Rob Hoveman: Alan Thornett and the Oxford Miners’ Support Group
TributesAlan Thornett, who has died aged 89, was a remarkable working-class militant and revolutionary socialist. He became a key figure in the growth of rank and file trade union militancy and power in the British Leyland car plant in Cowley, Oxford, in the late 1960a and early 1970s before being witch hunted after nationalisation of British Leyland and the appointment of Michael Edwardes as CEO. He was the second victim in 1982 of a process which saw Derek “Red Robbo” Robinson sacked from the Longbridge car plant in 1980 and Alan Thornett’s comrade Bob Cullen sacked from Cowley in 1984.
I got to know and admire Alan in 1984 when he set up the Oxford Miners’ Support Group at an early stage in the Great Miners’ Strike. This later became something of a model for miners’ support groups across the country.
He came from a different, more orthodox Trotskyist tradition to that of the SWP, but he welcomed everyone who wanted to support the miners into the support group and was always respectful towards different voices. The support group related particularly to the miners of Merthyr Vale colliery who were billeted at Ruskin Trade Union College in Headington, Oxford, from where they picketed the Didcot power station every day of the strike. It was the collapse of the spoil tip from Merthyr Vale that caused the death of 116 children and 28 adults on the 21st October 1966, including brothers and sisters of the Merthyr Vale striking miners.
Alan strongly disagreed with the SWP’s analysis of how the strike could have best been conducted and won. He emphasised the need for the trade union bureaucracy to take up the call for a General Strike whereas we put the emphasis on doing everything possible to develop rank-and-file organisation and strength and for other disputes to be developed alongside and in solidarity with the miners.
These differences never deflected Alan and everyone else involved in the support group from delivering solidarity and support to the miners in any way possible. After the strike was lost, he also produced a very good book recording the achievements of the support group which raised a lot of money for the striking miners over the year-long strike. In that book he also allowed me to debate with him our political differences over the strike.
I think that the Oxford Miners’ Support Group was Alan’s crowning achievement after he was sacked from the car plant. He later felt that the working class internationally had suffered a historic defeat when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, again a product of his orthodox Trostskyism. But he never gave up his commitment to seek fundamental change to create a much better world, latterly focussing his main concerns on the threat of climate disaster. The socialist movement will miss his voice.