Striking in Notts

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Above: protest at Holloway jail after Sarah Tisdall was refused leave to appeal against her six-month jail sentence for leaking Heseltine's secrets.

Published by the Socialist Organiser Alliance, 28 Middle Lane, London N8. Printed by Laneridge l Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office. Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views AT A meeting on April 10, striking miners from Ollerton, Beavercote, Bolsover, Bledworth and other North Notts.

pits formed a joint strike committee to begin their own flying pickets in the area. FREE SAKAH TISBALL Immediately mass pickets were planned to hit adjacent pits.

Up until then, the 7000 Notts miners known to be in favour of strike action have faced considerable intimidation - threats of the sack from management, physical attacks from miners opposed to the strike, and usually little support and often outright opposition from their own branch officials.

This has coerced many miners to cross the few picket lines which got through the police blockades. In addition, Notts miners in favour of the strike have been divided in their response to the Notts Area vote against taking strike action, and the clamouring for a national ballot.

400 of the 1100 miners from Cotgrave pit, for example, who were. on strike from March 30 to April 6, eventually went back to work in order to campaign for a strike vote in the national ballot, they thought inevitable.

Improved coordination of the miners in favour of the strike in Notts can only help overcome the confusion and isolation that led to the return to work at Cotgrave. The Joint Strike Committee of the Notts miners makes it quite likely that there will be considerable strike moves in Notts and a resumption of the strike at pits like Cotgrave.

Striking miners in Notts are particularly angry at the way the media has ignored them, falsely presenting Notts as a 100% scab area. The press has worked with the bosses to try and demoralise the strikers both inside and outside Notts.

That is why striking miners in North Notts and other Notts miners in favour of the strike will form an organised contingent on the April 14 march in Nottingham.

As one striker declared at the meeting at which the strike committee was formed, "We need our own area leadership for those supporting this strike. The scabs have got theirs in Chadburn."

.td, London E2. of the SOA. Than Cheul Port £10, £20, confidence of the working class and the authority of the Tory government.

Two Gloucestershire coke merchants have already begun proceedings against the NUM under the anti-union laws. The Coal Board has an injunction waiting to be used against the Yorkshire NUM.

It the NUM executive reiects a ballot, that could be the signal for heavy use of the anti-union laws. And that will be another reason why the miners' fight is a fight for the whole labour movement.

Trade union boycotts by transport workers are already giving vital help to the miners. Rail workers, power workers, gas workers, and water workers all have pay claims on the table. The best way to win this struggle would be for these workers to bring forward action on their claims, strike alongside the Continued page 3 Bks this week to ng Siu Ming £150, Corbishley £40, a Glasgow reader Sarah Stephens B.Moore £4, and Ellis Hillman £4.

That makes £308 so far this month. We neer £1000 to keep on an even keel.

senu money to su,

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