The miners - one year management, those who wanted the closure of the pit, many of whom had participated in the October 13 vote, started demanding a ballot. They presented the branch committee with a petition containing two hundred signatures.
on from the strike
In this, the whole question of to light.
democracy was brought
After a long debate the men had collectively decided to fight for the
IN THE following articles a miner and a miner's wife give their views of the situation since the strike ended. Dennis Pennington describes the closure of the Bold, Lancashire pit. Liz French, whose husband is currently serving a five-year gaol sentence for his activities during the strike, talks about the campaign for amnesty in extracts from an interview by Ruth Chenette on behalf of the Collectif d'information et de soutien aux mineurs Britanniques - victimes de la repression
(Paris).
THIS MONTH Bold pit in Lancashire, will be closed.
and their wives from this pit, which one of the most active militant during the strike, particularly while they were drumming up international support.
We record below, a description of the events which led up to the closure, by Dennis Pennington who is on the branch executive of the
Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and editor of the Lancashire Miner. Pennington was imprisoned after miners' strike and then sacked by the
National Coal
Industrial Tribunal ordered his reinstatement, but the Coal Board refused to have him back.
In the article Pennington describes that the pit should be closed, deliberately ran it down, although it was of the ones originally earmarked for closure before the strike began. Clearly the Coal Board wanted
On October 9, the area director took less than two minutes to inform all present that financial losses incurred before and wished to close Bold colliery by the end of this financial year.
A special meeting of the Bold branch NUM was held on Sunday
October 13. The branch committee had decided to recommend opposition to the closure.
During the same week that the
Bold closure
NUM suffered the multiple shocks that the men at two pits in South
Wales (Penrhiwceiber and and two pits in Yorkshire (Brookhouse and Cortonwood), all of them militant pits, had accepted closure. Corton-
24 wood was the very pit whose threatened closure in March 1984 had sparked off
At that time the total workforce at Bold was seven hundred. Five hundred were miners - members of the Bold
NUM - and the remaining two hundred were members craftsmen's section of the NUM, the deputies union, the clerks and managers. The section of workers at the pit,
Over three hundred attended the meeting. It was possibly I have ever attended, and there was much discussion and debate.
The inevitable question came up from the floor - 'Why don't we hold a ballot?' This was suitably rebuffed. At no point in the meeting was a proposal made and seconded for a secret ballot. A proposal for a vote by a show of hands on whether we should or should not oppose the closure was made, however.
taken. I put my head in my hands and closed eyes. The men voted to oppose the closure by a majority of two to one.
uproar and jubilation amongst those who had stood firm those that had pit shuffled out of the hall in stony
The Coal Board then started to encourage the men to believe that the decision made at the meeting of October 13 was undemocratic, in fact over four hundred men had put their names down for or redundancy, that only a minority of men had participated vote by show of hands on October 13 and that a ballot should
With this encouragement from the pit. If they had been allowed to harbour their individual fears or protect their individual self-interest by means of a secret ballot, perhaps they would have voted to close. The petition for the ballot was rejected unanimously by the branch
The key to Bold's productivity was the face known as T27. This was a new coal face and all expected great results from it. It was acknowledged as one of the best faces every installed It was worked almost exclusively by strikebreakers, could offer the highest bonus had been, given to them after the strike.
rate of work of these colliers of course affects the productivity of the pit. On October 21, the scabs on T27 decided that they could not mine coal until a ballot had been
Meanwhile an unofficial ballot had been called. We instructed men not to participate and that the decision stand until the next branch meeting. However, 252 did vote and of those, 222 voted to close the pit. This was still a minority of the Bold NUM. Management backs scab action
Management was openly encouraging these scabs to take strike action to close the pit. The irony of the situation was laughable. Last year 140,000 miners who struck to save their pits and communities were openly scorned by management and media alike, and now men were being encouraged to strike to close the pit.
The net result of the actions of those selfish men was that barely more than 3,000 tonnes of coal were coming up the pit each week. The NCB propaganda machine went into full gear. Bold was losing a fortune each week; less than a quarter of target output was being mined!
The management then offered a financial bribe to the men in the hope that they would sell their jobs. They said that if any man accepted redundancy and the immediate closure of the pit, then he would be paid his service payment for 1984, even if he had been on strike. The terms of International Viewpoint 10 February 1986
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
BRITAIN
redundancy in the mining industry are that you receive approximately £1,000 for each year worked. This offer had to be put to the men and the branch committee decided to do it by means of ballot. I and two others voted against this decision. The ballot was duly held and the question on the paper simply said: 'Are you prepared to fight for Bold?'
The men decided by two to one to close the pit.
When the ballot was being held many men were clearly angry about
The closure of Bold colliery was for political reasons. Bold was the pit most loyal to the NUM in the county of Lancashire.
then so be it. We're not going to get any help from the leadership of the TUC [Trades Union Congress l or the LP; we've got to do it ourselves now. It just means that to work that much harder.
got fifty lads imprisoned round here.
really strong fighters.
were sacking men they knew who
Q. What were they sacked for?
"They are political prisoners" Interview with Liz French
Question. What did Terry actually get put away for?
Answer. Well, he was charged with grievous bodily harm on a policeman. That's the terms they put it in. That was May 1984.
Q. When he went to court, what did he plead?
He didn't go to court until December, and he pleaded not guilty to the charge. The first trial was at the beginning of December, where you had four dockers gave witness to the fact that Terry was there, week in the courts, we had to have retrial because evidence that they'd got. So we had a retrial in January 1985. In the meantime they had found another 13 policemen. They gave statements saying that in September 1984 they'd heard Terry shout on a picket line and that he'd actually beaten a copper up. So with all this new-found evidence that they were supposed to have had, there was no way that we could beat them. They were after having Terry put away and they'd already made the decision about it beforehand. We knew that they were going to be hard on miners; they were going to be made an example of. Leon Brittan [then Home Secretary] said right at the beginning of January that anybody going to court would be made an example of. Terry was one of the first big cases to come up in the courts, and he was made an example
Its political, whatever you say about it. They are political prisoners.
But here in Britain there is no political status. prison conditions like?
The first prison he was in spent five months in there and the conditions were appalling. you wouldn't keep up for 23 hours a day.
If you haven't got a job in Wandsworth [prison], cleaning or in the kitchens, then you are locked up 23 hours a day. I only used to get a visit once a month.
International Viewpoint 10 February 1986
Q. Was that when he was on remand?
A. No. That was after he was sentenced. He never was on remand, was Terry. But he used to get visits once a month for 45 minutes. And to go in and out of the prison was frightening. But he is now in Maidstone, where I get a visit once a week.
The problems faced by imprisoned miners are very those in the North of Ireland concerning the question of political status.
Well, it is. It's the same. Terry would love to pursue the status bit, but if he starts doing that, he's going to spend more than four years in prison. He's really going to lose everything. He wanted to demand political-prisoner that, you have to go on hunger strike, you have to refuse to wear prison suffer in the end would be me and him. So he never pushed it that far.
I think all miners were after a few months on strike that we were being used like the Irish were used, and we started linking up with the Irish and the coloured communities in London over police harassment. We knew how it felt then to live in Ireland, with continual harassment from the police and the army, because they were there on the picket line and all, you know! now in the support committees for the victimised miners, so your time the campaign has been for to get the lads out of prison. It's died off a little bit because of it being just after Christmas, but we've got to start really getting the show on the road again and really pushing home because nobody up top is going to do it for us. No Labour Party [LP] leadership is going to do it for us. They've made it obvious that they think we're criminals. And if you're a criminal for fighting for our jobs,
A. Occupying the pit during the summer of 1984, to make sure it was safe. The reports said that Betteshanger was finished, that it was collapsed. They went down and checked it, and it was as good as the day they had left it. And 29 got sacked that day. Some of them weren't even there, like Terry; no way did he occupy the pit because he was reporting to the police station twice a day.
What about the women who gave a lot of support? Not just the miners' wives but all the other support
There's a hell of a lot of support groups the national WAPC [Women against Pit Closures] is still there, wouldn't say it is as solid as it was. This thing about 'we're never going to go back to the kitchen' m at the end of the day you've got to go back and cook the meals, and I mean, it was a bit silly to say that in the first place.
have gone back home and gone back to their own little lives and really and truly, they can't do anything else, can They're married, they've got families.
something they had to do at the time, and I'm sure if there was a strike they'd be back out again and they'd be supportive, but they had to
Q. What about the international support? Is that still there?
The links are still there. I've been out in Denmark since the end of the strike, I've and Germany. I still get a lot that they're still thinking of us. changed your attitude in general about politics?
Instead of being just worried about my own little house and how and me were going to think about Ireland, they think about now to South Africa and Nicaragua, El Salvador. I mean, you're there. So it has opened our eyes about world problems.
25