CAVALRY CHARGES and riot police are what greeted the miners at Orgreave picket line on Monday. The Tories are determined that the miners will not score a victory in any confrontation with the police and are prepared to use the most open police brutality to achieve it.
Last week MacGregor and Thatcher also decided to blow up the negotiations between the NUM and the Coalboard by demanding the NUM accepts pit closures. The Tories have decided on their political plans for the summer. They want to smash the NUM into the ground and with it strike a devastating blow to the entire labour movement in Britain.
For the last three weeks Thatcher's government had played the 'hard cop, soft cop' game. Through carefully orchestrated leaks to the press about 'divisions' in the government and the NCB, Thatcher sought to create illusions in the talks. Meanwhile the government's real policy could be seen even then at Orgreave and the other key depots and power Slauolls.
The reality is that there is no major concession Thatcher can afford to make to the miners. The government is in trouble on a number of fronts, meeting problems in its confrontation over local government, and falling electoral support. It is locked in a battle with Britain's most powerful industrial union in which the miners show no sign of giving in.
Thatcher's political conclusion is simple - and is why she blew up the negotiations and organised her thugs at Orgreave. Liverpool, local government, and above all the miners must be crushed few fainthearts may have dreamt of a compromise, but Thatcher was never interested. She knows that her government today cannot afford any major defeat at the hands of the miners.
The entire labour movement, and Labour Party must pick up that challenge Thatcher has thrown down. Labour's steps forward in the Euro-elections were a big boost. But the whole party must understand that advance will count for nothing if it allows the miners to be defeated.
National and local trade union boycotts of coal are being built. Local Labour Parties are actively building solidarity.
But the entire national Labour Party now has to be thrown behind the miners. Top of the agenda of every trade union branch, and of the first meeting of every local Labour must be solidarity with the miners.
The NUM has to take the lead in spreading that solidarity not merely to the leadership but also the rank and file of other unions.
The key steps in the days ahead to build on the solidarity being carried locally are: • The Labour Party NEC should urgently call a national Labour Party demonstration in support miners. • The NUM should call a national solidarity conference of all trade unions, and trade union bodies, supporting the miners to map out a plan of campaign for solidarity. • The campaign must be built for a national day of strike action in support of the miners.
If the labour movement builds on the victory it scored in the elections to secure the victory of the miners then Thatcher' decision to confront th NUM can be made a blow from whict she will never recover. of the
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