Was Scargill right?

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I WOULD like to take issue with some of the points Alan Thornett makes on the NUM in SO 123.

For most rank and file miners the national ballot has been in the last decade a basic democratic guarantee and an affirmation of their union as a national entity.

This is a strong tradition in the NUM.

We also have to see the decision of the NUM executive to go for a national baliot against the background of a failed national ballot on closure and a failure to get action on a regional basis over Kinneil in late 1982; and a situation where it was clear that tensions existed between formal policy and the position of national, regional and locai leadership and their ability to pull their members along with them.

We do not know what exactly happened in the crucial executive meeting where Scargill is alleged to have been wrong to retreat before the right wing. But surely if Scargill had stood out for a strike without a ballot, he would have been in danger of putting down a marker in the eyes of thousands of miners as a manipulator who flouts union democracy for his own purposes.

Moreover even if Scargill had stood firm and won a vote for no national ballot, there is no guarantee that the executive's decision would have been acted upon by many pits.

It is a basic mistake of strike strategy to believe that you need everybody out all at once, 100% from the start. But in the speci: fic circumstances there may well have been widespread defiance.

CHORLTON WOBBLY Khrushchev's kisses no-one misses Pie in the sky won't feed his heirs Joe his great teacher taught him that classes Are to be ignored when the state is theirs.

Workers of the world rest on your backs Bosses and bureaucrats in bloody matrimony In their edifice to inhumanity.

Their common cause is a nation's glory Even Chorlton won't escape its atomic pile Unless workers' action wins back our skies.

Ward Labour Party, Chorlton As the general election approaches, scientific issues already look like being fairly prominent in Labour's campaign.

For example, a row is brewing over nuclear energy, with the right wing-dominated Labour Party Energy Committee ranged against the Environment Study Group.

Meanwhile, Foot is making play for the "Green' vote, and the Labour Party Science and Technology Study Group (STSG), which has been quietly discussing with itself over the last 6 months, is about to bring out a report.

Unfortunately, despite some correct positions on single issues (such as abolishing lead in petrol, stopping Sizewell) and various vague statements of good intention, Labour's overall policy on science and technology (S&T) is no different from that of radical sections of the capitalist class. It still see S&T as basically nunmacaiva marolv noorino It would have been different had a rolling strike movement developed with thousands walking out.

It didn't. The two Derbyshire pits that did come out illustrated the theoretical possibilities and the practical limitations.

To go forward without a ballot would have risked chaos and the further undermining of the national unity so dearly bought in the 1970s. National unity, national ballots, national bargaining are not sacrosanct. But in the concrete circumstances think it is strongly arguable that Scargill was correct to accept the position of those on the executive calling for a national ballot - a position which had strong resonance in the coalfields.

Given the overwhelming balance of static forces against a successful strike in terms of coal stocks, would it not be wrong to enter upon it on a basis of division and rank and file rebellion within the NUM itself.

Fact I think we have to face up to the fact that the situation was lost not because Scargill did not stand firm against the right but because the majority of miners were not prepared to strike in the specific conditions of March 1983.

It is wrong to lump leadership together with that of Bill Sirs in 1980 or with that of the TUC General Council members who betrayed ASLEF last year - or even with MeGahey, leading his men like the Duke of Plaza Toro over Kinneil.

The ballot reaffirms November's vote and gives a reasonably fair picture of the limitations of miners' present consciousness. This may be an unpalatable state of affairs. We have to recognise it if we are to change it.

We cannot try to change miners' minds if we don't really believe they need changing in the first place.

IRK STARR, Oldham Khoo r moto '.... on-aa. uom.

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