NO POLICE STATE - DEFEND THE NUM! Solidarity with the miners must be the order of the day. The government has launched an incredible and vicious police-state type strike-breaking operation through the use of 20,000 police. The police have illegally turned back cars carrying miners, they have threatened action against coach firms who carry pickets, and now they are stopping 'legal' picketing.
The government is determined to break this strike and with it the leadership of the NUM. The miners who have struck and gone on the picket line have matched the government in determination. Their fight in defence of trade union rights and their stand against the King/Tebbit Laws and the police violence that goes with these laws, merits the support of all the labour movement.
Twenty thousand police can stop four or even five thousand flying pickets. But they cannot stop the organised might of the labour movement. The TUC has maintained a cowardly silence but if they did call for action the strike would be won in days. Now is the time for the union leaders to act. In conjunction with the miners' pickets at power stations, coke and coal depots, and at the railyards, the other unions could make sure that no coal is moved.
This means that the coal turned out in the scab pits would simply be stockpiled. The left trade union leaders must also make it clear that if the government attempts to use the army to shift coal then they will call an all-out stoppage.
This strike can and must be won. But to win it means that the unions must join alongside the NUM in openly defying the government and its laws. • The Triple Alliance and TUC• must organise the blacking of all movement of coal! • Unconditionally support mass pickets at the pits and power stations! No recognition of Tebbit's laws! • Labour councils must extend practical support for the miners and pickets! • Name a day for solidarity action with the NUM!
Socialist Action 23 March 1984