Cardowan gives a warning
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-09-29Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 15 →
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'Nice try la‹ a try lads, better luck next they I time round!' This is the general tenor of an article by Mick McGahey (Communist Party member and President of the Scottish NUM) dealing with the recent closure of the Cardowan colliery, which appears in the latest issue of Scottish Miner, paper of the Scottish NUM.
McGahey rightly talks of the "heroic fight for Cardowan" But why did the miners who put up the heroic fight end up voting two-to-one to accept the closure? McGahey does not even ask the question, never mind attempt to answer it.
With equal accuracy MeGahey talks of 'the breadth of solidarity among the other Scottish pits". This refers in particular to "the spontaneous strikes at the Polmaise, Polkemmet and Bogside pits, during the week of the NUM national conference, to prevent transfers of Carowan men to these pits.
But what did the Scottish NUM Executive do to consolidate and further extend this breadth of solidarity? Nothing.
When delegations from Polmaise and Polkemmet turned up at the NUM national conference on the second day of their strike, they never even got into the conference hall, never mind onto the conference platform.
McGahey continues by politely thanking all who supported the fight at Cardowan: 'the Labour MPs, the STUC, the Triple Alliance, Strathelyde Regional Council, Strathkelvin District Council, the community associations, churches and political parties.
So impressed is MeGahey by this support that he regards it as a model for the future: ''This is the kind of mass backing which we are going to build for the whole Scottish coalfield in the coming weeks and months."
But there never was any campaign built to mobilise "mass backing" for Cardowan. When McGahey talks of the STUC or the Triple Alliance, he does not mean the hundreds of thousands of trade unionists who belong to these bodies. He means his fellow bureaucrats who run these organisations.
Instead of organising for confrontation (such as by building upon the kind of spontaneous strike action displayed during the fight over Cardowan) the union leadership maintains a purely propaganda campaign and seeks allies outside the labour movement