[Dave Milliken reports from Scotland KINNEIL Colliery, Bo'ness…]
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-01-06Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 15 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 15
Dave Milliken reports from Scotland
KINNEIL Colliery, Bo'ness, 12 miles west of Edinburgh, will close in mid-April with the loss of over 300 jobs.
The failure to seriously resist . this closure will undoubtedly result in the Coal Board feeling confident enough to press ahead with the decimation of the Scottish coalfield.
It was known for months that Kinneil was likely to prove the focus for a fight to save jobs, and workers there had campaigned long and hard to raise support, so some serious questions are now being asked about how it came to be that last Monday's conference voted by 12 to 7 to back down.
Simon Martin, NUM Branch Secretary and Labour Party member feels that it can be primarily put down to a lack of leadership. 'We weren't getting any real help. We were being left on our own. I have been instructed by the branch to write to the Executive with some questions to be answered. I feel that if this dispute had been made official we would have won. When Mick McGahey met out branch officials he told them the situation was dark, we weren't getting the support. Much the same can be said of the Labour Party leadership, despite the Conference decision in October.
Regroup
'We have had nothing from Jim Mortimer OI Michael Foot. We did however, win the support of every Scottish constituency party. We shall have to regroup our forces for the future.