Victory to the miners!

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THE miners' strike is vital to the interests of every British trade unionist. In the trench warfare that has characterised the industrial struggle since 1979 it represents a major onslaught by the forces of capital, led by their vanguard, the Tory government. It is a battle which could be potentially decisive for both the government and the trade union movement, coming as it does hot on the heels of the NGA and the GCHQ affair.

This is a provoked strike. It has been planned. It has been prepared for.

As early as 1978 the Tory cabinet asked present Minister of Transport Nicholas Ridley to prepare a detailed reconnaisance on the enemy forces. Ridley singled out groups like teachers, road transport workers and steelworkers as amongst those who could be taken on and gunned into submission.

Within months of Thatcher taking power a derisory offer to the steel unions had provoked a national confrontation.

: Thanks to the defeatism which riddled Generals Murray and Sirs, the Thatcher administration gained its first major victory and opened the ranks of labour to the subsequent toll of jobs and conditions The government strategy was to postpone an all-out attack on the strongest groups such as the miners until unemployment had sapped Labour's vigour and the anti-union laws were on the statute book and tested.

The miners had to be moulded, disorganised and weakened before a set-piece battle could. commence. So in 1981 Thatcher gave ground, made concessions but kept her guns firing.

The Labour government had already, as so often, laid the groundwork. The strength of the 1972 and 1974 strikes was based on the national wage scales.

Since its introduction in 1978, the productivity scheme has gone some way LABOUR FOCUS ON EASTERN EUROPE AN FOR I ROCK • MUSIC WENEDEN A ROPOSIN COURSE Box 23, 136 Kingsland High St., London E8 to meeting its objective of splitting up the miners.

'One rate for the job' means united action.

Today more than a fifth of miners' wages consist of productivity payments.

Those at the safe and productive pits can earn over £40 a week in bonus - a strong basis for conservatism.

Thatcher's biggest howitzer was the generous redundancy terms.

Last year 20,000 jobs were sold in the pits, bought for £193 million in Judas money.

At the end of March 1981 there were 225,000 miners, today there are 190,000.

Other lessons had been learned by governments from the 1970s strikes. A Civil Contingencies Unit in the Cabinet Office kept watch constantly on the essential industries, assessing their vulnerability to disputes. after the experience of the NGA strike, the National Recording Centre at Scotland Yard was made responsible for police all over the country being used to stop mass pickets. Thatcher and MacGregor were ready to take on the praetorian guard of the workingeclass.

The boss class is united and determined.

If they can blast the miners into oblivion, they can break through on all fronts. A severe defeat for the miners would have serious Falklands-style ideological repercussions amongst workers. If the early 70s revenged 1926, capital could now take its revenge for Edward Heath. 'The defeat of Mr Scargill's miners will do more for the economic prospects of Britain than any chancellor could ... " (Sunday Times editorial, 18 March).

The strike was not manipulated by the devious Arthur Scargill as the bosses' press alleges.

It was deliberately provoked by lan MacGregor.

The decision • to close Cortonwood pit with four weeks' notice, a pit which had been promised five vears' life and which involved many miners who had recently moved from other pits, was in violation of the NCB-NUM procedures.

MacGregor felt now was the time to show his hand and announce the hit list Scargill had long and correctly alleged existed. 20 pits and 20,000 jobs would go in the next 12 months.

MacGregor and Thatcher felt that this announcement might well herald strike action in Scotland and Yorkshire. They were gambling on the rest of the coalfields staying put.

They have temporarily lost that gamble. But the workers cannot stand still.

The executive of the NUM should now announce that the strike is a national strike and will be organised and controlled nationally.

They should tell the members to dig in for a hard and bitter struggle.

The executive should campaign throughout the coalfields to inspire and deepen the commitment of the membership.

They should announce:

there will be no national ballot. The purpose of the call for the national ballot is to break the strike. It is the demand of the blacklegs who would consign their brothers and sisters to the dole queues. It is the voice of Thatcher and MacGregor in our midst.

This argument must be put across again and again to those in the safe pits. Not only have you a duty to fight for your fellow members. Your own future is not secure!

The Tory strategy will not stop at this year's mutilation. The drive for contraction of the mining industry to a few super pits with a handful of jobs will continue. You will not be allowed to succumb to your own lack of understanding of your own self-interest in the shameful secrecy of a ballot. You will not be allowed to vote your comrades out of a job.

National direction and organisation is required to build the strike in the pits. But the strike cannot be Jack Taylor won in the pits. The arguments for the fight to stop pit closures has to be got across to the entire trade union and Labour Party spectrum.

We have to hammer home that a job sold is a job gone forever. That the UK pits produce the cheapest deep-mined coal in the world.

That every pit pays for millions of pounds worth of interest to the capitalist money lenders.

That Thatcher's "massive subsidy" is a fraction of the cost of the Falklands war.

Demonstration in Scotland in That the miners are not the aristocratic elite Fleet Street paints, with surface workers earning £75 basic a week.

miners will be a defeat for us all.

Armed with these arguments the miners must move.

The time of year is not a good one. The coal stocks are high. Only light minded dilettantes would fail to measure the odds. But if stocks are 24 million tons today, they were 17 million in 1972.

There is a magical chemical which can instantly dissolve those stocks as a weapon for Thatcher and MacGregor. Its name is solidarity.

Mass picketing must be organised consisting of miners and other workers to take the struggle into the wider movement.

*The open cast mines which provide a financial boost to the NCB must be stopped.

*AIl British ports must be closed to coal.

*Not one piece of coal must move in Britain. All TGWU drivers and ASLEF and NUR members must boycott the movement. of coal.

*A campaign must be mounted to bring out Britain's power workers.

*The TUC said it would call a one-day general strike if GCHQ workers were sacked. The miners strike is just as important. A one-day all-out stoppage should be called immediately.

If this strategy was implemented, victory would be in sight. But while the boss class is united and determined - witness its POLMAISE COLLIERY SCOTTISH AREA SHERENDER support of the miners on 24 March police hordes — our own movement is divided. Solidarity such we suggest will require a hard fight.

It its meetine on Marc y the lUC General Coun cil failed to even discuss the lite and death issue. It was not raised by miners' delegate, Mick McGahey.

If the fight is to be won, the struggle must be taken into the TUC. If Murray and Basnett are not prepared to fight, the tuc left must organise.

Evans and Bickerstaffe and Tony Dubbins should form a miners support committee and appeal directly to the ranks of all unions • to support the The ranks can move now in the branches and stewards committees to form local support committees. We don't have to wait for the trade union leaders.

If possible, support groups should be organised around the trades councils.

We must raise again the call of miners president Herbert Smith in 1926 when he berated other union leaders to stop talking and 'Get on the field!' In particular we have to say to the Labour Party leaders, stop lending support to Thatcher and get on the field.

Kinnock's statement "when people become violent in the process of picketing I condemn it" is a shameful endorsement and amplitication of the lies of the Tories and the media which can only harm the Every pressure must be put on Labour's leaders to give total and unconditional support to the miners, particularly as a campaign of mass picketing outside the miners will require us to prepare for an attack from the courts.

The NCB have not renewed the offensive against the Yorkshire miners but the use of the anti-union laws may be expected from the CEGB or British Rail or a host of smaller employers.

Every Labour Party branch must pass resolutions calling for the Labour Party to be put on a war footing and devote all its resources to this dispute.

Every local Labour Party should make all its facilities available to the miners, whether they be local or visiting pickets.

Leaflet local workplaces, put up miners' pickets and organise pickets themselves.

Extra-parliamentary

campaign is a pet word in the Party. Now is the chance to make it real.

A campaign on these lines could start developing the perspective of an all-out general strike. But right now what's essential is to push the dispute another few miles forward.

Now is the hour for every single person who opposes Thatcher's Britain to stand up and be counted.

Join the Labour Party Write to: The Labour Party, 150 Walworth Road, London SE17 IJT.

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Socialist Organiser no.172 March 29 1984 Page 3 TORAGE STRENGTH, S TOL SAY Labour slams police Nottingham Socialist Organiser supporters report THE BATTLE to shut down the Nottinghamshire pits is still being waged - in the face of an unprecedented operation by thousands of police.

On Sunday right/Monday morning (25th/26th), hundreds of miners were stopped from entering Nottinghamshire by police who threatened mass arrests.

The pickets asked: If we carry on towards the colliery, will we be arrested?' 'Any colliery'. 'What are you doing with that list of our names?' 'We're keeping hold of it in case there is any more trouble' 'Where do we go now?' 'Home' The police stopped every vehicle at the county border, and checked every person. There were many arrests.

At one major road block, about 100 miners marched 10 miles before being confronted by hundreds of police. Scuffles broke out, but the weight of police numbers forced the pickets back.

The Nottingham labour movement is starting to organise for the miners, and the question of the police is being taken up by the Constituency Labour Parties. An emergency County Labour Party meeting is being pushed for to attempt to get the Labour-controlled County Council to take a firm stand against flying police.

Dan Duncan reports

from Sheffield AS THE coal strike moves into its third week, the NUM has consi derably stepped up its action.

This week has seen the formaUNIT 0 Kent miners' wives marching in Leicester YOURFIGHT SOPPOR 34. 3% 1 YOUR NO PIT Closite

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CZECHOSLOVARIA: NO ROOME

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