Hear Scargill speak Public Rally Thursday 18 July Road.
and campaign to defend the sacked and victimised miners.?
Speakers include Arthur Scargill, Jack Collins, Martin Gould (SERTUC), Joan Maynard.
Chair:Andrew Jacks (SERTUC). Doors open 7pm.
who were involved tells this story in detail and draws the political lessons All those who heard Roy Butlin, or other Coalville workers, at many rallies around the country, will want to read what happened there, and so will every LaDour activist who supported the miners.
The miners who were picketing their pits had a difficult enough job do, but much harder • it was to sustain solidarity another industry, in an area where a of the miners were still at work. Yet that exactly what the rall unions did and the lessons they learnto us all.
For it was their broad political perspective which their solidarity against tremendous pressure from the Railway Board its managesuspended him those grounds.
The real importance of this pamphlet lies in the way in which the political lessons are brought out -including the impact of the opposition to that came from inside the labour movement.
If only the Notts miners had stayed loyal...
only NACODS had acted on their huge ballot general council had followed the decisions of conpress... if only the whole parliamentary party had been on the picket lines every week.. then the strike might have ended in victory!
looking scapegoats, for what really Now, as ine government tries to carry through its mopping up operations against other groups workers in the aftermath of the strike - attacking teachers, health service workers, steel workers and the Fleet Street unions too will have to stand fight. where they ОГ we shall be picked off one by one. Nor should we deceive ourselves into thinking that if we do so we are necessarily weak as pared to the powers of the establishment.
For that frightened huddle of top people who are now crowding into the politics SDP, , Liberais those who agree with them the political spectrum only doing so because they N.U-E HANDS OFF RAIL MORKSHO PO Box 50, London N1 2XP.
SOTGRAV Socialist Action supporters in rail have produced a pamphlet called 'Railworkers and Miners', the story of Coalville during the 1984/5 miners' strike. It costs 50 pence per copy and is available from Socialist Action,
photo. CM COOKSON CONFERENCE meets this year following the longest, most bitter and possibly most savage national strike ever seen anywhere in the world. We meet not in the aftermath but still in the midst of a historic and heroic struggle waged by this union and mining communities against the most reactionary coal industry ment seen since the 1920s and 30s — a struggle in which we have had to face the combined weight of the most reactionary and destructive government known in over a century.
We have come through a strike which has changed the British history: a conflict of tremenARTHUR SCARGILL's presidential speech to this year's NUM confecence drew an entire balance sheet of the 12 mouths strike and replied to critics af the miners leadership. Socialist Action prints the speech in full.
choice.
Board's Hilalake' position we knew to be right.
has course of LONE established procedures. As they contempuously announced 25 pit closures — five of them immediately — with a loss of over 25,000 jobs we knew in our hearts that our union had no real We could either accept the proposals in the certain knowledge that they were only the start of a massive closure programme or we could take strike action, and fight with dignity and pride for the To the eternal credit of this union, we took strike action. Let me say, unequivocally, that in defending our policies, our jobs, communities and industries, we had no alternative and history will vindicate our posilaws which remove the democratic rights won by our people in over two centuries of struggle.
* The attack on our union was the culmination of five years in which the Thatcher government had successively introduced anti-trade union legislation while raising unemployment to four-and-a-half million through the use of the media had implanted minds unionists the idea that they could not Many struggle against this new authoritarian government.
appoint MacGregor as chairman of the tional Coal Board was evidence of the Tories' growing confidence with their success against the NGA and the elimination of trade unionism at GCHQ, they were showing their increased contempt for the TUC and its affiliated unions. Ian MacGregor was appointed chairman in order that free market criteria could be applied to the mining industry, following exactly the line pursued by the Tory government in olner nanonanseu maustries. brief was to carry through a policy of pit closures as the first step towards a restructured mining industry, ripe for - a strategy which the Tories also believed would see Britain's most powerful union rendered impotent. mittee's report, which recommended that the Coal Board review its position relation to recommendation which if it had been; implemented would result in over 80 per Coll of those reinstated, and the union could have concentrated ment for dismissed were sacked, and since the end of the strike, still more have been dismissed. lan To date. over Na- reinstated. This is an attack upon this movement and union that smacks of the 1920s and '30s. The management and government are determined to try and dismiss from inis industry ine most active elements, militant sections of the trade union movement. Crime His jailed whilst policy, taking action to save pits and jobs. I say without equivocation, they are political prisoners, and this movement must regard them as such, and should support them during Socialist Action win those miners the sacked being on winning the rest of those miners During the strike, over 900 miners 600 have not been and the most the British Over 50 of our members have been TOT Cal vile ning them the period while in19 July 1985 It has now been proved the shan we said it was at the time. And I hope that those with the vitriolic pens wil remember the words, they wrote las Noverhff→ When they urged that thi union accept the so-called NACODS deal. Some went so far as to say tha the union was snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. What we said ther is now being proved correct. The dea was a sham, and the only thing thai miners, in whatever union of this in. dustry should have done, and shoul continue to do, is to fight the Coa Board's policy and keep pits open.
Ironically, judge lan MacGregor's stewardship of the coal industry even on the basis of his own market forces criteria, he stands ac cused of total incompetence and of crimes against Britain's economy and people. During the years since his appointment, he na cost Britain's taxpayers of this nation over £90 million per week. He is, by standards, an unmitigated disaster, and if ever there was a case redundancy, he represents th perfect candidate - the quicker he goes, the better for all concerned The NUM argued from the begin that Ian MacGregor should never have been appointed. His entire performance during and since the eno of the dispute bears witness to this