["THESE are the times that try men's souls"…]

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"THESE are the times that try men's souls" , was how a famous pamphlet by Tom Paine, written during the American war of independence, began.

The eighteenth-century American colonists had their backs to the wall. Some despaired of success against the might of Britain and gave way to moods of defeatism. Others changed • sides or turned traitor.

These are the times when the political soul of everybody in the British labour movement is being probed and tested — especially of those who claim to be on the Left. Anybody in the labour movement who is no good in the miners' strike will never be good for anything.

The titanic battle between the miners and the Tory government is moving into its sixth week. Nobody but a political child or a political idiot can now argue that this is not a stand-up political fight between the Tories and the entire labour movement.

Arthur Scargill told the truth last Saturday in Nottingham when he said: "Stop merely saying you support us. Come out and join us. We are facing the organised might of the state machine. There is a police state in Nottinghamshire"

The seafarers' leader Jim Slater - no political firebrand he - went so far as to paint this bleak picture of what is at stake:

"If the miners lose their strike, it would be the last strike we would fight for decades to come"

Maybe this is exaggerated. But nobody should be complacent about it. Nobody in the labour movement has the right to be complacent about it.

The Tories believe that if they can beat the miners they will have broken the back of militant trade unionism for a generation to come. That is why " ... Mrs Margaret Thatcher is willing to spend any amount of money to ensure that the Government is not again defeated by the miners' union" (as the Times put it, April 18).

That is why they have provoked this strike. That is why they have set up a special 'War Cabinet' to deal with the miners' strike.

That is why they are prepared to hit the miners with everything they need to hit them with to beat them into submission. That is why some employers are already going to court under the anti-union laws — they could bankrupt the NUM.

That is why the Tories will declare a state of emergency and use the army if that is the only way to break the miners' resistance to the decimation of their industry and the destruction of their communities.

The miners are their target right now, but if the miners go down no section of the working class will be safe. The gains of decades of working class activity will go down before Thatcher's juggernaut like farmland walls before a tank.

Industrial protective practices, the health service, the safeguards of local democracy — all will be flung in one heap to the bottom of Mrs Thatcher's dustbin.

The battle now being fought by the miners is a battle of the whole labour movement. The tragedy is that it is not a battle being fought by the whole labour movement. The miners"

COt fight alone.

The transport workers solidarity with the miners has been magnificent. But it is the least we can do. And it is not enough.

The whole movement must take action together with the miners. This situation demands a general strike.

Only a general strike can stop the Tories. The alternative is to let the miners get mauled in a strike that could stretch into next winter.

It is not impossible that the miners could lose such a strike. For against the miners and the labour movement stands a solidly united ruling class.

Despite differences such as those between Heatn and Thatcher in the Tory party, on this issue they are all bonded together with the grim purpose of defeating the working class. David Owen made the Alliance's position plain: "I am voting for the police" he said in the Parliamentary debate on the strike.

Two times in the last: 12 years the ruling class have been beaten by the miners. •Now. they are determined win whatever the cost.

From Thatcher, to the CBI, to the Cabal of Chief Constables coordinating with military precision the physical war against the miners, to the brainwashed young coppers bussed into Nottinghamshire, they are one reactionary phalanx concentrated on defeating the labour movement.

And waiting in the wings stands the army, which they will call in if they need it to break the miners.

And on our side? Individual trade union. leaders have given limited suppert to the miners, but the TUC weasels and wriggles. Legless Len Murray is like a confused, nervous sheep shuffling from foot to foot outside the slaughterhouse door while its peers are being dealt with inside.

The day of action over GCHQ was no more than a small militant spasm. We need concerted, coordinated action, not mere spasms.

We need a general strike in support of the miners.

Perhaps the single most disgusting thing in the labour movement now is Neil Kinnock, its political leader. He still calls himself a man of the Left. Yet he has not had the guts or the principle or even the decency to come down squarely on the side of the miners in what is indisputably a political strike provoked by the Tories for their own political ends.

He has joined the baying dogs of the Tory media and the baying Tories in the House of Commons to condemn "violent" picketing. He thinks the best way to prepare for a Labour victory in the next election is to rat on the miners' strike now.

In fact, of course, the depression and demoralisation that will follow a defeat on the scale of that the whole movement will suffer if the miners go down will be bound to have bad effects on the movement's electoral prospects too.

The miners' strike has probed Neil Kinnock's soul and uncovered nothing but a faulty pocket calculating machine.

The Labour Left has been in retreat for two years. Kinnock's election confused and divided it. As well as the bandwagon-jumpers and those former Lefts who had been softened up by a little bit of local government "power' large numbers of honest leftists decided to wait and see, to give Kinnock a chance.

Some of them felt they should not 'rock the boat' Now they have their answer. After the election defeat in 1979 we set out to change the labour movement so that "never again" would there have to be a miserable Labour government like the Callaghan-Wilson administrations. We set out to remake and renovate the movement.

Kinnock's behaviour in the great test of the miners' strike shows the extent of our failure so far. For what is to be expected of a future Labour prime minister who behaves like this in a decisive class-struggle battle where the immediate fate of the whole labour movement is at stake?

We can expect from Kinnock what we got from Wilson and Callaghan — or worse.

The fight must be resumed in the Labour Party right now. Labour Party members should insist that Kinnock stops weaseling and stands on the line with the miners.

Many local Labour Parties are already organising fundraising, solidarity meetings, help with accommodation and transport, even door-to-door collections for the miners.

JOHN HARRIS

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e miners. Others should follow.

We must collect money for the miners, back up their picket lines, and denounce everyone in the movement who is not fully with the miners as a traitor.

For Tony Benn was right, and spoke for the militant in those industries who supply the equipment that the mining industry needs.

•We cannot accept the Government with its rotten dictatorial policies designed to crush working people, in the interests of the class that paid for their election. If we stick which is stronger than are — and they know it"

The miners' strike is the battle that will shape the labour movement for a long time to come.

We are strong enough to beat them. That's why we must fight in the labour move-