THE LAST deep mine in South Wales has closed. Miners at Tower colliery voted to accept redundancy, reversing an earlier decision to fight closure.
The vote followed an unprecedented week of manoeuvring by British Coal. In the words of one Tower miner, "If British Coal worked as hard to keep the pits open as they do to close them down, we'd all be smiling.
The events which unfolded are as bizarre as they are tragic. The first response by British Coal was to try to undermine the vote, by pressurising individual miners to accept redundancy; they even asked one coal-face team to vote, as a team, on the redundancy offer.
By next day management were forced to accept this contravened review procedures and all offers of redundancy were withdrawn. It seemed the pit was entering a lengthy review period.
British Coal then announced the pit would be kept open after all, if miners accepted pay cuts and increased production. In one week their position had changed from closing the pit, because of lack of markets, to keeping it open with increased output! The NUM were given 48 hours to respond.
A 27 hour sit-in at the pit by Ann Clwyd MP began, with Woman Against Pit Closures lobbying the Welsh Office and calling an impromptu demonstration at the pit gates.
The following morning a recalled NUM mass meeting reaffirmed the decision to take the pit into review. British Coal responded with a cynically worded statement, announcing they had decided to keep the pit open after all.
This was widely reported by local and national media as a victory for the campaign.
The sting in the tail was the last sentence: 'Men will be paid fully in accordance with the industry's collective agreements as regards basic grade rates and the local agreements covering incentive and bonus arrangements'.
This sounded innocuous enough but 'basic grade rates' meant re-grading most of the men at the pit, affecting paypackets by £100 or more per week as well as final redundancy payments.
British Coal were asking the men to lose a further £20,000 or more on top of the £9,000 already sacrificed - for a pit that wasn't guaranteed a future beyond the next three monthly review.
The NUM argued British 1 Coal had no right to pull the pit : out of the review procedure.: Being in the review would have: protected all existing pay and redundancy terms.
Alll the confusion and double talking, along with the huge loss of pay and redundancy money, placed enormous pressure on the miners. A further mass meeting voted to accept redundancy.
But as Phil White, chair of Tower Lodge, pointed out: "The men didn't close the pit, British Coal did.' The closure of Tower brings to an end a remarkable history of struggle and organisation in the South Wales coalfield.
The South Wales Miner's Federation, which organised 250,000 miners at its peak, was undoubtedly the finest collective endeavour of the Welsh people this century. The South Wales miners gave us the Miners Next Step, one of the most important documents of the British working class.
The stay-down strikes of the 1930's remain a vivid example of the struggle against company unionism. As a banner for the "Taff Merthyr' prisoners declared: 'You have suffered for a principle. We are proud of you.' We have every reason to be proud of the Weish miners and to mourn their demise. Our task is to affirm their history in the face of those who would like it quickly forgotten, to learn from it, to prepare for the struggles ahead.
By Glen Voris, St Helens Trades Council ON MONDAY April 18 Merseyside FBU called a ballot following threatened closure of a Liverpool fire station.
The ballot proposed a series of one hour strikes throughout Merseyside, to be stepped up if closure is not reversed. Results are not yet known.
To give FBU members confidence the Merseyside leadership called a national demonstration in Liverpool for Thursday April 14.
To the amazement of local and national leaders over 8,000 FBU members - more than a fifth of the entire membership - participated.
After this show of strength Merseyside FBU leaders are confident of a massive vote for determined strike action.