Victimised miners fight on
Labour Briefing1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
The 500 miners who remain sacked following the various reviews and procedures after the end of the strike are still there. They are still organised; they are still fighting and they are still victimised.
They are still supported by many of the Support Groups which are still active and organised under the Support Groups Co-ordinating Committee; by Women against Pit Closures, which is active and well organised; and by the officially recognised campaign – the National Justice for Mineworkers Campaign.
Conditions for defending the victimised men have not been improved, however, by the rightward drift of the NUM at Area leadership level which has intervened in the Justice Campaign to strip it of its political content and make it acceptable to Kinnockite politics.
The Co-ordinating Committee met in May and July and resolved to continue to fight on behalf of all victimised miners – rejecting both the implications of the dropping of the word "amnesty" by the Justice Campaign and the comments of Neil Kinnock that a future Labour government would look at the cases of those miners who had won their Industrial Tribunals but were still not reinstated. Every miner who was sacked and every miner who went to prison was a casualty of the most determined action in defence of jobs seen in Europe for decades. To simply accept Industrial Tribunal decisions as a criterion for reinstatement would be an outrage.
For the labour movement to be organised behind the victimised miners is the most effective way to support the NUM in its continued struggle aginst pit closures.
Courageous
Scargill's message that there is no future in compromise and that eventually action will have to be taken is a correct and courageous stand. The same attitude needs to be taken over those victimised. The campaign needs to be maintained at a high profile – the best example is the way the Kent victimised miners are organised. Those who argue "Keep your head down" and rely on negotiations with British Coal condemn the victimised people to a life on the dole and weaken the struggle in the industry as a whole.
A new campaign is needed to take the issue back into the trade unions and Labour Party branches – to link it firmly to the campaigns for the victimised printers and the sacked Silentnight workers. (One meeting of the Justice campaign was held at the same time on the same day as the national demonstration in support of Silentnight, forcing activists to go to either one or the other.)
The national initiatives proposed by the Justice Campaign need to be pressed forward – particularly the proposed national demonstration in Mansfield which will boost the NUM and challenge the UDM in the scab area.