THE DAILY MIRROR, self-appointed sup Neil Kinnock, launched a bitter attack on Arthur Scargill in its front page on Monday.
While happily miners' strike was lost clear to over 60 per cent of miners still on strike, nor to the Tories who are treading a good deal more cautiously that 'Mr Scargill has stabbed himselt in the back. No one did it to him'. It was not Neil Kinnock. It was not monsense has won through', the Mirror As is often the case reverse is the truth. After 11 months of struggle the NUM executive goes into the talks with over 60 per cent of its membership still on strike, and still supporting Arthur Scargill.
It is not Scargill who is out of line with the membership. It is those who have not defended their members jobs. Not since AJ Cook has there been a trade union leader with such a record of determined leadership, and principled refusal to sell the membership short.
City Scargill could have accepted the MacGregor plan. He could have called in the TUC general council to get him off the hook after a token resistance. capitulate in the face of the most ferocious assault on any trade union since World War! has produced a major labour movement.
In the last year the strike has become a tocus for every strand of resistance to the attacks of the Tories - for blacks, women, Greenham, and the whole labour and trade result, the Tories have been forced to back off from a whole series of attacks on the working class: on the docks, on rail, and in Liverpool.
The left in the movement has strengthened and clarified in the course of the miners strike — and this is a material factor in the current talks. Had Scargill accepted Willis, Basnett, et al, Tories would be free to turn their attention to would now be well under way, other sectors. In that very real sense the miners have fought for the whole working class, and continue to do so.
Those who do not stand with the miners are betraying the whole working class.
volved in the labour movement today, and will continue to be involved, is a division between those who stand on the class struggle and those The left which has emerged in the course of the miners' strike is a product of that divide. It runs from top to bottom of the movement, and ingstone has stood on the class struggle side of The treachery of Kinnock, Willis, et al, has shown that to deal an effective blow to Thatcher, methods deep and deal with the sabotage of the right. For that, the left must strengthen itself programatically, and organise across the movement.
to stand back and take ones distance from the strike. The other is to stand with the miners and fight, to be with the struggle, whatever the outcome. At this point in the strike the left must do all it can to strengthen the NUM in the talks. The task for the left is still BACK THE MINERS!
Editor: ALAN FREEMAN Published weekly except two weeks in August and the last week of December.
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What nonsense Am I not a lon standing support of Margaret Thatcher?
Socialist Action 1 February 1985