Betrayed: the miners defeated but not broken
Socialist Viewpoint1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
THE miners strike was the best opportunity the working class have had to turn the tide against the Thatcher Government. Five years of retreat by the trade union leaders and the TUC had wreaked havoc on the trade union movement. Huge closure programmes and the reorganisation of what industry was left had created four million unemployed. Union organisation was under attack at shop floor level and major packages of anti-union legislation were brought in.
The miners were a determined group of workers prepared to challenge that, and with a national leadership prepared to back them all the way.
The Ridley Report showed that they had left the miners until last and had prepared for the battle. But they were vulnerable. Their plan involved keeping the miners isolated from the rest of the trade union movement. They had no plans, resources or capability to take on other major sections of the trade union movement at the same time, far less the trade union movement as a whole.
This proved to be the decisive strategic factor in the whole strike, particularly with the decision of the Nottingham area of the NUM to scab. Time and time again the isolation of the miners could have been broken, but each time instead of hardening their attitude and standing firm leaders of other unions sought compromise. Steel output reached record levels during the strike since every union in the steel industry was determined to compromise when steel production was threatened by the strike. The dock strikes ended with a compromise deal for coal into Ravenscraig. The rail unions blacked the movement of coal but did nothing to organise a struggle in their own industry alongside the miners. The Government were exposed for having intervened in the rail pay nogotiations — authorising a shabby deal to prevent a rail strike. The rail unions allowed themselves to be bought off.
The role of the TUC was even worse. They stood back and did nothing when huge attacks were taking place against the NUM, like the sequestration of their funds and later the introduction of an official receiver to take control of their finances. They even intervened when it looked to them as if NACODS would go on strike, advising them not to "escalate the stituation".
These are the leaders who have denied the miners and the working class as a whole the victory which should have been theirs. They are the ones who created the situation faced by the NUM last week when the strike against pit closures could no longer be prosecuted. They are the ones who have given Thatcher and McGregor a victory which they now plan to use to great effect both within the coal mining industry and wherever there is resistance to their policies.
Plans have been drawn up for a new management structure for the NCB. Hardliners like the Director of the Scottish coalfield would be brought forward. New people from outside the industry who know nothing about mining coal but plenty about balance sheets and sacking people, would be brought in. In this way they planned to strip a defeated NUM of its authority and facilities, and re-establish the authority of management in the way MacGregor and Edwardes had been able to do in British Leyland and British Steel. The strike was, after all, more about defeating the NUM as a union than closing pits.
They have looked well on course to push them through.
Then came the proud and dignified march back to the pits with banners flying and bands playing. The miners demonstrated in the most spectacular way that the solidarity developed over the past year in the main areas of the strike was still strong and although the NUM had failed to get agreement to stop pit closures it was far from defeated as a union. Public opinion swung towards the miners as the government was seen trying to humiliate a proud union and proud workforce.
This is not to minimise the defeat which the NUM has suffered in failing to shift the government on pit closures or the 720 miners sacked during the dispute. The board is clearly in a strong position and MacGregor intends to exploit it to the full if he can get away with it.
In some pits the majority of the branch or lodge leaderships are sacked. In some cases officials at the head of marches back to work had to turn away at the gates because they were sacked and could not go in. One of the delegates who attended the national delegate conference (and voted to return to work) was sacked as soon as he got back to work for "threatening a policeman". Miners in Yorkshire have been sacked since the return to work for "abuse" to scabs who had returned to work earlier. In some cases when officials have gone to negotiate with pit managers over sacked people they have been given lists of new sackings.
Although area negotiations have resulted in a few reinstatements thousands of miners still face trial and the possible sack if convicted. Peter Walker has made a statement as Minister saying that "acquittal in court does not mean miners will get their jobs back".
In the Sunday Telegraph (10.3.85) MacGregor openly gloats about his "victory" and pledges the hardest possible line from the Board. The sacked miners, he says, "are now discovering the price of insubordination and insurrection. And boy, are we going to make it stick." He attacked soft liners on the NCB as "romantics". Of the Kent coalfield one of his executive said, "If they never come back it will be too bloody soon." The board's aim, he said, was to trim the labour force of 25,000 miners "as soon as possible".
Miners strike points the way forward
The validity of the strike, however, was not just its outcome but the fact that it happend. The NUM was the first union to reject the economic "viability" argument of the employers and make a principle of jobs. The strike was the greatest struggle of the European working class since the general strike in France in 1968, and the movement of workers which overthrew the Portugese dictatorship in 1974. It is the greatest struggle against mass unemployment since austerity programmes became the norm for the European bourgeoisie. It stands as the great example of what can be done and what should be done when faced with ruthless monetarist governments prepared to go to any lengths to break the power of the trade union movement.
In the end it was the TUC who not only isolated the strike but intervened over the heads of the NUM leadership and negotiated with Thatcher in the most damaging way. They cooked up a deal which was far worse than the previous offer to the NUM. At the same time they used the "negotiations" to worm their way back into Downing Street.
It was excellent that Willis got physically challenged at the anti-ratecapping rally in Jubilee Gardens on March 6. But it was not just Willis. The shabby deal cooked up with the NCB and which was so damaging to the strike was taken to the NUM by the whole of the TUC team including Moss Evans and Ray Buckton, who have been "supporting" the strike.
The day after the rally, Evans defended Willis's role in the strike and denounced those who had demonstrated against him on March 6.
Mistakes towards the TUC
The mistake the NUM made was to let the TUC off the hook far too much. Not just at the September Congress, but throughout the strike. This weakness did not come out of a lack of resolve to pursue the strike. Scargill led from the front and is undoubtedly the most determined leader the British Trade union movement has produced. But it was a political mistake for which the strike paid dearly.
The final opportunity to force action out of the TUC came at the special delegate conference of the NUM on February 21. By then it was self evident that a decision to continue the strike simply on the basis of appeals for solidarity without a new initiative and a new way forward would quickly run into problems. The back to work drift would rapidly escalate to dangerous proportions. The absence of power cuts during the hard weather in the first two weeks of February had convinced many miners that the strike could not be won whilst they remained isolated from strike support by the rest of the movement.
Arthur Scargill had now recognised this and had been making general calls for the rest of the trade union movement to join the miners. But general calls were not adequate. General calls could not initiate any actual action. Any action of a general nature had to come through the official channels of the movement and that required specific moves and specific proposals to be made first and foremost by the NUM.
The key to it was always a special emergency TUC Congress. There the NUM would have been in a quite different position to fight for action than at the right wing-dominated General Council to which they had already unsuccessfully appealed for help.
This was an achievable position had the full strength of the miners strike been used to motivate it. Massive demonstrations of miners outside the Congress, and the support of those unions who said they supported the miners, would have been hard to resist.
It would have had a dramatic effect if a special Congress had been called under those conditions. It would have provided a new focus, opened up new possibilities of extending the strike and winning it. It could well have stemmed the back to work drift and brought the strike back on course.
Inside a recall Congress the NUM would have been in a much more powerful position to challenge the right wing directly, spell out the full implications of the situation and force some real action.
Despite resolutions by both South Wales and the Durham areas this demand was never taken up. There was a reluctance by Arthur Scargill, whose position throughout the strike has been to neutralise the TUC rather than fight for them to act, but the most negative force was Mick McGahey, who, as NUM General Council member, repeatedly opposed a recall Congress.
The Back to Work Decision
Ten days after the delegate conference, the drift back had escalated in every area of the country. Several areas of the NUM were beginning to call for a national delegate conference and an "organised return to work" without an agreement.
A further delegate conference was called on Sunday March 3. It faced a very difficult situation. Any attempt to continue the strike on the basis of pit closures would probably have failed with thousands continuing to go back to work. Having got into this position it was better to have no agreement with the NCB than the shabby deal offered a week earlier by the TUC. This would at least allow the issue of closures to remain disputed, and would provide the basis for a united and defiant return to work.
The call for an "orderly return" was moved by the South Wales delegation. It had a very major problem within it. It said nothing about the 720 miners victimised and sacked during the strike. This was a huge issue. How could the NUM return without them?
The resolution from Kent correctly dealt with it, calling for no return until all the victimised miners had been reinstated. Had this been adopted it is likely that the strike could have been sustained for a further period. It would have been very important. It would have taken the issue to a much higher level of prominence, and probably have saved more miners from victimisation even if it had not been wholely successful. The same option of a united return would have been there once that had been fought as far as possible.
It was tragic that the most solid area of the strike — South Wales — ended up moving the resolution for a return without the victimised people. This did not reflect the membership but elements in the leadership who had been working for a return for some time. Kim Howels, an academic who was spokesperson for the South Wales Area, was the first to call publicly for an "organised return" when it was contrary to the policy of the Area Executive. The Area had a policy of a recall TUC, but Howells never pressed that in the way he pressed an organised return.
This has now been compounded by the decision of South Wales to go into the High Court and purge their contempt in an attempt to get the sequestration of their funds lifted — contrary to a National Executive decision to refuse to do so.
The decision of the Kent Area and pits in other areas to continue the strike on the call for an amnesty in spite of the delegate conference decision was very principled and important. It did raise the issue to a prominence which would otherwise never have been the case. No one had fought for it after the national decision.
The role of the Communist Party in Scotland, however, was very different to that of Kent. There, George Bolton — an executive member of the CP and Scottish NUM Vice President — opposed Scotland staying out and criticised the Kent decision as "a mistake". No wonder there was such hostility to Mick McGahey after the Scottish strike was called off. It was quite different to their attitude to Arthur Scargill who they knew had been against a return to work without the sacked people.
The Morning Star was in any case claiming that the miners had won a victory. They said on March 6 that "the Government's strategy for mass sacking and closing pits in the mining industry lay in tatters yesterday as 85% of miners marched back to work in a fighting mood." Yet the CP has people amongst the sacked and their members in Kent were calling on everyone to stay out.
The Scottish Area NUM has gone on to invite Neil Kinnock — who has opposed the call for a general amnesty — to be "guest of honour" at the Scottish Mines Gala in the spring.
It is true that the fight goes on. The NUM has not been defeated in the pits. It will not be easy for MacGregor to break up their organisation the way he broke up shop floor organisation in BSC and BL. The trade union movement is not broken anything as much as it was in 1926. Struggles go on. There was a massive TUC demonstration in London on ratecapping the day after the miners went back.
The price the Tories have paid is enormous. Their strategically important tax cuts in the budget are likely to go. The strike has cost them many times more than the Falklands war. But to call it a victory is wrong. That can only disarm miners who are going back under difficult conditions.
Those conditions have to be met by organisation. Tens of thousands of miners have developed as class fighters during the strike. They have to fight to remove the right wingers in the NUM who refused to back the strike. They must ensure there are no compromises with the Nottinghamshire Area. They must move out into the Trades Councils and into the Labour Party and fight the right wing there who back the treachery of Kinnock throughout the strike.
Equally the women in the pit villages must develop on the huge contribution they have made during the strike and continue the struggle against all aspects of Tory policy.
The support committees should continue. They need to take up the campaign for the reinstatement of the victimised miners. They need to defend those who are in prison and raise money for their families. They need to defend those miners who still await trial and they need to take up the struggle against ratecapping and support the teachers and other struggles which will emerge in the coming period.