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THE ARTICLE on the miners' pay claim (Socialist Organiser no.97) was a timely one, and I would like to make some comments.

It is important for the whole Left in the unions and in the Labour Party to support Scargill and the NUM left. But it is also true that we should have some reservations about Arthur's ability to carry struggle through to the bitter end.

You may recall that in the 1981 struggle, Arthur kept quiet while the Welsh miners were out. It was the rank and file in Yorkshire who gave the lead, and it is in the rank and file that we must place our trust now.

Unless there is a tremendous campaign in the pits, many may use the fact that the claim is so high - 30% - to justify arguing that it is pie in the sky union machine. It must reach the ordinary worker.

This will be the real fight. I do not see the point about stocks being high as conclusive. They were high in the two previous victorious strikes. It is the intensity of the picketing and blacking, and the involvement of other sections of the working class, that is crucial.

Distract

We also have to argue that the pay claim does not distract from the fight against pit closure, and particularly argue that agreement to closure should not be used as a means of gaining more cash.

EDDIE GINLEY, Liverpool. 30% claim: pie in the sky? Dear Socialist Organiser, There was good discussion at the SO delegate meeting in September about all that's wrong with the paper as regards layout and language, etc. Then Martin Thomas, one of the editorial staff, tried to answer the various points. But I think he was too much part of the problem to be capable of summing it up.

We need a paper which appeals to all those who are interested in political action, to change this society so ordinary people are in a strong position.

We will only get this sort of paper if those who work hard for its production are prepared to step back and realise that you don't convince people by producing a paper jam-packed with preaching to the converted.

We already have well-researched, interesting, factual articles like the one by Stan Crook on the Gorbals damp campaign, and the article on Basingstoke hospital workers and Bagnells. For such articles to be easily accessible they require prominance and space through good lay-out methods.

For the Organiser to organise it has to be totally re-vamped and to foster a style of writing which relates to the actual experience of oppression which is the possession of every working class and oppressed person. We need a lively and easy-going presentation which makes the paper enjoyable to read and inspiring rather than bludgeons its readers, with the aims and objectives of the S.O.A.

John MacDonald This openness should not, however, be at the expense of maintaining a thoroughgoing hostility to nationalism as an ideology.

Whether in its 'left' or right variety, Scottish nationalism is a totally reactionary phenomenon, fulfilling no progressive function whatsoever.

At a recent aggregate of the Scottish Labour Coordinating Committee in Glasgow, Galloway, highlighting the issue of Scottsell-government, echoed the thoughts of others in the labour movement who have recently argued the increasing relevance of the devolution issue.

One of the main prongs in that argument has been the contention that the Tories may win the next general election in England, but certainly cannot hope to do so North of the Border.

That this is based on a probably false assumption about the trend of opinion in the working class south state and creates the cond tions for a fuller expressic of working class hostili to that entity. Devolution not, then, a fall-back ri sponse to an abatement i working class struggle, bi an optional lever in struggle against capital.

Seen in that way, socit ists may be for devolutir in Tyneside or Merseysir as well as in Scotland.

The priority that o1 accords to devolution is n determined by relati levels of working cla consciousness and strugg north or south of the Bor er. That is a recipe f despair, not a strategy f Moreover, we must dra a sharp line between dev ution and nationalism. TI first is a valid strategy f socialists, the priority which is open to debate.

Nationalism, on the co trary, is, whatever its colo ation, a reactionary ide logy, harnessing. Scottis workers to the interests Scottish capitalism.

This is no academ matter. Jim Sillars was