THE FOLLOWING is an excerpt from Peter Heathtield's speech to the Bridgewater Campaign Against Unemployment on 20 June.
Our demand for an amnesty for the reemployment of victimised miners has almost fallen on stony ground. The Standing Committee on employment which gave evidence with a majority of Tories on that committee came out in our favour. They declared the board had not applied the standards and yardsticks which they claimed they had applied. They had acted in a discriminatory way in different coalfields. McGregor has rejected the findings.
He has said, Mrs Thatcher has said, Tom King has said and Peter Walker has said that people guilty of violence have got to be punished. The irony of that statement is that the issue is not about violence.
I'll site you two examples to show that its not about violent miners in Kent and Scotland.
In Nottinghamshire 30 working miners have been convicted of violence against striking miners and their families. They've been fined between £25 and £300. Not one has been disciplined by the NCB not one man has been told that his job would go.
In Derbyshire, in my own coalfield, in the early part of the strike 15 miners were convicted of assault on coalboard property. In May they. were sentenced to three months imprisonment. They were not out of prison two days before the colliery manager was knocking on their door saying you can have your job back, providing you strike break.
It's not a question of violence. There's a common feature about those dismissed in Scotland that the board refused to talk to and those dismissed in Kent. The common feature is that they are died-in-the-wool, 100 per cent supporters of the NUM. That is the crime they have committed.
Very few prosecutions have actually taken place in Scotland. People have been sacked who have not been prosecuted by the police The Kent miners who travelled underground to inspect the state of their pit were found to be in breach on the Mines and Quarries Act. They were all dismissed.
In Lee Hall in the Midlands, a father and son decided to have a sit-in to demand a ballot. The NCB sent the television cameras underground. They were in breach on the Mines and Quarries Act. They received no punishment. They were honoured.
Different standards apply to people in struggle and people defending the establishment. 7.30pm Friends Meeting House, Euston it.