toerfield ly * The provision of good housing, health and education for all, by absorbing those private facilities that might be necessary to achieve a fulcomprehensive system real choice to all. * The introductin of a major programme for the democratic reform of the apparatus of the state including the abolition of the House of Lords; ending of all patronage miners giving home but I feel that, country, millionaires;
unionists; ordinary sycal the that system more determined.
ing, only one battle', and I am don't believe they because they do you can't quit.
beginning.
we nave not to dive Il ithink a . OI leave their consciences there as well.
discard your their consciences at the and what goes on.
down and finish you.
AT 14 YEARS of age, in 1923, I went to work down the pit. It was soon TERRY FRENCH is a Kent miner serving five years in Maidstone jail on a frame-up charge. He was recently visited by Tony Jeremy Corbyn, and we reprint below the interview he gave them. SYD WILKIN is a retired miner living in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. He wrote, as 'fifty years a trade unionist', an open letter to Margaret Thatcher and lan MacGregor which we also print below. Terry and Syd give the two best reasons why every single person in the labour movement should support the national Justice for Mineworkers Campaign.
BEING in here it's hard. I want to go ulas when I do go through home and look back, I will, in a way, be thankful for this time because | have had the opportunity of seeing every single aspect of it: top trade working that have people that helped us all through that - and I have met with some of the people that have suffered through And, you know, I think I will be a bit thankful. It's made me a lot more humble. It's made me realise what I am. They have not knocked anything out of me. They have just made me Many times during that year of the strike we said: 'this is just the beginnand I hope the miners remember it, because I worry that some will say: 'We've done a year of strike, we've suffered and that's it • going to call it a day.' But I should do that have given everything and when you have got nothing left to It's just that they all know it is the We said all through the got beaten in this battle, they would come out hard and smash us into the ground and they are trying it and the lads can realise it. So of the staff here understand why I'm here, and what for. But unfortunately they are in the sort of job, where, when they pick up their keys at the gate, they have to When you first come into prison you resent it a bit: Fancy being able conscience. after a little while, it becomes self-evident to you that if they didn't leave gate they would soon end up unstable in their own minds, because of what they saw Don't stop fighting because if you do they have not finished with you yet. Your only chance is to fight. If you lay down they are going to come I have had letters from all over the New Zealand, America -all England, Scotland and Wales. And they are all saying the same thing: "You won't be forgotten.' Especially on the Christpeople They sent me pony driving with a The manag their The unions were always fighting miners have against tem when 365 There was these other were frequent acBenn and cards, that message comes time and time again some of the letters from friends, from my own community, have helped me to have a greater understanding of myself. Because I don't think I have ever really had time to sit down and consider wnat I am. And Inese letters come from home have shown me that, even as an individual, I matter. I'm important to somebody and that's important to me.
TERR FRENC I think that what's important is the trade union movement, the way it's going. And I'm not too pleased at what's going on at the top.
me, but all the miners. I should like to thank all those who have helped us and all I can say is that I will never desert you, because I know who 1 am and where I come from and where I belong and that's with the working people in this country and they are the who had f5 left out of his dole money that f5 in, rather than take the bus and split into it. How can you quit time of that suffering is no substitute for struggle and that awareness of what is going on and you doing and hope I can repay it one day. cidents on the paddy-mail, often with • losing their lives. Miners deserve better treatment than this Throughout the 1984-5 strike they struggled, not for more money, but to preserve jobs — as they had fought all their lives to make the pits safer for all those who work in them, including the management. Those miners who were sacked in the aftermath of the strike also deserve better treatment. They are not criminals.
were sacked after the 1926 lock-out did not 1946. Does vie missement intend to victimisation lifted until give these sacked miners the same treatment, in 1986? Most of these only trivial offences If the managers have any compassion left in them they should reinstate miners. They have suffered enough. Stop dividing the miners and let us get back peace in the mines.
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Two reasons to demand justice for