Miners' lead militant

Scan page 9

imposed on himself a super-human schedule of speaking engagements, addressing four or five meetings each day seven days a week and the consequences were apparent.

Elected to the General Council in 1927, Cook was isolated and until his death from cancer in 1931, dogged with ill health. When the TUC entered into the 'new realism' of those days, the Mond-Turner talks on how to best collaborate with the employers, Cook campaigned against it with James Maxton, of the ILP.

It was ironic that when - like many on the left now - he turned away from industrial action to support onent, his hopes should not the 1929 Labour governonly be betrayed by McDonald but that he should be witch-hunted by the CP now in the throes of their ultra-left third period.

Cook's final political involvement was with Sir Oswald Mosley who resigned from the Labour Party because it would do nothing for the unemployed. Cook, together with 17 Labour MPs signed the 1930 Mosley Manifesto and supported Mosley's New Party in its initial stages. Had he lived, there can be no doubt he would have broken from Mosley as he headed towards fascism.

Cook was an honest, dedicated and inspiring leader. Despite his lapses, he resisted corruption and defied incorporation. He literally gave his life for his members. We should, we must honour him. His limitations in the end were the limitations of syndicalism. He believed militant trade unionism was enough. When the balance of forces made it impossible for trade unionism even at its most intransigent, to win he. had no other Like Arthur Scargill today he was not prepared to organise against the right wing across the whole union movement. Like Arthur Scargill today he lacked any real strategy for the political development of the membership and was forced to play the game of trade unionism - bargaining his members with Bishops and diplomats.

If Arthur Cook failed to develop beyond syndicalism to Leninism the tragedy of so many of today's leaders, like Arthur Scargill is that they were formed in the politics of that terrible debasement and negation of Leninism, Stalinism.

That, and the ever worsening position of British capitalism, is what makes the building of a rank and file alternative in the unions and a socialist alternative to the political misleaders of our movement even more essential today than in the early years of this century. If an alternative can be built those like A.J. Cook, who sacrificed themselves for the struggle, will not have given their lives in vain.