Union Briefing fringe meeting at last year's Labour Party Conference. It received the backing of the Campaign Group of
Labour MPs and was then officially supported by the National Executive of the NUM.
In giving the Campaign official support the NUM proposed a new structure which involved establishing an NUM nominee (Billy Etherington, secretary of the Durham mechanics)
as the chair, a Preden burgering secretary (Ed Fredenburgh)
establishing a broad-based Steering members who are crossing print union picket lines and distributing Murdoch newspapers. At its last meeting the Executive instructed the drivers not to go into Wapping, but at the same time made it clear that there would be no disciplinary action even if they did.
By BILL PETERS nominees from the NUM areas, 10 from the Campaign Group of Labour MPs, 10 from Women Against Pit closures, 10 from the Support
Groups, 2 from the Co-ordinating
Committee of Support Groups and 10 "others" These would be general labour movement nominations.
It was a good democratic structure reflecting all the main groupings involved in the continuing campaign on behalf of 500 miners who remain victimised. The campaign based itself on the redrafted "Justice for Mineworkers Bill" presentec In
Parliament by Tony Benn and the Campaign Group of MPs in February. Although the redraft calls for a judicial review of the cases of the imprisoned miners rather than a Committee. This would comprise 10 | pardon, it is a very important rallying Socialist Viewpoint No. 12 May 1986p8 symbolic policy of the union serves to show the scale of the shift to the right which is taking place.
The Justice Campaign received a major boost with the highly successful March, Rally and Albert Hall Concert on March 2. All these positive developments, however, threaten to come to a shuddering halt if developments which emerged at the last meeting of the Campaign on April 18 in Nottingham are continued.
The meeting was again well attended with well over 200 people present. For the first time there were officials from some of the NUM areas. Terry Thomas was there from South Wales and a large delegation trom the Scottish NUM headed by prominent EuroCommunist Party members Eric Clark and George Bolton.
As soon as the meeting opened it
was clear that the informal open discussion of previous meetings had gone. Billy Etherinaton welcomed everyone to the meeting with his first sentence, and told them would be the last open meeting the Campaign would hold with the cond. In future, he said, only the Steering Committee would meet which would elect a smaller subcommittee to run the Campaign.
Another contentious issue when it was realised that a new position of convenor of the campaign had been created since the last meeting and the address of the secretary removed from the letterhead. Attempts to leave things as they were until democratically changed were defeated.
Alan Meale, secretary of the Campaign Group of MPs, then challenged the model resolutions Labour Party and TUC