THE 1984/5 miners strike evokes powerful memories. The tenacity and courage of 160,000 miners out on strike for a year. Massive confrontations and mass pickets - some up to 10,000 strong. The police trap and burning barricades at Orgreave. The 7,500 miners arrested during the 40 were jailed - including two young South Wales miners for life and Terry French for five years. Davey Jones was killed whilst picketing out scabs at Ollerton. Thousands marched behind the coffin of Joe Green, killed on picket duty at the Ferrybridge power station. Remember the cold class hatred of a state which took his house and estate (he was single with his own house) and refused to pay for his funeral out of it.
There was tremendous class struggle leadership given by Arthur Scargill and Peter Heathfieid and the historic Women Against Pit Closures movement-Which mobilised 10,000 women from the pit villages to march through London in June and represented something new and important in the class struggle in Britain.
Ten years on the picture is very different. Arthur Scargill wasn't just right. He was so much right that now there is no longer a coal industry and only the remnants of the NUM.
Naked class hatred, the Tories' thirst for revenge for 1974, the privatisation of power generation, the dash for gas, and the rigging of the market have meant that the NUM has suffered the fastest decline of any union in history. At the time of the strike the NUM had 210,000 members in 170 pits, now the total labour force has shrunk to 10,000 in just 17 pits - and they are still being closed. Privatisation is through Parliament and private mines are already operating.
Biggest since 1926 HISTORY The defeat of the strike, in the biggest confrontation between the trade union movement and the state since 1926, was a huge blow to the whole trade union movement.
The attack on the miners was preceded by the NA's battle of Warrington (and the TUC collapse in front of the anti-union laws) and followed by other militant actions such as Wapping and the seafarers strike. But the defeat of the miners was by far the most important victory for the Tories during the 1980s.
The NUM had played a vanguard role in the modern trade union movement first in the 1920s and again in the 1970s. But the smashing up of the NUM and the mining industry was not inevitable even OUR after the end of the strike - that depended on the continuing betrayals of new realism and the fate of a series of defensive. actions which were to follow.
Nor was the defeat of the strike itself inevitable. Far from it. In fact the strike was a potential winner. At the time of the NACODS vote to join the strike the govTORRETIRE ARIS Thousands marched in defence of the miners in October 1993 ernment was actively preparing for a U-turn - not that many miners held out much hope that NACODS would stand firm. The line was only just held despite the scabbing UDM operation in Nottinghamshire - which was eventually betrayed by its Tory backers.
Arthur Scargill was the most determined national trade union leader the British trade union movement had ever produced. The strike, however, faced «What lost the strike and Neil Kinnock, which ensured the isolation of the strike, and the Communist Party, which in the end organised the back to work move" from the start a serious problem - isolation from the rest of the trade union movement.
The union leaders had moved to the right since 1979 and new realism - the idea that strikes were a bad thing for Labour's election chances - was gaining an increasing hold in the movement. The Labour Party now had the 'dream ticket'.
Faced with this, the unspoken strategy of the strike from day one was the model of 1972 and 1974 - when the miners could win by their own strength alone, when the lights went out after a few weeks and the government was forced to concede.
This was a difficult road to tread. Apart from the scabbing in Notts the state had learned the lessons of the previous strikes and a repeat of Saltley Gate was not on. This time the key was an extension of the strike into other sections of the trade union movement - the opening of a second front. Mass picketing was correct and in many ways the life-blood of the strike, but it was not an adequate strategy for And such a strategy was viable. Throughout the strike repeated possibilities of it spreading presented themselves. In the first stages there were numerous opportunities for other unions to join the miners through pursuing their own wage claims with vigour.
But not a single union took such a hard line and compromise after compromise was reached. The government even intervened directly to broker a compromise settlement on rail and the NUR executive could not grab it fast enough. Some union leaders even argued that it would be a "bad tactic' to be on strike at the same time as the miners.
Later, two national dock strikes over the movement of coal by unregistered labour presented the chance to break the isolation. It was the perfect issue. Both groups of workers were fighting for their jobs and their industry and Tory ministers were already making it clear that they intended to abolish the National Dock Labour Scheme.
It was in the interests of both groups to fight together (and very difficult for either to win alone) yet the dock strike was called off with no settlement just at the point that the government began to panic.
Arthur Scargill was the inspiration of the strike. He fought it until the bitter end and his defence of militant miners against media attack was exemplary: 'I will never condemn brave young miners whose.only crime is to defend their jobs'.
His weakness, however, was his dealings with the TUC and the other union leaders - who held the key if the isolation of the strike was to be effectively broken.
The funds of the South Wales Area Scargill: fought through to the end were sequestrated just before the 1985 TUC congress and demands for solidarity action were at their strongest. The night before the Congress he agreed to the withdraw of resolutions calling for strike action in support for the miners in favour of a disastrous policy of boycotting scab coal going into the power stations - a very difficult policy to make effective even with the will to do it.
These mistakes, however, did not lose the strike. What lost the strike was the treachery of new realism, the TUC and the Neil Kinnock leadership of the Labour Party which ensured the isolation of the strike. Add to this the role of the Communist Party, which in the end was the force which organised the back to work move, which was still opposed by Scargill.
Ten more years
Far from recovering from the defeat of the miners, ten more years of new-realism (with the retirement of Len Murray and the advent of Norman Willis) have compounded the problem. Every chance to turn the tide has been squandered. •Stop strikes to get Labour in office' has remained the clarion call of the rightwing - yet they still have no Labour government to show for it.
The Tories recognised that the defeat of the miners was the green light for wave after wave of anti-union laws which have been introduced without a finger lifted from the TUC.
Ten years on we have seen the loss of four million trade union members, the lowest level of strikes in history and the employers pushing in massive changes in the workplace with the wholesale introduction of new management techniques and a huge army of low-paid and unprotected workers.
With the miners strike, as with so many other issues, the left have been proved to have been right. It was a watershed issue which would determine the political and industrial situation for the next decade or more.
Support movement
A victory for the NUM would have meant a big rise of a Scargillite left in both the unions and the Labour Party. The possibilities of this were shown by the support movement for the miners - a real rank and file movement - and the development of many of the miners themselves, for example NUM banners on the 1985 gay pride march. A defeat on the other hand has left the movement fighting its way back.
Though the results were worse than the left had thought, that did not make them wrong. Those who were wrong were the new realists who have created this situation and now have no answer to the monster they have created.
The future lies not with them but with new generation of militant workers who can rebuild the movement and repair the damage which has been done. They are already there in the background. Their time will come.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 58 12 March 1994, Page 11
was the treachery of new realism, the TUC