Stop the slide to the right
Labour Briefing1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
Every available indicator, from the county council elections to the Brecon and Radnor by-election, suggests that the Tories will have serious problems in winning the next election unless they can pull something very dramatic out of the bag. Such has been the effect of the miners' strike and subsequent Tory policy on their electoral popularity.
Essentially, however, the miners' strike was not about electoral popularity. It was about creating radically new conditions at the point of production. Of shifting the balance of power significantly away from the working class and the labour movement towards the employers and the state.
Looked at in this way, the outcome of the strike is rather different. The bargaining power of the NUM is very weak. Pit closures are going ahead linked to speed-up and reorganisation for those that remain open. In other sectors of industry the employers have been strengthened and are imposing new levels of speed-up while the advantage is there.
But these employers' measures are not happening because the organised working class as a whole has been cowed by the defeat of the miners. They do feel weakened, but strike struggles are continuing. We face nothing like the disastrous situation which existed after 1926. On top of that the conditions being suffered are very much an imposition and are likely to break into militant action at a later stage.
What holds this potentiality back is the slide to the right which is now taking place in both the Labour Party and the trade union movement. Kinnock and Co. are trying to shift the ground to facilitate a coalition government with the SDP in the event of a hung Parliament after the election. The miners' strike was in any case an acute embarrassment to them.
At the same time the trade union leaders, with very few exceptions, draw the conclusion that strike action doesn't pay and the time has come to make peace and compromise – which is what they wanted to do in the first place.
The most dramatic development in this direction – and probably the most decisive – was the decision of Jimmy Knapp and the Broad Left leadership of the NUR to push compliance with the ballotting requirements in the 1984 Tory legislation through the NUR conference.
If one of the most left unions surrenders the implication for the rest are pretty obvious. The UCW quickly followed the example and the TUC leaders are involved in detailed preparations to abandon the Wembly 1982 decisions at the September Congress. "Flexibility" is to be the factor used. The General Council will recommend "continued support" for the Wembley decisions, but with "flexibility". Very nice!
The TGWU conference decisions to maintain the main planks of its policy – opposition to the anti-union laws and against incomes policy – is more a product of recent events surrounding the TGWU than a serious counterweight to this trend. In other aspects – such as the attitude to the victimised miners – the conference followed the predominant drift. Astoundingly, the conference accepted without a voice against, a recommendation from the standing orders committee to ban the victimised miners from taking a collection at the conference.
Another aspect of this has been the weakness and disorganisation of the left in most of the union conferences. To the extent that the TGWU conference was to the left was due to the attitude Ron Todd chose to take. The left was weaker and the right more vocal. If he had decided to go in the other direction things would probably have been very different.
The attitude adopted to the victimised miners is probably the best indicator to the current situation in the unions. 600 sacked miners and 50 still in prison remains the most important issue facing the labour movement, yet the unions at official level have been dropping them as quick as they can. Not a single trade union leader outside of the NUM made as much as a verbal protest when the two outrageous life sentences were meted out in South Wales.
If they were to organise or support protest marches and demonstrations the campaign for the victimised miners would be in a dramatically different position. The WRP stepped into the vacuum with their march to Wembly and their crassly ultraleft demand for a general strike now to get the miners out of jail. The problem is not for a left group to set itself up, but to shift the labour movement over the issue. That is the only way sentences will be dropped and miners reinstated.
The most important exception to the drift to the right has been represented by the NUM itself in its Sheffield conference. There Scargill has begun to give a very important lead. He has very correctly called upon the Labour Party conference in September to pledge a future Labour government to reinstate the sacked miners and squash the jail sentences. A special NUM conference is to be called to discuss the victimised miners. At the same time Tony Benn has placed a Bill before Parliament calling for the release of the jailed miners.
These moves should now become the focal point of a campaign throughout the labour movement. They can be backed up by demands on the TUC Congress to release money to the NUM (which is still in the hands of the receiver) and perhaps to call a national demonstration on the issue.
Scargill was also very correct at the NUM conference to project a confident attitude and talk about future renewed action by the miners. He knows that is difficult but it strikes the right note and brings back some confidence for workers far beyond the NUM. It must have been right because it attracted even harsher denunciation from Kinnock than even Tony Benn received for his Amnesty Bill.
The left should follow Scargill's lead and not be intimidated by the situation. The fight must be rejoined and confidence rebuilt. The miners' support groups in particular have a role to play in this. They should not be disbanded, but rebuilt and strengthened to take up the campaign.