Yes, the fight is political

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IAN MacGregor is absolutely right to argue that this strike is about politics. The Sunday Times is right to claim that "If Mrs Thatcher loses she will be left presiding over a country which is not worth governing. 99 We need to stand four square with the miners but we also need to develop political answers which will enable the working class to break through from the pattern of Labour governments we have known in the past.

The main task facing the miners now is winning the strike. We have to point out to the waverers that Arthur Scargill has told the truth. He has been right in the past and he is right now.

*In 1977 he argued that the bonus scheme would be divisive and he was 100% right.

*In 1982 he alleged that a hit-list existed and he was right.

*A year ago he explained the extent of Tory plans and he was right again. Thatcher and MacGregor are still telling ieș.

A job lost is a job lost to our class forever.

A future of industrial barbarism awaits those who keep their jobs if the union is beaten. Compulsory redundancies in Nottingham, Lancashire and Staffordshire will be on the agenda if the union is beaten.

As the Report of the Select Committee on the Mines pointed out: "If the scale and pattern of redundancies in 1983-4 is repeated in 1984-5, the number of miners aged over 50 will be relatively small by the end of the year."

There is never a right time" to fight. The time of year is wrong, the bargaining balance embodied in the large coal stocks is wrong. The time is tough. But the time is right.

If miners stand up now they have a chance of turning back Thatcher. A defeat now can only intensify existing weakness, strengthen Thatcher's and MacGregor's bargaining hand, lead to recriminations and demoralisation and make another national stand very difficult indeed.

The main task is winning the strike. But it is not the only task.

Winning would strengthen the miners and the resolve of every other militant and the Capital already bleeds the mines. The Financial Times points out: "If the UK (mining industry) were to enjoy the same levels of subsidy as that granted to other EEC countries, the industry's finances would in themselves show a profit. "

West Germany subsidises its coal at £8.6 a tonne, the French at £17.2 per tonne, but the UK at only £3.2 per tonne.

Meanwhile, since 1974, interest charges have risen by 642% to a total of £341 million. To the immense benefit of the finance houses, 98% of the NCB's assets are financed by interest-bearing loans.

A discussion has to start in the NUM as to how an industry which exists for the benefit of capital can exist for the benefit of the workforce. How can that clause which states one of the NUM's objects to be "to join with other organisations for the purpose of and with a view to the complete abolition of capitalism" be implemented, whether that capitalism is of the free market or the state capitalist variety?

Some of the starting points we must argue for are union veto of all pit closures and job loss and the sharing out of work between all existing miners with a reduction of hours and no wage reductions.

We must argue for the finances of the NCB and its suppliers and customers to be opened to the NUM and for the companies which have spent years cashing in to be taken into public ownershp.

We must argue for all debts and charges on the NCB to be cancelled.

But we must state and restate that old fashioned nationalisation has failed. e need a system by which the workers who produce the coal manage the mines as part of a planned fuel industry in a planned society.

It is essential that a discussion of these issues, dead as a strong force for many years, should revive in the mines and in other industries.

We must raise all these points in relation to winning the strike.

The Tories have a revolutionary strategy. They wish to rip up society as we have known it. They want to change British society from what they see as a seedy, run-down holiday camp, into a slightly relaxed version of Auschwitz.

We cannot just answer this by defensive measures such as strikes, essential as they are.

we must plan to rip up today's society in the same way as Thatcher and MacGregor. We need a socialist vision and a socialist programme.

e need to urgently think through how, if politicians like Thatcher are "left presiding over a country which is not worth governing", they can be replaced by a government which will act in the interests of the working class and move in the direction of building do