ACTION VICTORY ORGANISE DESPITE the press campaign solidarity with the strike was building up last week. • A one day strike in solidarity with the miners has been called in Dundee. • After NUR members at Shirebrook in Nottinghamshire voted to ignore union instructions, coal, the trains were blocked in any case operators. • Dockers dlesborough import of 65,000 tons of coal the US bia. Fair destined BSC plant at Redcar. • NALGO voted £10,000 to the miners support fund. • Literally solidarity meetings and collections have been organised by local trade union and Labour Party organisations throughout the country some raising thousands of pounds for miners solidarity.
ing official silence has come on all the real issues of the dispute not for my job.' Labour Party. movement miners engineering usual.
and the SDP.
move the Labour Party. by signals Midblocked the ship Am- Rodney for the hundreds of Neil tersley, But amid all this a deafenNeil Kinnock and the arliamentary leadership of the GORDON ROYSTON, now a Yorkshire miner, but Northern Ireland. In his letter he wrote: 'I am now a Yorkshire miner and I feel that at the age of 31 I may soon be one of the forgotten masses. In other words I was good enough to be a Yorkshire bully boy fighting in Ireland, but Thatcher has a policy on the miners strike - the miners should go back to work and accept unemployment David Owen has got a line.
He agrees with Thatcher - as The Liberals are showing their normal independence by agreeing with both Thatcher has In fact the entire world has got a policy on the strike - except the official leadership of Behind the scenes of course there is a policy. Labour Party leaders like Tony Benn, Eric Heffer, and Dennis Skinner, together with union leaders like Bickerstaff, Ray Buckton and Jimmy Knapp, have been backing the miners, going to the picket lines and getting boycotts of coal.
Kinnock, Roy HatGerald Kaufman, and Dennis Healey have been supporting the line of the right wing to force a ballot. That was in all the papers even before Healey leaked it last week.
Terry Duffy and Bill Sirs, like the Parliamentary Labour leadership, can criticise police methods. But that is to avoid the real issue, who is right in the Is it Yorkshire, Scottish, Kent and South Wales miners fight for their jobs? Or are they "bully boys' who the police must deal with - although 'not too roughly, of course?.
Nor is Labour going to be able to avoid the realissue of the strike simply by concentrating on civil liberties. Of course the police actions are a huge attack on democratic rights and must be denounced. But if the strike to be defeated, if the pickets are really "bully boys', then the attacks on democracy are regrettable but necessary That is the only practical conclusion people will draw There is only one basic choice. Either Labour supports the miners in their strike or it doesn't. The rank and file of the Party does. It is showing it up and down the country. Neil Kinnock isn't It is completely unacceptable to have a leader of the Labour Party who looks like an ostrich with his head stuck in the sand - but secretly is urg. ing a ballot.
Neil Kinnock should be urg. ing the Nottinghamshire miners to come out on strike. Not backing the right wing's demands.
Come out and back the miners, Neil. Or step aside and let those who will back the miners speak for the Labor
Socialist Action
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formerly a soldier in the Coldstream Guards, has sent back to the Queen a medal he received for three tours of