YOU CAN'T FIGHT CLOSURES JOINTLY WITH THE RIGHT WING!
Socialist Organiser1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
THE VOTE against strike action in the NUM ballot over pit closures is a serious setback for the working class and an important victory at a key time for Thatcher's demolition-squad government.
Previously, throughout their almost four years of office, they have ducked taking on the miners. They have picked off other sections of workers one after another, created mass unemployment, and developed their onslaught against the unions. Now, with coal stocks high, oil plentiful, the TUC in full retreat, and their anti-union crusade well advanced, they decided the time was right to turn their attention to the coal-mining industry.
They started to close pits and accept no compromise. This created a confrontation between two opposing policies: that of the NUM, repeated again and again at conferences, to oppose any pit closure except on the basis of exhaustion — and the policy of the NCB, of closing pits which they choose to regard as economically unviable.
The vote is a major victory for the NCB. But it must be said again, as with the steelworkers, the BL workers, train drivers, and hospital workers, that this was a struggle that could have been won but for the serious unresolved crisis of leadership which dogs the working class at every stage.
We can certainly be proud of the courageous fight of the rank and file of the Welsh miners. Their policy, to give a lead and then fight for the support of the other coalfields, was the most effective way to get a national strike. (Though even there, there was a weakness in tactics. The decision to ballot South Wales, rather than simply call a strike in line with previous decisions, gave the right wing in the other areas an argument).
The strike was 100 per cent solid in South Wales. Their impressive lobbying of the other coalfields on the Monday the strike started was a credit to the rank and file leaders who organised it. It was also very successful, resulting in the Yorkshire, Kent and Scottish executives ordering strikes in their areas to begin on Monday 7th.
Although by Tuesday some right-wing area executives and some pits began calling for a ballot (this was exaggerated out of all proportion by the media), two pits in Derbyshire walked out in support of the Welsh miners. By Wednesday the situation was moving strongly towards a national strike, despite the protests of the right wing.
That day, Arthur Scargill broke his silence to announce his support for the strike decision, and went on television to quote Rule 42 to establish that in these circumstances strike action called by the area executives was fully constitutional. He announced that he had called a meeting of the national executive for Thursday and would be urging them to back the strike decision with an unanimous vote.
That meeting turned out to be a disaster for the coalmining industry. Instead of endorsing the strike decisions and the strategy of developing them into a national strike, these were unanimously overturned.
Scargill and the left on the executive collapsed in face of the campaign by the right wing in the union and by the media.
Presumably Scargill and the left calculated that they would lose the ballot issue anyway to the right wing majority on the national executive, and decided it was best to avoid open defeat by backing the ballot themselves.
Maybe the executive would have gone for a ballot anyway. But, at the very least, by staking out a position and fighting for it, Scargill and the Left could have put down a marker for the battles to come. Inertia and unity-at-all-costs almost always helps the right. So, more than anything else, does retreat without a fight.
Doubtless, the blunder made last October in linking the jobs issue to the wages issue was an intimidating factor as well. This had already been evident at Kinneil and in the acceptance of job cuts in Kent. But it does not make the collapse any less complete.
According to his statements on television, Scargill himself moved the resolution to call a national ballot, justifying it on the basis of the unity of the union. The resolution effectively nullified the area strike decisions already taken, and ordered those on strike outside South Wales back to work. The additional decision of the executive to support the South Wales strikers was pious, since they also decided that South Wales would have to ballot again, as part of the national ballot, and this made it more difficult for South Wales to continue their action if the national vote was against.
Such was the retreat. And according to reports Scargill even phoned the NCB during the EC meeting to urge a compromise. The Board, of course, turned him down flat.
Militant miners throughout the NUM were shattered by the executive decision for a national ballot. The pickets in South Wales on Friday morning found it almost impossible to believe. Scargill had changed horses in mid-stream. The developing strike movement had been demobilised in front of their eyes. The militants knew that it would now be very difficult to win the national vote.
Scargill had retreated before the right wing at exactly the time when it was necessary to stand firm. It is simply not possible to fight pit closures in unity with the right wing. South Wales became stronger once they were on strike, and so would a national action. South Wales had given a lead, and the only effective way to defend the pits was to pull the rest of the miners behind them.
The decision of the government to announce the probable appointment of Ian MacGregor to the chairmanship of the NCB on the very day of the executive meeting was designed to rub salt into the wounds. Scargill was right to liken his appointment to the opening of a blood-bank to Dracula. He should have concluded that a no-compromise fight was needed, not a compromise with the right wing.
MacGregor has impeccable credentials for Thatcher. He was the power behind Edwardes on the BL board during the time that 90,000 jobs were destroyed. He was moved to British Steel, where he destroyed another 90,000. When he moves to the NCB, his plan will be to destroy another 60,000 or 70,000 there. South Wales and other smaller coalfields will be virtually wiped out, and the most profitable pits in Yorkshire prepared for privatisation.
But it does not end there. MacGregor is a union-buster. Union facilities will come under attack in the pits, as they have done in BL, British Steel, and elsewhere.
These realities now confront the Welsh miners after the defeat in the ballot. (As we go to press, there is no news of the future of the Welsh strike). Welsh miners have no acceptable alternative, despite the difficulties, but to continue the strike. To accept defeat is to accept the destruction of the coalfield. The valleys will be devastated. The Welsh miners should continue the strike and call for support from other sections of workers, particularly from South Wales. The Triple Alliance should be made a reality, with steel workers and rail workers giving full support to the miners.
The NCB's policy of closing 'unviable' pits raises issues such as the profits made out of mining equipment purchased by the NCB from private manufacturers.
It highlights the huge sums of interest paid each year to the banks and government by the NCB. This is surplus value extracted from the pits, but not taken into account when the NCB produces figures to justify closures.
Welsh miners should demand that the books of the NCB be opened, and the full facts revealed. This would point towards the more fundamental issues involved, which cannot be ignored in such a struggle — the need for workers' control of the mining industry, and a workers' plan for energy.
Defended
In the short term the NUM policy must be defended: no pit should be closed except on grounds of exhaustion. 'Overcapacity' created by Thatcher's monetarist policies should be met by shorter hours throughout the industry, without loss of pay.
If the strike in South Wales continues, it must be made the focal point of the struggle against Thatcherism, and actively supported by every progressive trade union branch, shop stewards' committee, and Labour Party throughout Britain.
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Whether or not the South Wales miners stay out, this dispute will not be the end of the jobs issue in the pits. There will be further cutbacks and closures.
One key lesson from this struggle and from the Kinneil and Kent retreats is that there is a vast job of education to be done amongst rank and file miners to alert them to the scale of the NCB attack on jobs and working conditions.
The closures are only part of a concerted drive towards speed-up and demanning in the coalfields. Yet since last October's national ballot — despite speeches and rallies by Scargill and other left wingers — there has been no centralised publicity campaign by the NUM to counteract the lies and distortions of the media and present to miners the information that will convince them of the threat to their jobs.
Instead of redoubling efforts after the setbacks last Autumn and earlier this year, the NUM has drifted on with no popular leaflets, broadsheets and pamphlets presenting its case.
The NUM has the information: it submitted lengthy documents to the Parliamentary Select Committee spelling out the fraudulent NCB arguments and the dangers to jobs. This must at once be made accessible to members and the campaign against speed-up and closure stepped up.
The responsibility for this falls upon the left within the NUM, which must combat the sabotage of the right wing by organising the rank and file in preparation for the rounds of struggle yet to come.