Welsh quarry strikers revive spirit of 1900
FIVE months after striking coal miners returned to work in Clwyd, slate quarry workers in neighbouring Gwynedd came out on strike and have been out for 4 months.
The dispute, in the Blaenau Flestiniog area, involves T&GWU workers, employed by three different companies and was sparked off by attempts by the management of one of them, the Flestiniog Slate Co., to end bonus payments. This would have meant a loss of between £25-30 week in wages for the quarryworkers.
As a result of these attempts workers from all three companies decided that from 19 August they would work to rule. This action led to directors in one of the companies, Cwt y Bagail, sending the men home. Members from the other two companies walked out in sympathy. A ballot later voted unanimously to continue the atrike.
The struggle has been maintained with the support of the Blaenau Flestiniog community and its efforts to appeal for help from elnewhere. This support is needed since it took George Wright, the Welsh TGWU's version of Gavin Laird, over 5 weeks to recognise the dispute as official. The continuation of the strike has many advantages which the North Wales miners did not have firstly most of the quarryworkers live in the small area of Blainau they are therefore not isolated during the strike. Secondly. workers in Gwynedd slate industry are both aware and proud of their history of militancy (for
WREXHAM LABOUR PARTY
Wrexham demonstration to suppori the Gwynedd strikers
By YVONNE CONWAY example, neither strikers nor scabs have been forgotten from the great 3 year strike of Bethesda quarrymen in 1900-03). At a recent rally for the strikers, a number of references were made to the 1900 strike.
A Blaenau Women's Support Group has been set up — mainly consisting of wives and partners of the strikers but also of women who were in the Blaenau Miners' Support Group. They, along with the strike committee, have appealled for and found support from a number of sources: South Wales miners, whom they supported Wains thine recent strike too one Wales Miners' Support Groups; the Labour Party (though Interestingly enough not from the local Labour Party branch); from Welsh republicans; from other individual trade unionists and from students in the Gwynedd area.
But support from TGWU officials in Wales as a whole has been very poor. For example not one single TGWU official in Clwyd has so much as publicised the slate workers' case, much less given concrete support.
The most hard nosed, fiercely anti-trade union boss in the dispute, E. Williams, who has so far even refused to speak to the strikers, is an active member of Plaid Cymru. Letters from Dafydd Ellis Thomas, Plaid's President, to Williams have as yet received no reply. The strikers' determination to continue their struggle, despite difficulties, stems from a fear that if they give in to a loss of bonus payments, it will open the flood gates to a continued worsening of their working conditions and an assault on union rights. Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 p7
They are only too aware of how bravely and bitterly fought was the battle to win union recognition and improvements in the quarries' working conditions. It took three major strikes, including the 3 year stoppage at Bethesda, to gain the right to be trade union members, against ruthless bosses and despite a very conservative leadership of the old North Wales Quarrymen's Union.
Indeed the parallels with earlier struggles in the quarries are very striking. Those struggles took place in a climate where the fear of unemployment loomed large and was a powerful weapon for the bosses.
After the end of the union recognition struggles of 1874-1903, the workforce had dropped from 16,000 in 1898 to 8,000 by 1914. Also it was other trade unionists and the community who sustained those strikes not the union leaderships. A huge total for those days of £3,921 was collected in the Welsh communities at home and in America for the union recognition strug gles. Some of this was donated to South Wales miners then on strike.
This connection still exists today.
Whilst the early struggles are remembered, the quarry workers have no intention of reliving the agonies of working in 19th cenutry conditions. The continued support by other workers is vital for the continuation of the strike, as is pressure on TGWU officials in particular to spread support for the strike throughout the union.
Donations and messages of support can be sent to:
Flestiniog Quarrymen's Dispute Fund, TGWU District Office, 17, Segontium Terrace, Caernarion, Gwynedd.
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