to some leaders of certain political parties, one would have assumed that f we had not taken strike everything would have been alright. In fact if miners had not taken action in March 1984 then, today, as we meet in Kotherham, been closed - including Cortonwood and nine in Yorkshire.
It is now being demonstrated that the Board's intention is not about a reduction of four million tons, nor is it about the proposed closure of twenty pits, or five pits within a short space of time. What's behind the Board and government's thinking is their long term policy of closing 70 pits and axing 70,000 jobs.
The miners strike would have been won quickly if, first of all, miners in Notts, South Derbyshire Leicestershire had come out on strike and supported this union. Secondly if they disagreed with our policy but nevertheless. as members of a trade they had respected the basic cross picket lines, not only would we have won but David Jones would be alive today.
Action If Eric Hammond of the EETPU, instead of inviting Tebbit to open his 101G centre, had workers to take strike action in support of the miners we'd have won in a matter of days. That's the sort of action we should have been entitled to expect.
I don't blame working people. I blame the leaders of those unions for lack of leadership in a situation like that. If steel workers had been prepared to give the miners the same support we gave them in the 1980 steel strike, production would have come to a standstill in a matter of five weeks. And if Bill Sirs had been less inclined to jog along the Brighton, and more inclined to join our picket lines, that policy would have come to fruition.
If transport workers, with a few honourable exceptions Buckton's ASLEF Knapp's NUR, had refused to move coal our strike would have been successful in a very short space of time.
Finally, if in October last with an 82 per cent bailot vote behind them, the pit deputies had refused to accept a sell out this dispute would But I want to make one appeal to our members. There are lessons to be learned from our dispute. If there is one overriding lesson ahove all others it is that you don't start to turn inwards, and you don't start being vinwould nave Coal As far is the section of the anywhere in union supports them.
translate into September congress last year.
violence. ing tor miners without equivocation.
told condemning the throughout the 1984/5 dispute.
Rodney
Benn talked about the you ain't seen nothing yet!
Courts
front in the alical receivership.
We've got a bigger task. like Ray Jimmy receivers year, picket in my submission.
we should have. dictive towards other working people. mOle as I'm concerned, as a socialist and a trade unionist, I pledge working class if they are involved in industrial action then this be There was an abject failure on the part of the TUC General Council to positive action the resolution that was passed in the There was also an obsession on the part of Party leaders with alleged They should have been doour class what Thatcher did for hers! They should have supported And if there's any doubt among the Fleet Street hacks about where I stand l'I tell them once again and lI tell them slowly. I will not be a part to brave men women who manned our picket lines Bickerstaff things that have taken place in this dispute. But The appointment of a receiver (for the union) was designed to emasculate the NUM. Yes, I want to see us freed effect of Yar want lo sec 3o questration lifted. But I tell you what.
I don't believe this union should crawl either to the Tory courts or to either.
Because we've done nothing wrong.
I've also been reading in some ot these intellectual magazines that one of the reasons the miners were not ment wholly successful was the failure of mass picketing. It was not a failure of mass picketing bat a fallure to mass That was one of the main reasons why we didn't have the kind of breakthrough that The decision to go back to work without an agreement has led to enorproblems for this Over 900 men have been sacked and 700 have not yet been re-instated. Fifty of our members have been jailed. And their only crime was fighting for the right to work.
Those who've been jailed should regarded as political prisoners wno ve beenlacer o ge se ccarcerated for the stand they took in support of this union.
Tony Benn and I want to say to you, to every Labour MP on this platform. and tothe Labour Partyleader. ship, that the next Labour governshould give an unequivocal commitment to free those been jailed and reinstate into work all those who've been sacked.
There are those who have suggested that the miners' strike has demonstrated a failure of traditional militancy and in particular of picket line militancy. Nothing can be further from the truth. vital it is to have mass action. Class commitment is involved fight a class enemy of the kind that we've endured over the past 12 months. The demonstration of the lengths to which this government is prepared to go should be seen in the cost of this dispute.
the overtime ban, is over t8 billion more than 50 per cent of the NHS bill, more than the machines, or heart machines or the cost of maintaining human life.
If judges stewardship on the basis of efficiency market forces or economics his is an unmitigated disaster. In the 93 weeks since his appointment as the chairman of the NCB he has cost Britain's taxpayers over £90 million a week. Choice for closure, nine in Yorkshire with a loss of over 20,000 jobs. has announced its intention to close 12 out of 23 workshops with a loss of over 2500 jobs. fronted us in March 1984 are as real today as they were then. But there are now additional features which colour the picture for the NUM.
those in jail. There has to be a campaign to win reinstatement for those dismissed for offences alleged to have been committed during the course of This relax until every single miner has been reinstated developments 1930s. who've measures being deployed at every pit in wiping agreements, indicate that their long-term aim is to slaughter this industry privatisation with the parts that are left.
one of you, have got a simple choice.
throughout concerned The miners' strike has shown how when you The cost of the miners' strike, and cost of kidney improving lig back, MacGregor's Twenty pits have been earmarked historians, The Board Street, The issues which conThere has to be a campaign to free will neve women There are other and more sinister reminiscent of the Board's draconiar There out overnight customs and practices go tor The British miners, each and every defeated. something wrong, with a world in which we spend billions on arms and death and destruction while we can't provide money to save kids and starvation in Ethiopia. began to understand thai history some of the greatest struggles were seen by certain misinformed people as apparent serbacks. Nothing could be further from the truth as far as the miners' strike is As far as the women's movement is concerned I have heard lots oi conflicting rumours as far as the propos. ed new national rules are concerned But when you see the Sun newspaper the Daily Mail and the Notts Mine! against these changes that's the bes! reason for supporting those rules and giving women their rightful place a part and parcel of the NUM When people talk to me of serbacks let me remind you of a fer SOLACSUIN . Who, looking back. would regard the Vietnamese as having suffered a setback in the Tet Of fensive when later they took Saigon and got rid of the Yanks? Who, look would regard Fidel Castro as suffering a defeat in 1956 when three years later his supporters took Havana and established socialism?