NUM setbacks affect the whole movement
Socialist Organiser1980sIN THE FIRST part of a discussion article on the situation in industry, Alan Thornett looks at struggle in the pits. Part 2, dealing with other industries, next week.
Transcribed by hand from the printed page.
IAN MacGREGOR is now in control of the National Coal Board and is programmed to do to jobs and conditions there what he has already done in BL and the steel industry.
Even before he had taken office, however, the success of the management offensive and the virtual collapse of the Scargill leadership in the face of it has been a very major and central gain for the Thatcher Government, a collapse which has a serious affect on the whole working class.
For this reason it needs looking at in more detail.
After 1972 and 1974 the miners were seen by workers as by far the most powerful section of the working class. Many saw them as invincible. They rightly created this respect because in 1974 they had removed a Tory Government.
Scargill's election extended this and had widespread support in the working class.
Workers would often hope when things got tough that the miners would come along and sort everything out.
The Tories feared this possibility as well. At first they handled the miners with kid gloves giving them bigger than average wage increases to avoid a confrontation whilst — following the strategy worked out by newly promoted Minister Nicholas Ridley — they concentrated their fire on industries like BL, Steel and Rail.
The image, however, was not the whole picture. The miners were more vulnerable then they appeared. Up to 1972 the miners had fought very little for years.
The new generation had little experience of local struggles and the Stalinist/right-wing leadership at national level had allowed massive pit closures to take place without resistance while wage levels fell well below most organised workers.
After 1972, of course, the NUM became much stronger at all levels and Scargill personified that. But there were still very few local struggles. The main experience remained the national strikes of 1972 and then 1974.
One of the problems of the 1974 settlement was a bonus scheme which was designed to divide the miners. This helped management at a later date to weaken the miners at the 'profitable' pits and isolate them at the more antiquated 'loss-making' pits.
It was a successful exercise. After first retreating over closure at Deep Duffryn, the Tories began to take a firm stand.
The NCB won the 1982 ballot on wages and closures, through a mistake of the leadership of the NUM — who made the miscalculation of tying the jobs issue to a vote on wages — and gained an important advantage.
Then came the Kinneil colliery betrayal in the New Year of 1983, and the cracks were wider.
The crunch came, however, with the decision of the NCB to close Lewis Merthyr in South Wales which was met by an all-out strike in South Wales and an explosion of militancy.
A crucial developing national strike movement, however, was turned back by the failure of the NUM left and Arthur Scargill to confront the right-wing on the NUM executive, thus allowing them to block the fight for spreading the action and to turn the tide towards a national ballot.
In a demobilising situation the ballot could not be won and it was not. After that things got rapidly worse. Pits were left to fight on their own.
Cardowan miners were offered only 'moral and financial support' by a national conference of the NUM and the Scottish Area Executive. This was under conditions where the pits facing closure do not on their own have the basis to defend themselves.
It was the same at Monktonhall, which struck when miners were sent home after being 5 minutes late on shift after an NUM meeting to discuss 300 redundancies. Miners had been out on strike for two weeks before they were told that their case for support would be discussed at a national conference of the NUM to be held on Friday of this week — October 21 — i.e. 4 weeks later! Even then they were only offered 'moral and financial support'.
But the national conference has been upstaged even before it has taken place. The Scottish Area NUM Executive has organised a £2 per week area levy (which starts on the day of the Conference) and yesterday's Scottish one-day protest strike.
There is therefore no serious prospect of the national Conference organising anything else. The danger therefore — since a £2 levy suggests that all other miners remain at work — is that Monktonhall will be left isolated and hung out to dry.
Scargill has presented the one-day strike as a major development. But in the context it is taking place this is far from the case. A year ago the NUM leadership was looking for strike action. Over the last 6 months they have increasingly avoided it.
It is hard not to conclude for the Monktonhall experience that NCB propaganda that strikes will be very difficult has got through to the leadership of the NUM, and that as a result strikes are now being sabotaged.
Worse
Recently things have got even worse. The NUM leadership now seems to be going out of its way to isolate strikes. The latest closure at Crontop colliery in the North West saw a 24 hour strike which could lead to nothing.
Thus the post election period and the arrival of Ian McGregor has seriously compounded a previously existing problem. Now nearly every area of the NUM has at least one pit closure on the agenda. As the situation has changed in their favour, the NCB have got bolder in their actions.
The sacking of NUM militant George Marsh in Barnsley was no chance event.
Miners in Scotland have received letters about their individual time keeping and in other pits they have been threatened about productivity levels.
The Monktonhall strike started after miners were locked out for turning up to work only five minutes late, after a NUM meeting to discuss 300 job losses: this is a typical Edwardes-type move.
The management at Polmaish did exactly the same to the miners there who went to a meeting to support Monktonhall. Despite this there was no move made to use an obvious opportunity to spread the strike and take on the management.
The strike in defence of George Marsh spread to 15,000 Barnsley miners and was taking place at the same time as Monktonhall; yet the strikers were sent back to work by the Yorkshire Area executive on the basis of an inquiry which was completely biased in favour of management.
The inquiry team consisted of a representative of George Marsh, a foreman and a manager (i.e. two management and one union).
In spite of this bias the Yorkshire NUM are insisting that its findings will be carried out!
These details of current struggles in the pits are necessary if we are to understand the situation; if local struggles are repeatedly sold out and defeated the power which the miners have had for the last ten years, and which has been so important to the working class will be frittered away.
In that sense these betrayals will be historic betrayals which will affect the whole balance of power between the working class and the employers and the Government.
Scargill in all this is showing himself seriously incapable of leading the fight, while his henchmen, the Stalinists of the Communist Party, centred in Scotland, are doing his dirty work.
It is not that Scargill does not want to fight. His call after the election was genuine in a very general sense. He is, however, incapable of rising above the conditions prevailing in the labour movement and labour bureaucracy as a whole, and taking on the fight with the right-wing which that would involve.
He can make generally correct statements, but cannot put his words into practice in his own industry which is now a front line target for the Tories.