Police State Tories

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ORGANISE FOR A GENERAL STRIKE! "THERE IS no inger a soft option. We vill use aggressive action against intimidation to enable miners to go to work" - Peter Joslin, Chief Constable of Warwickshire.

The Government and the police, in their determination to break the miners' strike, have turned whole areas of Britain into virtual police states.

In a massive centrallycoordinated operation, thou sands of police (over 8000 according to New Scotland Yard's own figures) have been mobilised to prevent flying pickets reaching strike-breaking coalfields.

Roadblocks have been set up, and Kent miners were stopped at the Dartford tunnel and warned that they would be arrested if they crossed the county border.

Chief Constable David Hall, head of the New Scotland Yard strike-breaking "nerve centre, told the press on Monday that his 'clearing house' was handling 400 calls per hour from Chief Constables throughout the country, outlining requirements for officers.

Enforce *We arrange their movement from one area to another. We are determined to enforce that mass picketing is not permitted"

In addition, phone calls coming into the Yorkshire NUM headquarters have been interrupted by the police, and call boxes in Nottingham being used by pickets have been cut off.

So much for the image of the good old British bobby, non-political, impartial, and never taking sides in an industrial dispute.

The police know who their paymasters are. As the NGA pickets found out at Warrington, the cops are ruthless. well-organised and determined upholders of the 'rights' of scabs, the property of employers , and the whole anti-working-class offensive of the Tory government.

The Tories like to present themselves as upholders of democracy. But to defeat the miners they have been prepared to tear up the elementary rights of a citizen to travel freely round the country (of course British governments, Labour and Tory, long ago ended the equally elementary right to travel between countries) and of trade unionists to picket strike-breakers.

Contempt

It is the same contempt for democracy that the Tories have demonstrated in their proposals to abolish the Greater London Council and the metropolitan county councils. For this government all the cant about democracy' goes out of the window when it comes to dealing with their political opponents.

Despite the police, the flying pickets still managed to bring the majority of pits to a halt. And the Coal Board's decision not to proceed with its High Court injunction against the NUM was almost certainly due to the militancy of the pickets. -But there is no room for complacency. As Yorkshire area president Jack Taylor says: "On the surface this appears to be a victory for the Yorkshire miners and those who have been supporting them. But we are under no illusions.

"The main struggle - against pit closures and for jobs - will have to be continued with renewed determination"

For the striking miners, the immediate tasks are clear: to picket out every pit, and to stop the movement of coal to the power stations, docks, and depots.

The rest of the movement must give the miners every possible support. Trade union branches and Labour Parties should be raising money for the strikers, providing accommodation for pickets, and organising trade union boycotts of coal.

Trades councils should be forming support committees in the areas.

Most importantly of all, we must be urging defiance of the anti-union laws at every level - from solidarity action at rank and file level to the demand for the TUC to break collaboration with the Tories and organise for a general strike.

Injured picket at Thoresby colliery HUM NUM president Arthur Scargill denounced the police moves as "almost tantamount to a paramilitary state".

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Sotialist Organiser no. 171 March 22 1984 Page

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By Jim Denham