate to come to an understanding with the Nottinghamshire miners without upsetting his TUC backers.
The solution agreed on by the TUC and Kinnock is an attempt to bring the NUM and UDM into a single federation. However this course would certainly be rejected by Scargill who correctly see it as a virtual dismembering of the national union. Neither is it clear that Nottinghamshire UDM leader Roy Lynk is willing to do anything that interferes with stated goal of alternative to the NUM.
The NUM is fighting back against the breakaway union and file level. In Nottingham 4,000 of the 7,000 miners who voted against the scab union have pledged themselves to remaining members of the NUM. Branches of the NUM are being organised at every pit. A similar organisation was established after defeat of the miners in 1926. It took 11 years to smash Spencer and restore a single national union for all coal face workers. Few NUM loyalists believe that the UDM will be easier to defeat than Spencer.
Scargill has remained intransigent in the face of these attacks. However the same cannot be said for the majority of his executive or most of the powerful area leaderships of the union, many of which are dominated by the Communist Party. Since several of these leaders have attacked Scargill for his conduct of the dispute, most notably for his refusal to hold a ballot and his encouragement of mass picketing.
recently Scargill has been able to defeat his critics and continue to determine the policy of the union. A significant exception to this pattern came with the decision of the NUM executive to apologise for its conduct during the dispute in order to regain control of funds seized by the courts during the strike. The decision was the product of an alliance between left wing' leaders of the Welsh and Scottish areas along with 'moderates' on the executive. The new majority in the NUM NEC marked a victory for the pressure that Kinnock and the TUC leaders have been urging on the union. The long term significance of the new alliance is not yet clear. In a special delegate conference held in London on October 28 the day after the executive meeting, the union decided to call a demonstration outside parliament to call for the reinstatement of the 615 miners who remained the lack of determination shown by the area leaderships the executive has also extended a failure to fight over pit closures. While a number of pits have accepted closure since the end of the strike, including Cortonwood national strike started in March 1984, others are fighting back. St. John's in South Wales, Tilmanstone in Kent, Bates in Northumberland, Horden in
Durham, Darfield Main in Yorkshire and Bold in Lancashire are among those who have so far rejected the alternate financial threats of the NCB and referred their pit to appeal procedure.
The fight to build for the necessary defeat pit closures after the end of the strike is of course an uphill one. At Bold colliery an action committee has been established to fight the closure, with representatives of all the unions concerned at the pit. Public rallies are planned with speakers from the national union leadership and the Labour Party. Economist
Glyn has drawn up reports showing
11
NOTIS
•NUM*
STRKE
FORCE
These miners will fight to keep a national union (DR) the social costs of closure for St John's pit; a similar survey will be conducted by Bold.
But in the face of the defections to the UDM in Lancashire, such as that of the nearby Agecroft collery and the weak response of the area leadership, area wide and has already been necessary. Representatives of Bold pit have visited other pits faced with closure. And in the area itself a rank and file paper Lancashire Miner has been able to organise militants from other pits around it. The paper has been campaigning on the twin themes of unity and amnesty - unity against any attempt to introinto Lancashire, imprisoned miners like Lancashire Miner editor Dennis Pennington. (see page 14). The paper attracts between meetings as well as representatives from the still active Women Against Pit closures group.
Another national focus for the fightback has come with the launching of the Miners Amnesty Campaign by the Campaign Group of MPs supported by the NUM. The Campaign Group is a group of forty Labour MPs including Tony Benn, who split from group after solid support for Neil Kinnock's leadership. With only a few exceptions the Campaign Group took the side of the NUM in the and Scargill. The have proposed a parliamentary measure that would amnesty all the
But their challenge to Kinnock's leadership goes wider than this including publishing other bills calling for the withdrawal British troops from Ireland, on democratic rights and social policy. mitere political consequences of the strike are becoming more evident. The defeat of the miners was not a victory for the government. On the contrary since 12 the beginning of 1985 the popularity of the Thatcher government has been in more or less continuous political crisis. Discontent with the state of the economy has expressed itself in a deeply pessimistic report of the House of Lords, the second chamber of parliament, which predicted a rapid decline of Britain's economic tunes after the drying of Britain's oil reserves unless immediate measures were taken to reflate and rebuild Britain's manufacturing capacity. The political consequences of the high rate of unemployment also have placed a serious doubt in many Tory MPs minds as to the possibility of winning the next general election under Thatcher's leadership. Despite mutinous rumblings within the party no serious challenge to Thatcher has yet appeared, nor is it likely to until after the election. Under these conditions it is the SDP/Liberal Alliance who have been the gainers among the bourgeois parties. Most projections from opinion polls now give the Alliance the balance of power in any general election. ment there is no doubt that the defeat of the miners had a salutory effect on other groups of workers. In particular the rail workers who expected challenge Thatcher's plan for the rationalisation of the rail system voted narrowly not to fight. Building a class struggle left wing
However it is not the right wing who have made the greatest gains as a result. The fact that many of the rightwing leaders openly expressed their desire for the Tories to defeat the NUM, and actively assisted the Tories in that defeat did not enhance their appeal for many workers who will face similar attacks in the future.
Instead many workers have now put their confidence in returning a Labour government as the only way to halt the attacks of the Tories, and to undo the effects of six years of Thatcher. Consequently the Kinleadership of the party has gained immensely since the end of the strike, consolidating its position with its attacks on the left at the last party conference. (See International Viewpoint No 85, October 28, 1985).
Kinnock's attempts to make the Labour Party once again trustworthy enough to rule on behalf of capital have undoubtedly made some steps forward, attracting to his side previous supporters of the 'hard left' such as Ken Livingstone, the leader of the majority on the Greater London Council. As a result the
Labour and trade union has undoubtedly shrunk in size.
Neither has the left been helped supporters' leadership of the fight of Liverpool City Council with the government which played into the hands of the trade union bureaucrats with its "tactic' of making 30,000 of the council's employees temporarily
On the other hand the left has started to clarify itself on a number of issues which will be vital for the around the next general election. There is a growing understanding of the necessity of a real assault on the major financial institutions if unemployment in Britain is really to be tackled. The Campaign has published a pamphlet by Andrew Glyn A million jobs a year, which proposes taking the banks and other finance houses into immediate public ownership as a necessary step towards overcoming 4.5 million on the dole.
Significant too is the fact that the recent Black uprisings in inner cities found statements by Black people on the Labour left such as Bernie Grant, the Labour leader in the north London suburb in which some of the most serious police-youth clashes took place. Arthur Scargill too took an unambiguous stand when he said at a recent NUM rally in Barnsley, Yorkshire attacks on our Black comrades in Handsworth and Tottenham were the same as those made on our members during the strike!
As the Communist Party now places its support behind the Kinnock leadership both in its political pronouncements and its activities in the unions it is this Labour left which represents the only credible alternative for workers who want to fight back
Tories - not only in terms of its size and influence, but also in the growing radicalism of its policies. This is not to argue that it is not possible to build revolutionary organisations the Labour Party. The Socialist Workers Party in Britain has managed to maintain many of its members during the Thatcher period - but only at the cost of a growing isolation in the labour revolutionary socialists today is how to link up to, and politically and organisationally strengthen the left that despite defecions and a certain shrinking of size, still remains the first approximation to struggle left wing in the British labour movement.
The defeat of the miners' strike has not changed that task, but on the contrary has underlined its urgency. O International Viewpoint 11 November 1985