media is not in their unwillingness to use the anti• This is the real content of the Tories successes against the The action that Yorkshire, South want redundancy In Scotland Mick that the Tories can be of the argument on of is The Conservative Parpolitically been preparing for this strike for ten vears. It has been technically preparing for because the ive veds enormous police operation in Nottingham was not put Only few months notice.
TUC leadership pne has been preparing for the contronlalion five years also - by trying to ensure it didn't happen.
And Neil Kinnock confirmed direction which he intends to take the Labour Party last week by blocking with Gerald Kaufmann and Roy Hattersley to veto Labour forcing a debate on the miners strike in Parliament.
Neil Kinnock's politics of the ostrich however will not alter the fact that the this strike going determine course of British politics in the next five years Tall more than any election or any opinion poll.
For five years the Thatcher government has won almost all the strategic battles for capital. tion, introduction of antiTHORAWS, mass unemployment, massive reduction of the Labour Party vote, Cred tion of a new anti-Labour Party in the SDP. These are merely some of the prizes which the Thatcher government has delivered to British capital.
But almost none was important. as the victory last autumn over SOGAT, and the NUJ.
For fifty years, since the introduction of the 1927 Trades Disputes Act, everv arent to Dass laws limiting the powers of the trade unions in Britain has been defeated. The Donovan Commission, In Place of Strife, Heath's Industrial Relations Act all went down to Cities defeat amid mass union opposition and a shower of political strikes The defeat NGA, preceded by the capitulation of the POEU Executive, followed the acknowledgement of defeat by SOGAT and the NUJ, showed that the government for the first time had succeeded in im Posive aris hit in trade fectivę - right unions to defend their members. was the greatest restriction of the position the unions for fifty years.
But the success against the NGA was only a partia victory for the inal cher government and the framework law.
The victory at Warrington ended the days when relatively small groups of workers, or most single unions. could take on and defy anti-union legislation - as the dockers had successfully done in 1972 fol Since the NGA example.
dispute al! smal! pale de-
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THE miners strike is well into its fourth week. JOHN ROSS assesses the stakes of the dispute for the That- cher government and the labour movement. lan MacGregor's declaration last Saturday that the miners dispute is a political strike is just about the only true statement he has made since he became head of the National Coal Board.