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DEMOLITION MANY militants hoped that March 29 would be a double celebration, combining demonstrations and industrial action over the Tories' attacks on local government with the news that all of Britain's pits were closed down. It did not come to pass.

The police are fighting the pickets — and the police are winning.

Part of the problem is lack of preparation. Yorkshire President Jack Taylor feels 'There is a lack of political awareness in some areas. Perhaps the union has not explained its case long enough. Over the last two years the union has been a campaigning union but if you plant seeds one day you don't get fruit the next."

Fair enough. And the objective situation facing the left is a tough one.

The incentive scheme has divided the union. Many miners do feel they will be OK and should keep their heads down. Some may even feel : that their brothers going to the wall may help them survive.

But surely the defeat of the ballot in late '82 should have been the danger signal and I should have led to the whole union being put on a war footing.

Is it really true to say that the last 12 months have seen a detailed, inspiring, sustained campaign in Lancashire, in Nottinghamshire? Many of the miners picketing have said that miners in those areas are hearing the argument for the first time now.

The ammunition has been there for 18 months at least. Yet is hasn't been got across to very many Joe Averages.

KEEL It isn't getting across now. of course, because of police organisation and brutality and because of media propaganda.

The police have thrown a ring of steel around those areas which are working. They have physically divided the NUM in two.

A tremendous amount of energy, ingenuity, time and money has gone into evading the attentions of the boys in blue, and in the last week it has been decreasingly successful. Detours down minor roads or going the long way round has still meant, sooner or later, encountering a police roadblock.

At its gentlest, police intervention represents harassment. One group of miners travelling from South to North Wales was stopped no less than 12 times! Another group of Yorkshire pickets were forced to leave their cars and walk seven miles to the nearest colliery, where they were then picked up by police and taken back to Yorkshire.

Harsher has been the fate of the pickets who had their windscreen smashed by police crowbars to be arrested for obstruction.

Pickets from Kellingley Colliery near Pontefract who went into a Notts pub for a drink were arrested and taken to Mansfield police station where they were questioned about their political beliefs.

Four pickets from Bentley Colliery were detained for three hours, photographed and fingerprinted and their personal details filed. Obviously extensive dossiers are being built up.

Pickets at Lewis Merthyr Pickets who do get to working collieries have faced increasing violence. Police have quickly charged and dispersed any meaningful gatherings of pickets, even intimidating those going in who want to stop, and confiscating leaflets.

Those working have been supported by their leaders who have simply refused to campaign for national policies and have amplified and developed the media lies about 'violence', 'lack of democracy' and so forth.

As the number of pits still working has remained at 38, including the whole of Nottingvotes. By Tuesday March 27 eight right wing area leaders held a semi-clandestine cabal near Leicester to intensify their strike-breaking campaign for this demand.

As we have pointed out, this demand, in today's specific circumstances, has nothing at all to do with democracy. It is simply an attempt to stop miners in South Wales, Yorkshire and Scotland fighting for their jobs - a bankrupt attempt to say to them "For God's sake go to Thatcher's dole queues quietly."

Where were these people — Jack Jones, Trevor Bell, Ray Chadburn, Sid Vincent in 1977?

In July that year Joe Gormley was defeated in his attempt to impose the divisive bonus scheme. This decision confirmed the result of a national ballot held in 1974 when miners voted by over 60% to keep a united wage structure and a united union.

These gentlemen conspired with Gormley to overturn those decisions. They campaigned loudly for another national ballot.

It took place in October 1977. 55% of the miners said no to the incentive scheme. In Yorkshire the figure was over RRI 75% against. In Scotland it was 83%.

What did these people, who live and die by a national ballot, who kneel at the side of their bed nightly to pray to the Almighty Hewer for its immediate deliverance do? Did they accept the verdict so strongly delivered by this vessel of perfection?

No they did not! They immediately to break the result. Jack Jones announced he would not abide by the result. "I supported a national ballot because I thought it would go my way, said Jack. "I only support national ballots on that basis.

On 9 December 1977 the NUM Executive, led by Jack and his cronies of 1984, overturned the national ballot.

Each area, they said, could go its own way: the very thing they are saying today should not be allowed to happen at any price.

The strategy of the right wing is clear. Keep the union divided. Keep their members working. Intensify the clamour for a national ballot and at the April 12 Executive show their hand.

They claim they already have 13 out of 24 votes in their pocket. This is the strategy for breaking the strike and breaking the union. For the first time since Gormley's demise a hardened-out right appears

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DANGER out

NHOr JOHN HARRIS