Unholy alliance against Scargill: the politics of the miners' strike
Socialist Viewpoint1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
ARTHUR Scargill has been dragged back into the courts and forced to purge the NUM's "contempt" of court because they refused to accept a High Court ruling that the miners' strike was "unofficial". It provided the opportunity for the Judges to ridicule the trade union movement and brag about "the rule of law" being upheld.
But the responsibility for this situation does not lie with Scargill. He led the first great challenge to mass unemployment and in the course of it confronted the full force of Tory anti-union legislation. He, like the striking miners themselves, can hold his head high in the knowledge that he fought an uncompromising fight until the end. He and the miners were betrayed by the TUC and let down by those unions best placed to break the isolation the NUM found itself in a few months into the strike.
Failure to back the miners, and win the strike has now linked into a swing to the right within the trade union and labour movement. Neil Kinnock never misses a chance to attack Scargill in increasingly vitriolic terms. Principles are thrown to one side. The employers and the Government offensive against the working class is forgotten. Everything must be subordinated to winning the next election and the road to this is seen as a wholesale shift to the right.
This has led to the increasing isolation of Scargill and the left within the unions and the TUC. The miners demonstrated the fighting ability of the working class and showed that the Tories can be beaten if a fighting unity can be forged within the trade union movement. But the conclusion drawn by the vast majority of trade union leaders is that it was wrong to have fought; that it proves that their normal policy of compromise was right all along.
Unfortunately this dangerous doctrine is being increasingly accepted on all levels within the movement. The Communist Party for example, is at the centre of it. They talk openly about the "necessity" of isolating the "Bennite left" in the unions and getting together with groupings like the Tribunites and the Labour Co-ordinating Committee.
The far left, by and large, is not accepting the argument, but it is conceding the situation. The Socialist Workers Party has dropped the victimised miners for other pastures. The Support Groups have declined, although determined groups of activists keep them going in many areas, maintaining links with the NUM and supporting the victimised miners. This turn away from the miners by sections of the far left has made it easier for the right wing to take the initiative.
Nor is this slide to the right excluded from the NUM itself. There, the "success" of the scab UDM is exaggerated by the right wing in order to put pressure on Scargill. In reality the UDM has not broken out of the scab pits and has had a hard job getting a majority in some of those despite an openly biased media and the full support of the NCB manipulating the wage review to give Lynk the advantage.
Despite this there is a widespread movement amongst Area officials and others to undermine Scargill as President. This was reflected in the NEC vote to force him into the Court to purge the "contempt" of the union.
It is important for militant miners to defend Scargill and defend the NUM. Any move against him would make conditions in the industry far worse, and would prolong the vital task of rebuilding the fighting capacity of the NUM.
Now the TUC General Council is preparing a wholesale collapse in front of the AUEW and the EEPTU over money for strike ballots without even a recall of the Congress. The proposal is that the Government send the money direct to the TUC and they allocate it to the individual unions. Such a collapse, whilst predictable, would represent a further substantial shift to the right.
To combat the retreat, the task of the militants in the NUM is to rebuild the fighting capacity of the union, which means in the short term the reorganisation of the left and developing a fight around the pits faced with closure. A number of pits have taken a decision to resist closure: Mardy and St John's in South Wales, Bold in Lancashire and Darfield Main and Fryston in Yorkshire.
Most of these have begun various campaigns against closure — appealing for public support for their cases.
NCB policy is to offer vast increases in productivity for keeping the pit open. They have declared that any pit unable to produce coal for less than £42 per tonne in the short term and £38 in the longer term will be closed. Some pits fall into this trap by arguing their own potential profitability and in some cases even offering higher productivity.
Public campaigns are important, and the confidence of the miners can be raised in that way; but no closure of a pit or a factory has ever been ultimately prevented by a public campaign but only by direct action: either occupations or strikes.
It is self evident that pits faced with closure cannot fight against it alone. Support has to be generated throughout the coalfield towards a strike decision of an area conference when closure decisions go ahead.