111lICI planned this showdown.
The place of every trade unionist, every member of the labour movement, any person who believes in elementary he picket line with the miners. Tory banner for industry shake up of private buyers, profits out cutbacks.
brought down government in first try when against pit threatened 'U turn'.
The butcher Macuregor, dripping with 100,000 steel jobs.
The prospect communities is devastating.
• Jobs and closures 27,000 jobs.
been scrapped.
Secret In three 'LEANER BUT FITTER' was the at the 1979 election. This meant a major the nationalised industries — parcelling them up for oul squeezing more of less workers and destroying union opposition to the pits and Thatcher had a particular score to settle with the miners who had the Heath it a Dit 1974. So her ministers set to work with plans to close pits and break the NUM.
Thatcher got a bloody nose on her pits, Welsh miners struck ciosures 1981 national government retreated in a humiliating Tories have now turned to still axt TOT the mining Between 1979 and 1983, 36 pits shut with the loss of In the last year 23 more pits have closed and 20,000 jobs have goyernment documents leaked by the NUM in November 1982 show that the Coal Board plans to throw up to 95 pits on the tip in the next eight years and 70,000 jobs with them.
mining jobs would disappear.
Profit and loss rules OK 1970's, pits were closed when coal ran when geological conditions made it impossible or too dangerous to work the seams.
Now the NCB insists on profits and productivity alone deciding the fate of jobs. No matter how much good coal is in the ground or how needed this is in hospitals and homes economically without subsidy, then it should be shut.
• The age of the super-pit The NCB plans for a smaller number of superstuffed with computerised recnnology to replace lne cod produc ed across the country today.
Super-pits Selby in Yorkshire are capable of producing the equilation or Mares and Sonde Scotland, with only 10 per cent of the workforce.
The Board hopes to close all but a handful of the pits in Wales, Scotland and the North East and to carve away sections Lancashire, Midlands, Yorkshire coalfields Instead of using new technology to shorten the dangerous working hours ot miners it will be used to increase output from a decimated workforce.
fitter has meant slimmers disease for whole coalfields as they are starved of Without funds, InvestaCHE seams cannot mined or difficult geological conditions overcome. Areas like South Wales fare badly in the new tables for profit and loss - so the NCB proposes closure İn 1982 South Wales — employing 24,000 miners — received £14.5million for major capital Yorkshire — gol more. Promised new pits like Margam in South Wales, which could provide hundreds of new jobs are refused fundin hen Welsh miners went on strike in March 1983 it was for investment to viable, create more jobs.
• Divide rule with these plans unless the back of the NUM is broken. operation has taken many forms.
After decades of bitter battles, the north miners union has won a certain control and veto over work practices. now been flagrantly disregarded by the NCB in pit after pit, leading to bitter flare-ups over quotas and conditions In the first five months of 1983 one in five miners took strike action against these provocations.
The incentive bonus scheme, Kent troduced over miners' heads by Gormlev in 19//. has been used t‹ divide miners. Miners in higher investment and higher bonus pits are conned by the NCB and union officials into believing that harder work and less strikes will secure their future.
• The nukes are here In an attempt to break the strength of the miners as a force for social change the Tories are prepared replace dangerous nuclear power and limited supplies of oil — which are 35 per cent more costly. The intention is to increase the nuclear energy used, by between projects. North coal which - employing 14,600 miners £452.Smillion, that's 30 times elderly. bash the The lories cannot get awar The union bashing çompensation, This has dustry.
inpenditure Joe beneficiaries.
«coa with future Line lorics.
Socialist Action 23 March 1984 500 and 800 per cent by the year 2000.
The government has turned down NUM proposals for new ways of using are more efficient vironmentally sound and would allow cheap energy for the poor and the A 1979 Cabinet paper laid it on the line when it said 'But a nuclear pro gramme would have the advantage of removing a substantial portion of electricity production from the dangers of disruption of industrial action by coal miners or transport workers'.
No matter what the social cost, profits rule supreme.
• Leeches and their friends Aside from previous private owners still paid many of friends are leeching off the coal inLast year f366 million interest found its way to the pockets of the banks and speculators - that's a drain of f2million on every pit.
Between 1981 and 1982 there was a £54million increase in mysterious exlike Day licit. private contractors, depreciation and 'expenditure on other items' Anti-union employers like Arthur Snipe of Mining Supplies and Laurence Scott Electro-Motors — the scene of bitter jobs occupation in 1981 - are the are the private cowboys who are encouraged to take over open cast mining and workshops.
With their determined strike action the miners are saying enough is enough They are fighting for a safe and secure for themselves, their communities and all those suffering under
Socialist Action 23 March 1984