return to work) was sacked as soon as he got back to work
"threatening Miners in Yorkshire have been sack"abuse" to scabs who had returned to work earlier. In some cases when officials have gone to negotiate with pit managers over sacked people they
given lists of
Although area negotiations have
Tin a few reinstatements
thousands of miners still face trial and the ossible sack it convicted. Pete.
Nalker has made a statement Minister saying that "acquittal court does not mean miners will get their jobs back".
In the Sunday Telegraph (10.3.85) MacGregor openly gloats about his
Tand pledges the hardest possible line from the Board. sacked miners, he says, discovering the price of insubordination and insurrection. And boy, we going to make it stick. " He attacked soft liners on the NCB as "romantics". Of the Kent coalfield one of his executive said, "If they back it will be too bloody soon." The board's aim, he said, was to trim the labour force of 25,000 miners soon as possible".
Miners strike points the
Sway forward
The validity of the strike, however, was not just its outcome but the fact that it happend. The NUM was the first union to reject the "viability" argument of the employers and make a principle of jobs. strike was the greatest struggle of the European working class since the general strike in France in 1968, and the movement of workers which overthrew the Portugese dictatorship in 1974. It is the gatest struggle against mass unemployment since austerity programmes became the norm for the European bourgeoisie. It stands as the great example of what can be done and what should be done when faced with ruthless governments prepared to go to any lengths to break the power of the trade union movement.
In the end it was the TUC who not only isolated the strike but intervened
as in The "are now are never come "as economic over the heads of the NUM leadership The nost damaging way. They cooked ur a deal which was iar worse than the previous offer to the NUM. At the same time they used the tions" to worm their way back into Downing Street. physically challenged at the on March 6. But it was not just Willis. monetarist NCB and which was so damaging to the strike was taken to the NUM by the whole of the TUC team including have been "supporting" the strike. Kinnock sits out standing ovation for Scargill - and most of the miners' strike.
and negotiated with Thatcher in the nounced 6. "negotia- It was excellent that Willis got anti- ratecapping rally in Jubilee Gardens but The shabby deal cooked up with the of doubtedly Moss Evans and Ray Buckton, who paid dearly. back to February won movement. general that required Socialist Viewpoint, No. 4, March 1985. Page 3
TUC General Secretary Norman Willis. The day after the rally, Evans defended Willis's role in the strike and de-
those who had demonstrated against him on March Mistakes towards the TUC
The mistake the NUM made was to let the TUC off the hook far too much. Not just at the September Congress,
throughout the strike. This weakness did not come out of a lack
resolve to pursue the strike. Scargill led from the front and is un-
Othe most determined leader the British Trade union movement has produced. But it was a political mistake for which the strike
l'he final opportunity to force ac. ion out of the TUC came at the special delegate conference of the NUM on February 21. By then it was sell evident that a decision to continue the strike simply on the basis of appeals for solidarity without a new initiative and a new way forward would quickly run into problems. The
work drift would rapidly escalate to dangerous proportions. The absence of power cuts during the hard weather in the first two weeks of
Chad convinced many miners that the strike could not be
whilst they remained isolated from strike support by the rest of the
Arthur Scargill had now recognised this and had been making general calls for the rest of the trade union movement to join the miners. But
calls were not adequate. General calls could not initiate any actual action. Any action of a general nature had to come through the official channels of the movement and
specitic moves and specific proposals to be made first and foremost by the NUM
The key to it was always a special emergency TUC Congress. There the
NUM would have been in a quite different position to fight for action than at the right wing-dominated General Council to which they had already unsuccessfully appealed for help.
This was an achievable position had the full strength of the miners strike been used to motivate it. Massive demonstrations of miners outside the Congress, and the support of those unions who said they supported the miners, would have been hard to resist.
It would have had a dramatic effect if a special Congress had been called under those conditions. It would have provided a new focus, opened up new possibilities of extending the strike and winning it. It could well have stemmed the back to work drift and brought the strike back on course.
Inside a recall Congress the NUM would have been in a much more powerful position to challenge the right wing directly, spell out the full implications of the situation and force some real action.
Despite resolutions by both South Wales and the Durham areas this demand was never taken up. There was a reluctance by Arthur Scargill, whose position throughout the strike has been to neutralise the TUC rather than fight for them to act, but the most negative force was Mick McGahey, who, as NUM General Council member, repeatedly opposed a recall Congress.
The Back to Work Decision
Ten days after the delegate conference, the drift back had escalated in every area of the country. Several areas of the NUM were beginning to call for a national delegate conference and an "organised return to work" without an agreement.
A further delegate conference was called on Sunday March 3. It faced a very difficult situation. Any attempt to continue the strike on the basis of pit closures would probably have failed with thousands continuing to go
Sackings of victimised miners: key issue for NUM. back to work. Having got into this position it ws better to have no agreement with the NCB than the shabby deal offered a week earlier by the TUC. This would at least allow the issue of closures to remain disputed, and would provide the basis for a united and deliant return to work.
The call for an "orderly return" was moved by the South Wales delegation. It had a very major problem within it. It said nothing about the 720 miners victimised and sacked during the strike. This was a huge Issue. I How could the NUM return without them?
The resolution from Kent correctly lealt with it, calling for no return un il al the victimised miners had beer reinstated. Had this been adopted it is likely that the strike could have been sustained for a further period. It would have been very important. It would have taken the issue to a much higher level of prominence, and proSocialist Viewpoint, No. 4, March 1985. Page 4
abably have saved more miners from victimisation even if it had not been wholely successful. The same option of a urited return would have been there once that had been fought as far as possible.
It was tragic that the most solid area of the strike - South Wales ended up moving the resolution for a return without the victimised people. This did not reflect the membership but elements in the leadership who had been working for a return for some time. Kim Howels, an academic who was spokesperson for the South Wales Area, was the first to call
"organised return" publicly for an when it was contrary to the policy of the Area Executive. The Area had a policy of a recall TUC, but Howells never pressed that in the way he pressed an organised return.
This has now been compounded by the decision of South Wales to go into the High Court and purge their con tempt in an attempt to get the sequestration of their funds lifted contrary to a National Executive decision to refuse to do so.
The decision of the Kent Area and pits in other areas to continue the strike on the call for an amnesty in spite of the delegte conference decision was very principled and important. It did raise the issue to a prominence which would otherwise never have been the case. No one had fought for it after the national decision.
The role of the Communist Party in Scotland, however, was very different to that of Kent. There, George Bolton — an executive member of the CP and Scottish NUM Vice President - opposed Scotland staying out and criticised the Kent decision as "a mistake". No wonder there was such hostility to Mick McGahey after the Scottish strike was called oft. It was quite different to their attitude to Arthur Scargill who they knew had been
Cheers and tears as Mardy marches back "Don't forget that we've gained more than we've lost..." Solidarity in return to work
against a return to work without the
sacked people.
The Morning Star was in any case
claiming that the miners had won a
victory. They said on March 6 that
"the Government's strategy for mass
sacking and closing pits in the min-
ing industry lay in tatters yesterday as
85% of miners marched back to work
in a fighting mood." Yet the CP has
people amongst the sacked and their
members in Kent were calling on
everyone to stay out.
The Scottish Area NUM has gone
on to invite Neil Kinnock - who has
opposed the call for a general amnes-
- to be "guest of honour" Scottish Mines Gala in the spring.
It is true that the fight goes on. The
NUM has not been defeated in the
pits. It will not be
MacGregor to break up
organisation the way he broke up
By Anne Marie Sweeney BARBARA Williams, the Secretary of the Mardy Women's Support Committee, had said on TV that when the miners returned to work, they would be marching heads held high from the Miners Institute, men and women under their respective banners - up to the pit and no one would ever say they were defeated
The press realised that at the end of this powerful and ceremoney, one of the most militant pits in South Wales, and in the country, "Scabfree" Mardy, was returning to work.
They could, therefore, in these final hours, afford to magnanimous, to show the complete community backing for the strike.
Even the police stayed away, as also, despite expectations, Kent pickets. The miners appeared to feel divided about the possibility of
miners went back. enormous. ing back under difficult conditions. at the have developed miners for easy their emotional did Socialist Viewpoint, No. 4, March 1985. Page 5
shop floor organisation in BSC and BL. The trade union movement is not the broken anything as much as it was in 926. Struggles go on. There was . demonstration in Lon- don on ratecapping the day after the Equally The price the Tories have paid is neir strategically impor ant tax cuts in the budget are likel to go. The strike has cost them many times more than the Falklands war. continue. But to call it a victory is wrong. That can only disarm miners who are go- Those conditions have to be met by organisation. Tens of thousands of as class fighters during the strike. They have to fight to remove the right wingers in the NUM who refused to back the strike. They must ensure there are no period. compromises with the Nottingham-
shire Area. They must move out into
Trades Councils and into the Labour Party and fight the right wing there who back the treachery of Kinnock throughout the strike.
Othe women in the pit villages must develop on the huge contribution they have made during the strike and continue the struggle against all aspects of Tory policy.
The support committees should
They need to take up the campaign for the reinstatement of the victimised miners. They need to defend those who are in prison and raise noney tor their tamilies. They need to detend those miners who still awail trial and they need to take up the struggle against ratecapping support the teachers and other struggles which will emerge in the coming
we)sk.
MHA Kent picketting. They were unanimous that there would be no question of crossing the picket line. The militant activists wanted them there so that they wouldn't be going in, so they too could identity strongly with having no return to work without an amnesty.
As one put it, "we've got no one sacked as yet In Mardy, but the golden rule still applies — an injury to one is an injury to all. This strike own. ""bout just looking after your ins't
The lodge, though, hadn't wanted to stick it out turther for tear oi splitting their pit, solid up to then.
In their view it was better to march back as one, than to have a partial
scabs in Mardy and recriminations and bitterness against control of the lodge and any effective future struggles. The lodge had voted ovewhelmingly to back the South Wales Delegate Conference decision - to return with no negotiated settle. ment or amnesty. The left had voted with the majority, dominated by the Communist Party line of unity at all costs and in their eyes a lack of any
Yet they wanted the Kent pickets there, someone other than themselves could ensure that Mardy wouldn't be working that day, the left from elsewhere preventing the return to work so they wouldn't have to face the comeback.
At 6 o'clock in the morning, the entire community gathered outside the battered miners institute. Everywhere was cast in the bleached glare of the
television floodlights. The mountains and slagheaps were dark, hard and glistening with the night's frost. The lights from the works buses and miners cars from Aberdare worked their way down the mountain road as the banners were brought out from the strike headquarters.
Megan, carrying the women's banner, looked shattered. Privately aside she said, "Good God alive, well I never thought it would be South Wales that got us all back, never. How can we go in leaving those 700 lads out in the cold?"
Then, taking a firm hold on the banner that she had carried on many a more defiant occasion, she shouted: "C'mon girls, up the front where we all belong!" pitroad tollowing Selwyn, an electrician at the pit, explained the rubbish scattered along the roadside: "People dumped their rubbish here during the NALGO refuse strike, that was a long strike too, many [see elsewhere in this issue - Ed.] He pointed out the site of a previous mine, one of the 57 now closed in the Rhonddä,marks the centenary of an "This coming Christmas, he said, awful accident where over a hundred died in that pit."
The toll that mining has exacted from these communities over the years is carefully written in their personal and local history, the strike is sacrificed in lite, punishments cond that tradition hardships will not be forgotten for generations.
I talked to one of the miners from Socialist Viewpoint, No. 4, March 1985. Page 6
1100 10 Mardy who had been involved in the occupation of the crane at Port Talbot docks. He, along with 12l were awaiting trial, to be the biggest in legal history. Fresh hearings are always being held, and then the trial is put off again for another couple of months to build up the pressure. Each time it is deferred the prosecution seems to add a new charge and the lawyers have said that if found guilty they should prepare themselves to face sentences of up to 5 years.
One young miner, just gone twenty, couldn't take the strain. He stopped eating days before the last date of his trial and then one morning when his mother went into wake him, she found him dead: he had killed himself rather than keep enduring the pressure. The judge just callously said, "Well there were to be 123 here today, but circumstances have reduced the number to 122."
The boy's father had come to court to show his solidarity, even in his grief, with the other miners on trial. He heard his son just dismissed as a number, a figure on the court register. Like the two South Wales miners who lost their lives picketting at the Llanwern steelworks (tragical ly the same week as the crane occupation) the press remained silent about this young man's death.
The miner telling me all this said "Everyone, on the crane suffered enough, in high winds, a hundred that plus be the seeing be
"Men, the rain on a thin gantry. said, "were literaly petrified of moving, too scared to go for a piss." For
him - it was not so bad, as he had been in the paratroopers much of his life. "I was a 'king and country' man all my life before this strike, but that was before. Now I've seen side of things and I'm sick through with the whole set up.
As the march neared the pithead it stopped. The Mardy lodge and its members parted on either side of the road to salute the women with their banner passing between them.
"Let's hear it for the women" was the shout and the men clapped, with tears in their eyes as the