THE CLASS struggle is seldom illuminated by the goings on in the House of Commons. Last Monday's debate on the miners' strike was therefore an exception to the general rule.
For the sisted that the closure of uneconomic pits must be 'number one item on the agenda' before there can be agreement to resume substantive negotiations between the NUM and the NCB.
For the Labour Party, Neil Kinnock and Stan Orme begged the government to accept that the NUM's offer of negotiations without preconditions was a formula which covered the closure of uneconomic pits.
whole thrust of the Labour Party's front bench was to plead for peace around 'reasonable' formula uneconomic pits - a position which was quite clearly intended to distance the front bench from Arthur Scargill.
The Tories seized on this to quote Kinnock's statement that 'commercial must be included in deciding on pit closures. They were also quick to play off the TUC against the NUM.
In fact, the real debate was Tories and 'Scargillism'. Only the Labour left oftered any serious opposition ment's attempts to smash the NUM.
The Tories concentrated their attacks on Arthur Scargill, while Kinnock and Orme carefully avoided the issue. Tony Benn defended the NUM leadership. He pointed out that the only way to end the strike quickly was to the NUR, ASLEF and the NUS by providing industrial support and further political action.
The issue was not uneconomic pits, but the fact that the government had starved viable pits of investment, so that money coula be put into high-productivity mines 'with the intention of selling them off'.
The real line of divide in the debate was not between the but between those who support the miners and those who capitulate before the Tories.
The direction that Kinnock et al have decided on was reinforced at the weekend, with their explicit rejection of 'illegality' in the local government fight. This will continue to be the divide on every major question in the class struggie.
The positions of Kinnock and the right on these questions are not even capable of standing up to the Tories in the House of Commons, lel alone in struggles such as the miners' or defence of local government.
The left has the responsibility, in the next period, of fighting for the leadership of the whole abour movement, against betrayed the miners and will betray any other major struggle that emerges — and there will be many of them.
There can be no truce with Kinnock and those who have failed to support the miners, because they will also fail in every other struggle. must be called to account in every section of the movement.
The task for the left will be to take the class struggle methods which have been followed in the miners' strike, and which will be necessary in the defence of local government into the labour movement itself. The fight to remove Labour's misleaders must be pursued as vigorously as the fight against the Tory government. In the fight against the Tories ment needs the miners have had in the last 11 months.
The parliamentary debate proved yet again that those Labour leaders who do not stand with the class struggle stand against it. They are an obstacle which must be removed.
Editor: ALAN FREEMAN Published weekly except two weeks in August and the last week oi December Signed articles by contributors do not necessarily represent Socialist Action's views. editorials.
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