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DATED WE THE WATER AREA Miners supported the Health Workers. Now they need solidarity. against defend The Tory press this week ranted on the 'extremism' 'violence' of the miners. The Thatcher government was supposedly ordering in thousands of police to the right of ordinary workers to go into the pits. government claimed it was simply enforcing 'the same law which applies to everyone.' These statements are hypocritical lies even by the standard habitually set by Thatcher, Brittan and Lawson. The Conservative Partv manned its frontation with the NUM in detail more than five years ago. The miners are fighting one of the most premeditated attacks ever launched against the trade union movement.
The origins of the present confrontation lie in the Tories period of opposition from 1974 to 1979. At that time the Conservative spent amount or te ana resources ramming over the lessons of its defeat at the hands of the unions in 1972 and 1974.
Tory thinking was drawn together in a report authored by Conservative Nicholas Ridley. Ridley is now Minister of Transport.
Ridley's Conservative Party report was supposedly secret but it was leaked to The Economist magazine. It layed out a step by step blueprint which has since been followed by the Thatcher government.
The Ridley report recommended that each nationalised industry should be instructed to achieve a 'totally inTale of nationalised of return on industries capital.
be instructed to achieve target even if this, 'might mean that men would be laid off, or uneconomic plants would be closed down, or whole businesses sold off or liquidated.' The report warned there must be no retreat on the strategy, 'there is no point in undertaking it unless prepared to go through with it.' Nationalised industries were then divided into different groups according The CUL large Scargill as smeared by the Sun to how easily the Ridley report belived it would be to take on and defeat a Education, road telecommunications, air transport and steel were singieu Out as arcas wilere a strike could be defeated most easily. Railways, docks, mining, and rub bish disposal were identified as areas of 'intermediate' difficulty.
Sewerage and water workers, electricity, and gas were defined as areas of this maximum flexibility it was explicitly stated that where industries, 'have the national interest by the jugular vein the only feasible option is to pay up.' From the general analysis detailed we are recommendations on Conservative follow were drawn up. series of The singled targets. should be introduced into industry and wage bargaining to split up the working cass. Privatisation was the core of this Telecommunications and the post office should be separated. Any measure of comparability in pay settlements betTo weaken the the unions the advice was 'to cut off the money supply to the strikers, and make the union finance them.' confrontations early in its term of office goverthele should provoke with groups of workers in sectors where the employers had a particularly strong position. British Leyland, the railways, civil service workers, and steel were out as particularly suitable
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ween industries should be ruled out. overall position of