criticise Scargill's role

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-SCIENCE all these requirements. Neverthe- being chemically identical to norless it said that the I-131 was still mal iodine, I-127. • was released and because it was. that sa tibied ais per ustance .on tre contnen. Amo Inere • alt caused between 5000 and 50,00C released. but various factors, (süch as rainfall, extra deaths worldwide. As many one small gland, the thyroid, which the NRPB forgot about age-distribution population) as a medium-scale war. THE RUSH to defend Arthur Scargill in the letters page of SO 125 and 126 against my rather mild criticism in the lead article of SO 123 requires some comment.

Not so much on Martin Hoare and Mark Starr, who simply present the arguments of Trevor Bell and the right wing of the NUM - "a national ballot was desired by many members and the NEC was correct to grant this was correct to accept: the position of those on the executive calling for a national ballot" , but on Martin Thomas.

He accepts that the decision for a national ballot was wrong, but questions both whether it was within the powers of NUM President Arthur Scargill to avoid it, and further whether the miners were in the end prepared to strike given the slump and the size of coal stocks.

The discussion is useful since it involves our assessment of the most militant and important left reformist trade union leader in Britain and his performance during the first major strike of his presidency. So what happened?

There is little doubt that Scargill influenced the way the Welsh strike developed by telling the South Wales executive (doubtless influenced by the October blunder) that if they wanted to defend Lewis Merthyr a lead would have to come from Wales itself. He would then support this and seek to generate support. Thus in the first few days he was predicting that the strike would "spread like wildfire".

From the first day the driving force of the strike was the Welsh miners themselves, organised by the Joint Lodges Committee. They travelled the country in their hundreds, arguing that the strike should be spread area by area.

The decision of the Yorkshire area executive, lobbied by Welsh miners on the first day of the strike, to call their members out, was very strong and was a major escalation of the strike. Their decision, however, to delay the starting date for one week was a serLa few years ago, the nuclear industry was ronfid. ently stating that no-one had ever been killed by nuclear power. Nowadays, hardly a month goes by without an increase in the estimates!

In SO 125, I wrote of the possible 260 cases (and deaths). of thyroid cancer caused by the release of radioactive iodine (I-131) from the Windscale fire in 1957. I wrote too soon!

Arcordino to Inhn tiranhart in New Scientist (March 31), the National Radiological Protection Board's (NRPB's) report missed out the most serious element of the escape of radioactivity when coming up with its figures.

Now, all radioactive substances can have effects on health under the wrong. circumstances, but several conditions must be satisfied before a release of a radioactive substance can have serScotland, and Kent would have been out with Wales. There would have been a different dynamic to the situation. It is more difficult to stop strikes which have already begun than to prevent them before they get off the ground.

Mark Starr argues that we should be realists and recognise that the feeling for a national strike just simply was not there, as proven by the October ballot, that we should recognise reality and get on with an education job. But that is not leadership.

(A similar weakness seems to have been reflected among the left on the Yorkshire area executive, who, as far as I can see, supported the delay of the strike for a week on the ground that more 'education' was needed among the membership. Unfortunately education doesn't come that formal way. The development of militancy is linked crucially to the momentum and dynamic with which the strike develops.

No-one holds the position anita donnarnie hames a lot of concentrated by the body into characterised by Martin Thomas that: "correct leadership can automatically, always and at will, generate and win struggles"

As Marxists we say that it is the job of leaders to develop struggle when the potential for it is there. We say this to the TUC and the union leaders about the Tory government.

Not that every section of workers has been simply waiting to walk out against the Tories, but that the potential was there, shown by the numerous major strikes of the past four years, to develop a mass struggle: The job of the leaders was to grasp that potential and develop it.

The development of the strike in South Wales is a good example of this. Would a coldly conducted ballot with no strike action to raise militancy have produced a strike majority? I doubt it (despite previous votes against closures when a strike was not posed).

The militancy which produced the strike vote was developed By Les Hearn :

But there was one substance ice utit MeNS walen from the underground sit-in at Lewis Merthyr, and by the sup- porting strikes which followed at some pits. This produced a slim majority in the ballot. After the strike started, there was a very rapid development of militancy which was reflected in a huge South Wales majority for strike action in the national ballot. The process is obvious.

My view during the strike, and I thought it was the view of SO, was that the national strike would have developed in a similar way had Scargill and the left stuck to their guns, i.e. South Wales out first followed by Yorkshire, Kent and Scotland along with at least individual pits in other areas. Those on strike would then picket out the pits still working in a period during which the general level of militancy among miners would have been rising with the momentum and dynamic of the strike.

Mark argues polonium-210 (Po-210).

Polonium was made at Windscale in the reactor cores ('pile') for use in atomic bombs, and it was released as a gas when one of these niles caught fire. Its long FuNN half-life of 140 days meant that there was still half of it left after 140 days, when virtually all of the 1-131 had broken down. The radiation it produced was more dangerous than that of the iodine as well, particularly when absorbed in the body, either by breathing it in or by eating plants or animals with it in.

Most worryingly, fish and shell fish can concentrate polonium by a factor of 1000 or more!

John Urquhart tries to use such figures as are available to work out a more realistic estimate of the health effects.

'He estimates that the Po-210 released increased the total dose to the UK population by a factor of five, giving about 1000 cancer deans (win several dozen ucats 1. 11- dundler for this kind of deyelopment could endanger the unity of the NUM - which, he says, is contained in the national ballot tradition. But, important as it is, such unity cannot be placed above the development of mass struggle and therefore unity in action - particularly in a situation which was undoubtedly the crucial turning point in resistance to mass closures in the coal industry.

Now unless last month's serious setback can be ieversed -which is not impossible, but very difficult - the labour force in the coal industry will be cut in half, and many miners will face the "unity' of the dole queue.

No-one, of course, disputes that Scargill wants to stop pit closures, but that is hardly the point. What I am arguing is that h began by supporting - even prd moting to some extent - the spreading of a strike throughout the coalfields but he failed to carry the fight against the right wing on the NEC at the crucial meeting which he himself had called.

No-one, as far as I know, before the NEC meeting was predicting even the remotest possibility that the decision would be for a national ballot. Yet the dramatic turn around happened - on a motion from a tiny right-wing area, Leicestershire.

From his confident statements the day before that he wanted a unanimous decision supporting the strikes he emerged to tell the media that he had personally supported the motion calling for a ballot (which also declared null and void the strike decision in Scotland, Yorkshire and Kent). Afterwards he told the Morning Star "We did not pick Lewis Merthy. But the unofficial action to save it was a fact of life. Accepting that the strike had taken place, the only sensible thing to do was-to go for a national ballot."

That is not the language of someone forced into the position after a fight and making a formal statement to the press and TV. It implies that Lewis Merthyr was not the right battle ground and defends the ballot as the "only sensible thing"

It overwhelmingly suggests to me that concessions were made to the right wing at the crucial point of struggle. which could increase that figure.

Alternatively, looking at deaths from leukemia in 16 English counties, Urquhart estimates that some 1200 extra deaths could be due to the Windscale fire.

Leukemia

Unfortunately (or fortunate. ly?) most cancer deaths caused by radiation would be lost among the far greater numbers caused by smoking, diet, etc. Leukemia rates are more sensitive to radiation lev. els, and leukemias are thought to account for some 15% of cancers due to nuclear accidents. So the total number of cancer deaths from Windscale may be as high as 8000!

A final point for CND sup porters. Both British and Americ an atom bombs used Po-210, sc the hundreds of A-bomb tests ir ine 4us, bus, and ous coula nave 11- san- sen. 11 1. - --.

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democratic demand"; or, as Mark Starr puts it, "Scargill