The miners' vote was on the wage offer
Socialist Organiser1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
A JUBILANT National Coal Board has been quick to capitalise on the rejection, by 39% to 61%, of the call for a strike against pit closures and the NCB's pay offer.
Almost at once, closure details appeared which were unavailable before the vote. Snowdown colliery in Kent was revealed to be top of the list, followed by Kinneil in West Lothian and Britannia in South Wales.
These are plainly only the tip of the NCB's rationalisation iceberg.
Already the NCB have called for the reopening of the review board which deals with pit closures — paralysed since Scargill's election victory. The NUM executive have obtained a secret NCB document detailing the closure of 70 pits over the next five years.
So much for the soothing words of Coal Board chairman Norman Siddall before the ballot, claiming that Arthur Scargill's 'hit list' allegations were untrue, and that he would not use a 'no' vote to 'butcher the industry'.
Arthur Scargill has called the ballot result a setback. This is certainly true, not only for the miners, but for the working class as a whole.
The media have been quick to capitalise. Linking the NUM result to the BL vote, they have proclaimed these decisions as an endorsement of Tory policy, representing a new mood of moderation among important organised sections of industrial workers.
Core
This is false to the core. And the situations in BL and in the mines are very different.
In BL, a militant workforce which has been looking for a fight with management was confused by repeated sell-outs over recent years and the stupid tactic of one-day strikes linked to an overtime ban. In the pits, although the miners remain very strong, the heat has been taken out of the wages issue to some extent by their upward shift in pay relativity in recent years.
[Photograph. Caption: Miners ready to strike for the NHS workers (above) are not moving to the right. But they felt the odds were against them on wages.]
Scale
Many miners judged that against the scale of the battle posed. The appeal to miners to back the union, and the decision to include opposition to pit closures on the ballot form was not enough to counter that — particularly given the virulent media campaign against the strike vote.
The vote therefore in no way represents a swing to the right in BL or the pits, or a concession to Thatcherism.
Despite this, the media is determined to ensure that the votes are used to draw strength for the Tory government — that they are a blow to the working class, who have been looking to the miners for so long, and more recently to Scargill himself.
The example of the miners in stopping pit closures by the threat of a strike almost two years ago has been a shining example to the working class. If the media can use the ballot to reverse that stand, it will be a very serious blow indeed.
The right wing in the NUM will assist that process by their campaign to discredit Scargill. The right wing leader of the small North Wales coalfield has even retailed the filthy line of some capitalist newspapers in likening Scargill's five regional meetings to Hitler's Nuremberg rallies.
Trevor Bell, whose white collar, management and supervisory members are traditionally the Achilles heel of NUM ballots, is cashing in by attacking Scargill's methods.
As far as Socialist Organiser is concerned, we give 100% support to the decision of the NUM conference to fight for a £30 wage claim, and to the way Arthur Scargill conducted that campaign.
His regional meetings, so hated by the right wing, were a breath of fresh air in the trade union movement — a trade union president going out of his office to do what he or she should be doing, campaigning amongst the members for policies to defend wages and jobs.
We salute him for that and hope he will continue.
Unfortunately, it is clear now that the mood was not strong enough on wages to win the vote, and wages under those particular conditions determined the vote. It is also clear now, we think, that making the two issues the subject of the same vote was a tactical error. (And we say this as a newspaper which accepted Arthur Scargill's assessment of the coalfields before the vote, and supported his tactics).
Whilst the two issues are totally linked, it is clear that the closure issue was not immediate enough to seriously influence the vote against the immediate issue of the wage contract. With no concrete names or dates for closures, the lies of the NCB could confuse the issue and allow the wages issue, which did have figures and dates attached, to dominate the ballot.
Closures should either have been the subject of a separate ballot, or a separate question on the ballot paper.
Despite this setback, however, the fight against closures in the mines is not over. In fact, it has not begun.
Recent history shows that miners will respond to a national lead against pit closures, and Arthur Scargill is absolutely right since the ballot to say that nothing is settled and the fight will go on. There must be another national ballot. All closures must continue to be an issue for the whole industry.
Miners must be allowed to vote with the issue of pit closures squarely in front of them. Under those conditions, this setback can be very rapidly reversed.