the miners by the attempt to change Rule 30, which states that 'in all National Union shall apply and in all cases of doubt or dispute the matter shall be decided by the National Executive Committee of the National Union ...
The rule change sought by the Notts scabs would effectively take the Notts area outside the national The Notts would be independant of the NUM would become, in effect, separate union with the scabs who have lead the efforts to break the strike, in This SLeD calculated effort to break up the NUM. The people working miners old OVER THE LAST two weeks the National Coal AES 'exercise' designed to test the of Lancashire coalfields to the of pit head coal.
The coal is good quality coal for domestic usage NUM originally thought it was being moyed for concessionary users.
The TGWU Region No 4 fall-time coordinators, working conjunction with the NUM traced it to Stoke power station.
Bold is a militant pit which has been solid since day one of the strike. Unfortunately the attack, coming so near to Xmas, has been difficult to counter.
The Lancashire picket numbering 100-150 has been unable to prevent the movement of up to 40 lorFOURTEEN hundred people attended the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners' 'Pits and Perverts' ball which raised over £5,000 for South Wales and Yorkshire mining communities on Monday 10 December.
and (insert) Dave Donovan (Dulais NUM) who declared: 'You have worn our badge, Spin your badge on us, we will support you.
miners know there are other causes and problems.
• Contact for LGSM, c/o 39, London W9 2AH (phone 01-444 5442).
Islington Miners Support Committee March and Rally Assemble 12.30 Saturday 19 January 1985 at Islington Town Hall Upper St N1.
Speakers: Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn, South Wales NUM Join the campaign. Support committee meets every Thursday 7.30 Co-op Hall, 129, Seven Sisters Road. THE MOVES by leading scabs in the Notts NUM to make the Notts union independent of the national union represent a major escalation of the attack on and big-business backers of the 'Working Miners Committees'. The matters in which the Rules of this Union and those of the National Union shall conflict, the Rules of the committees have decided that Notts is the area to start that process.
The scab committees have been aided by donaions from big business, bi Fleet Street, and by sym pathetic solicitors. In addition, Thatcher aides such Tim Bell David Hart have been closely inal Tries a day. Uver the last fortnight the pickets have grown JWI unionists and Labour Parmembers joining picket lines.
The period immediate. ly after Xmas is going to be the most difficult for the waole strike. raising has focussed the activity of most miners up until now.
After Xmas most of the miners will be wanting to see a step forward in instabbing of innock and stabbing Kinnock and on TUC policy couldn't have come at a Countering these difficuities number priority of Pictured is Jimi Somerville of Bronski Beat you know what harassement means, as we do. Now we will It won't change overnight but now 140,000 We will never be the same.
Chippenham Rd, Photo: CAPITAL GAY Bell is director of Saatchi and Saatchi. Hart has been dispensing money to working miners' mittees since August. He worked closely. with MacGregor. He propert developer The Workin Miners Committee worked closely with these people throughout the dispute. The government and the NCB have avoided becoming directly involved in the various legal against the NUM.
For example, even though the secondary picketing of British Steel was outlawed under the 1982 anti-unior legislation, no court actions were taken by BSC.
Instead, the court actions have been taken by the working miners. These actions have so far led to the fining of the NUM, seleft-wing trade unionists in the north west. The NUM have recently established a full-time solidarity office in Manchester.
The TGWU Region No o have now assigned two full-time workers monitor the movement 01 coal and coal substitutes Picketing of oil refineries in the area have met with The North West Regional Committee 19 January. series of meetings across Merseyside Manchester have been oreans. ed between the NUM and leading stewards and officials transport, power and fuel industries.
Within the Lancashire NUM the porters of the leadership, in the Bold and Sutton Manor branch, are questration of its funds and removal of its elected caaersmip as trustees of the union.
This allowed the Tories seen as the aton the Inalso hide This new move is from source. The business. The miners, conincreasingly taking over leadership of the strike locally.
They begun make alliances with the left labour movement in the north west to fight for the implementation of TUC decisions.
Other branches controlled the Sid Vincent's of this world are not playing such a positive role.
This is why the NCB has chosen to try and move coal at Bold. Kinnock and Willis have given the NCB boor in and atack the attack the militant sections of the NUM to try and break woth isolide rested the won the rest of the The north west labour movefighting back against these attacks.
form different of th Spencer of the 1930s. strips the last working win a 'democratic' These would pleased tionally.
Striking miners
appealing all NUM changes. explains: choser dispute not for the issue against who was involved early stages, who mittee, said *i am no the movesee them smash the NUM, not be The whole NUM. The the the scabs see as the THE PIT village of Fitzwilliam near Wakefield is shocked by the severity of sentences handed out to members of Fitzwilliam mine.
Peter Hurst was jailed for six months on a charge of breach of the peace, arising from violent scenes during a police invasion of their village on 9 July. Three received ther defendants suspended sentences, while three are awaiting social reports.
The Fitzwilliam events were the first of the full-scale police assaults Yorkshire mining communities which were repeated lale.
Hemsworth, Armthorpe 'JEREMY CORBYN, pictured above, was one of the 300 pickets who turned up to stop the oil at Tilbury power station in Essex December.
Three oil tankers were turned back despite the presence of a large number of police dressed in riot gear.
Tom Durkin (Brent Trades Council), Ivan Shevs tional Executive), member of the NUR as well as Jeremy addressed une picket line.
Dave Palmer of Haringey Miners Support Committee.
'400 turned _ up to bickel Neasden power station in Brent from all OVC. SURe Home Counties on Monday December No tankers arrived while the pickets dance police behaviour was far less than Friday's mass picket.
'Two Kent miners and one woman had been arrested at that picket and their bail conditions were mile half-a-mile away the power station. and Grimethorpe.
The stipendiary magistrate has proved to be as vicious in court as the ponce were on the nigh when a force of 50 police surrounded Fitzwilliam Hotel and burst into it 'lashing out with truncheons'.
By Matthew Creighton The victims of this remarkable police brutality, dazed bruised, were charged with o were charged with fences like assault which carefully avoided the right Defendant Peter Doody told Socialist Action: "The police know brought K.
Andy ComMiners Comed went onto Willesden magistrates rest Councillor He was arrested in August Kilburn Street their families 'He Tait, of suppor chair of Brent CLP. For more New Year. they rely on these magistrates A jury trial likely have would most aquitted us.
the said was aquitted. chief job now is to give support to Peter Hurst in Armley Jail, and his family here in Fitzwilliam over Christmas • The defendants their supporters are setting Group. Sendmessagesand Prisoners Support Xmas cards Peter Hurst, Armley Jail, Leeds. Donations should be sent to the Prisoners Support Group, Rockingham Street, Fitzwilliam, West Yorkshire.
new militancy THE QUESTION that has come to the fore in every began with women setting the agenda of the peace movement at Greenham Common.
it is still women-only and it remains a source in inspiration for all those who wish to oppose cruise missiles being stationed in Europe, much to the consternation of the CND leaders.
Arthur Scargill, president of the National Union of Mineworkers, has been forced to reverse his attitude towards women by the growth of a huge Women Against Pit Closures movement in support of the women into contact with trade unionism, socialism and feminism for the first time in their lives.
Those feminists who chided the NUM at the beginning of the strike for being macho (Miners are men's love objects' wrote Bea Campbell in The Road to Wigan Pier Revisited) completely tailed understand that working class women would see the importance of inis dispute and organise actively in support of the miners as women.
Wives, mothers, daughters. girl-friends. renow unade donasts and members Doured into the SUDDOT groups to re-organise the communities prepare for a long haul where collective provision was at a premium.
By Valerie Coultas demonstrations have now occi orranscu, a lauloldi movement consolidated, ana women nave gone on picket lines alongside the men to spread the dispute.
Members of the NUM HARRIS/JEREMY NICHOLL freely admit to be taken aback by tne power or lal: movement contalment gle.
showed porting the but be con. fronted in process allu. a tamilv. learnt housework was The reknowned battles of also deserve The dispute, wonder have against ingham dinner ladies opposed won, Senan Skills The Fords machinists striking over lne recognl tion of women's skills in a Ieglaullig women in a company of 42,000 male employees proved that this militancy would take head on the employers 14 year-long offensive to avoid the equal pay legislation.
Black women, who have spearheaded the battle for black sections in the Labour Party, challenged all the priorities of socialist and feminists over the last year demanding that their concerns should be taken seriously.
And on the question of Have challenged the movement's silence by organising in support the Armagh WUlc political struggle over the last year is women. 1984 Contrary to all forecasts the camp still survives, The year is ending with biggest surprise of all.
A movement which has brought thousands of otos:
against the strip searches and harassment in gaol.
What we are witnessing InCH feminism. An outburst of women's militanev that 1s both a reaction to the attacks of this Tory government and a reflection of social position In socier roov.
Women have not allowed the Thatcher administration to push them VULI Often heading up families, keeping nemselves or providing an essential income they need their wages.
Trapped in the ghetto of low pay, fighting to de inadequate community services they have turned to the labour moveWhat is new about this wave of feminism is that it is deeply rooted inside the labour movement and the mass movements against As women turn to the Labour Party, the trade the peace movement to fight the Tories they are forced to organise to transform these movements because they 1121 these organisations do not autonal cally acconouale needs demands. 'Women have every right to disturb and challenge the priorities of the male dominated labour movement' This is the decisively new feature about this upstruggle for accountability within the 1979 to 1981, therefore had a particular attraction for feminists. Decade Unionisation of ing over a decade and the pro-abortion movement lad made strong links with the trade unions.
The attraction of Bennism to women was that it was open to feminisation. Accountability could very easily become a rallying cry of women to men, well as cry the ranks to the leaders of the sections gained a new lease of life Regional national conferences of the Labour Party were transformed as feminists the struggle for greater representation WCI on to pass some of the most radical policies on Te no one kakan! war, on NATO that any of aDOI movement adopted.
Women councillors brought feminism to the town hall committees were established.
The battle for representation was an obvious tocus for women's energies given the discrimination that exists within the British labour movement. At this years TUC for example only 13 per cent of the delegates were women there were no resolutions relating to women's concerns on the agenda.
Positive The labour movementaccords little independent authority to structures within the movement. Reserved places on Labour's NEC and the TUC women's advisory are chosen by men. The positive discrimination which exists movement is not based on feminist principles of accountability to women.
Many Bennite leaders have responded positively to the challenge of the oppressed unlike left forces ike the Now under seige from LiverDianne Abbott pool's black community it is having to learn that it is not so easy to ride roughshod over the demands of groups within the labour movement.
by counterposing the struggle socialism to the struggle lor grealer represenlalion of women and blacks in aDol movement, combined with reactionary views on gay politics show their prostration before everything that 1S worst about the British labour preJudice backwardness born out of it origins in crati unionism at the heyday of British imperialism.
Socialist Action 21 December 1984 When Militant lines up with the BETPU to oppose black sections, and with Gwyneth . Dunwoody oppose the demands women, it is crystal clear just rotten are the politics of this tendency. It claims the name of 'marx.
but reality represents social chauvinism comodation to the labour bureaucracy.
The sectarian errors of the Militant on questions of women gives succour to the argument of the Eurocommunists. Bea Alive Campbell debating Ken Livingstone at Left Alive we fundamentalists ng the 'fundamentalists' the 'old Trotskyist far left, the Labour Party hard left and sectarians within the Communist Party' "Fundamentalists', she argues, 'opposed to changes within without the working class, within without the socialist movement, changes that it is obvious the GLC have promoted.
But Bea knows this is a caricature. She knows there is a definite feminist current within Trotskyism and more importantly that the London Labour Party hard left, or the Bennite left, has been to the fore in promoting the case of feminism within the party.
To equate this-te moinis with anti-teminis 'tankies' inside the Comdeliberate sleight of hand designed obscure the real which alliances should the left in the Labour Party make to promote the concerns o 'the dispossessed'. This is the real issue Bea Campbell is really saying steer clear of the trots and Benn and come into the orbit of Marxism Today and the Labour Coordinating Committee because we'd ilke to share in some of the success of the GLC But there's no evidence that the LCC, which pro-Kinnock, will champion the cause of women within the party on a con sistent basis. There seems taking part in this sleez!
The LCC has already decided to launch a full scale challenge to the hard left section of the NEC a next year's conference and they alc unlikely Io SuD port the Women's Actior Committee slate Casal.
Bea's advocacy feminist incomes taking money men rather •than capital to give to wornell llas givell d left cover for the right wing to sharpen up their offensive against the left on this question before the next election.
Bea's immediate tions reveal feminis Steel, Owen ur The because the miners marcl of being priorities the male move. ment.
the labour exploiters tant that if the new of rewards.
TIfE MOST 'basic alliance that las' to be made in the struggle for socialism in Britain is with the fight of the Irish people for independence. Complete solidarity with that struggle would quired by the British movement quite regardless who was leading the Irish struggle for independence.
But something still more exciting important developed for socialists in Britain. Sinn Fein in the North of Ireland today has developed into the most advanced mass working class leadership in the whole of Western Europe.
REDMOND O'NEILL
Socialist Action interviewed JOE AUSTIN, Belfast chairperson of Sinn Fein, on the goals Sinn Fein was fighting for.
What are the aims of Sinn Fein? The short and longterm aims of Belfast Sinn Fein expose perialism and all of its ramifications in ana lo plot an course in the establishment of a 32 county democratic socialist republic of Having said that is isn't going to happen next week or even next year. There are a number of substantial problems which we have to get over least the British physical presence.
But the British occupation Ireland isn't only British troops. controlled through the colonial set-up in the North and the neo-colonial setup in the South.
We have the coming together with British imperialism of the tweedle-dum parties in the south -Fianna Fail - - supported in a pathetic fashion by the so-called Irish Labour It needs to be made clear to people, irrespective of the colour of the flag they fly over the GPO in Dublin, these parties are part of the collaboration with British economic, military occupation. the conspiracy against the Irish people.
People very easily identify enemv as ine British soldier street because of his paraphenalia: his uniform, his guns and the armoured wars ana lallks.
But the politicisation has to spill over from that to identify the class enemy in order to understand that the struggle is not simply against the British military presence, or even tne DrILISn political presence, but also against the economic presence that the political imperialism of the Brits will leave in their wake.
We not struggling geographical liberation to be again exploited by capitalists remove the Brits and replace them with something apparently different but not so different at the end of the day.
So we have to link together all of the struggles from the women's struggle, through the unemployment struggle through the whole social, and political struggle to the national They are all part of the one SLURLIC. struggle.
Republican News British prime minister in Dublin on Manday §oscadist Ardipon: 211 December 1984 militarists, revolutionary republicans.
organisation to which be reing the bombs, could not relate. of The has them.
It for ed struggle in strategy?
gle. The armed sacrosanct. It is part British im- gie.
alternative then like Harrods — 10I Harrods attack.
of It is counties in the North of Ireland.
mass popular support.
• Fine Gael and past Britsh administrations political and portantly, that They are part of presence In Bureauc. on ine reasonable people ple about Ireland. for that economic demands, was support for brisoneis.
you've had the constitutional republicans and you've had the When the first of these were in the leadership Sinn Fein was a militaristic working class, who were not involved in throwconstitutional republicans presented constitutional arguments to imperialism which actually did no work and the working class had no faith in is only with the revolutionary republican leadership that the movement is beginning to understand that working class struggles are part of the and to see that in fact they are two sides of the same coin. What is the place of support of the armSinn Fein's political The armed struggle and the electoral intervention are part of the same strugstruggle IS not OI une overal struggle. It has no greater place than any other component part of the strugIf the armed struggle causes problems, which it has done on occasion, we'd have to be very honest and say that attack or that operation was wrong'. This is not a question of affecting election results. An action is wrong if people cannot relate to it. For example, it's wrong if it's a backward step we condemned the Sinn Fein has been able to win well over 100,000 votes in elections in the six This demonstrates very cicary lal you lave But it is obviously not enough to defeat British imperialism. What is Sinn Fein's strategy for developing the struggle in the twenty six counties in the South after the immense impact of the hunger strike? There is no doubt that the current and need the active collaboration of the Free State, certainly in terms of having a semieffective security policy. But, more imcollaboration necessary in terms of confusing English working class opinion about the British 'here you have like Garret Fitgerald and everyone agrees that things in Ireland would be OK if the IRA would go away'. That type of argument does succeed in confusing English peo- Photo GRAHAM COOKSOA 'Historically in the republican movement there have been three main components in ascendancy: you've had the militarists, you've had the constitutional republicans and you've had the revolutionary republicans.' The campaign around the H-block their hungerstrikers had a very big response in the South, but this was mainly the result of the suffering of the prisoners, towards the intensity of the campaign, and of its which were very reasonable demands. That is not the same as support for the struggle or for Sinn Fein. It the demands of the We were not able to capitalise in the guru to understand that when the crisis comes with Brit departure the class and capitalist interests will come together and try to form an administration for the whole of Ireland which maintains status quo. For example Unionists who today oppose any relationship with the South will gravitate similar people representing similar class interests. That's happening already - perhaps not on the floor of Westminster or the Assembly — but its happening.
Capitalism in orientates towards British capitalism because Irish capitalists see British capitalism and the and obviously the people who are going to subscribe to it, perhaps even die for it are the politicised sections of the working class. What is the policy of Sinn Fein towards the the labour movement in the 26 counties. For example there is a debate taking place Amalgamated Irish General Workers with the Irish Labour Party. What is Sinn Fein's attitude to this?
In Ireland we don't have a labour movement. We don't even have a bad labour movement.
fight for it was Labour Party presides unions like the Transport Union on relations What we have is a mendment campaign and its conspiracy against women last year in the South instigated by sections of the leadership along with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. The Labour Party is part of the government which over the second highest unemployment rate in Europe. The Labour Party supports the repressive actions of that government.
'key to the whole liberation of the country is the social and economic struggle that
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Board have been moving pit head coal from Bold colliery to a power station near Stoke.
Victory to the Miners! Stop the Police State!
Contal Eloi Souls Easti wabury A and B er Stations
«A revol republican