THE SPECIAL Notts July issue of The Miner put the key questions and answers for miners on the Notts breakaway.
We are printing the article in full.
QUESTION: What do I have to do to stay a member of the NUM?
ANSWER: Nothing at all. It is the splitters who must get you to sign a piece of paper to deprive you of your membership.
But why should anyone want to split the NUM? Who would benefit from it? Ultimately, MacGregor and the Government whose big business pals want to see a divided and weakened mining workforce.
Such a workforce would not be able to resist the closure of so-called uneconomic pits nor the selling off of large highly profitable sections of the British Coalfield to big business. Government ministers themselves have admitted that's the ultimate aim.
So why have certain Notts miners gone along with the splitting tactics?
Over the years a diet of one-sided information has been fed via Where a workforce is kept ignorant of the facts, confusion and misrepresentation Miner for example has hardly been distributed in the Notts area over the past 18 months.
Is it true that a split from the national union will leave Notts miners in political isolation? Most certainly. ty are clear on this point: the Labour Party will only accept sponsorship for its MPS and councillors from a trade union affiliated to the TUC. A Notts breakaway would not get that recognition. As the TUC General Council said on January 23rd: *The breakaway bodies from their national unions wil not be eligible for affiliation to the TUC."
Wasn't a breakaway caused by adoption of a new rule book which the Notts NUM had no part in? This is one of the greatest myths around. Notts NUM did participate in the vote and when they they lost, walkea out. remember is that by participating in the vote, they helped to give birth to the new rule book — a book incidentally, largely established to defend the union against cleverly worded government legislaTOnA Many unions nave changes with hardly a media whisper.
By sitting tight what would happen to my union contributions?
You will pay 79p a week - considerably less than at present your local branch.
Finally, what would happen to all the other issues I care about — pay, allowances, protection of earnings, early retirement, safety, holidays, etc., if the national union were badly split?
For a time, nothing. Then, when the Coal Board/ Government judged the time to be right, many gains and agreements would be destroyed as is already happening in some areas. Years — decades — of advance would be unilaterally abandoned in the face ot a divided workforce too weak to retaliate. What remains of the ihdustry would then be delivered on a platter to private enterprise and the clock turned back nearly half a century. Arm yourself with this information, raising the various points at your branch meetings. Do not allow yourself to be silenced. You have the right to be heard.
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Socialist Action. 26 July 1985 the mass media and Coal News.
follow. The Already the TUC and Labour ParThe important part to introduced similar of which 8 per cent will be fed back to 4. have consistently suppressed literature sent from the national union throughout the 12 months of the strike, information is at a premium in the Notts coalfield.
Miners from Pye Hill and Moorgreen pits in the south, which are being closed, are reporting to places like Bevercotes for transfer only to be told by management: 'no strikers, no Scargill supporters, no NUM members.' The whole weight of the Coal Board and their collaborators in the area is being brought to bear to convince the miners that they have no choice but to o with the 'Nottinghamshire Union of Mineworkers'. Such a move would make it easy for the Tories to consider privatisation of the coalfield, not to mention the damage they would dearly love to inflict on the NUM.
At the moment Roy Lynk and his cohorts are investigating 'merger deals with breakaways in other areas, faced with the High Court ruling for a ballot, these 'super-democrats' are looking for a back-door way to break with the NUM.
CAROL TURNER reports from Notts. Notts delegation at NUM conference