Once again it was the miners who gave a decisive lead to the whole working class in their strike action last February to save jobs. They demonstrated that the Tories can be beaten through militant action. In the first of our regular features on the situation in industry Bill Alder analyses the significance of the February events and the prospects for the left in the miners' union.
The National Coal Board (NCB) began to reveal its plans for colliery closures on Friday 13 February. By the following Wednesday 23 pits had been named — a handful each in South Wales, Scotland and the North East, and individual pits in the Stafford, Lancashire, Kent, Warwick and Nottingham coalfields. The NCB claimed that some pits were on the verge of exhaustion (eg Hapton Valley in Lancashire and New Hucknall in Nottinghamshire), whilst others were being closed simply because they were big 'loss-makers' (the Welsh pits).
The basis for the closures was the change from the 'output-target' system of the Plan for Coal agreement between the last Labour government, the NCB and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and the 'finance-target' system of the Tories' 1980 Coal Industry Act.
The response of miners at the threatened Coegnant colliery in South Wales was an immediate walk-out. The South Wales NUM area executive was forced to bring forward a delegate conference from Wednesday 18 February to the Monday. The delegates voted unanimously for a total shutdown throughout the South Wales area. The 25,000 Welsh colliers responded as one, despite a threat from the NUM president Gormley that they were acting unconstitutionally.
By Wednesday all three Kent collieries were on strike, along with several Scottish pits, four pits in the north east, two in the western area NCB, High Moor colliery in north Derbyshire and 5,000 Yorkshire miners. In all, about 20 per cent of the NUM's membership were involved in some form of action, with Yorkshire, Scotland and Derbyshire areas (around 100,000 miners altogether) pledged to a total strike from Monday 23 February. Nottinghamshire area executive had called a delegate conference for Saturday 21 February, which, despite the area's 'moderate' reputation, was expected to call some form of strike action.
So it looked certain that over one-half of the NUM's quarter million members would be on strike even before any national strike ballot, In these circumstances the NUM national executive scheduled for Thursday 19 February would have had no option but to support strike action and call a national ballot, leading to a national strike within two weeks. By mid-week rail, steel and transport union leaders had already pledged their support in the event of a national strike.
On the evening of Monday 16 February David Howell, the Tory Secretary for Energy, sent the NUM and NCB a letter offering to meet them the following Monday. But within 24 hours it was clear that this would almost certainly be too late for anyone — Howell, NCB chief Ezra, or Gormley — to stop the drift towards a national strike.
The talks were hastily brought forward to the evening of Wednesday 18 February. At approximately 8.30 that evening television programmes were interrupted for an announcement that the NCB had withdrawn the closure plans and that the government was willing to discuss increased funding for the NCB and selective import controls on foreign coal.
The following day the NUM national executive voted by 15-8 to recommend a return to work. Executive members from Yorkshire, South Wales, Scotland and Kent argued for continuing the action until they received written guarantees from the NCB on closures, funding and import controls, Nevertheless by Saturday — having received 'further assurances' from the NCB — the former three area presidents were recommending a return to work. Kent area officials followed at the beginning of the next week. By Friday 27 February — two weeks after the strike action started — the miners were back at work in all the nation's coal-fields.
The crisis of the coal industry
The economic recession means a fall in the demand for coal from both private and state-run industry running into millions of tonnes. The decision of Bowater-Scott to close its paper mill at Ellesmere Port has meant the loss of 200,000 tonnes of coal per year, The cut-backs in production by the British Steel Corporation also reduces demand for coal by hundreds of thousands of tonnes. In July 1980, power station coal stocks were 3.2 million tonnes above their level one year previously, If no-one wants to buy coal, then it is obviously difficult for collieries to be 'profitable'.
High interest rates mean that the NCB will pay around £237 million to the big finance houses for the financial year 1980-81 (ie. £1,000 per working miner). And whatever the government's immediate proposals for emergency funding of the NCB (£200/600m has been mentioned) it still plans to phase out operating and regional grants by 1983-84. (Had the Labour Party remained in office, these were projected to average over £170m per year for the years 1980-84.)
Given these conditions and policies, it is most unlikely that the Tories' financial targets can be met by the NCB, whatever 'tinkering' with the system there may be. The NCB, by all accounts, still holds to the project of a far smaller number of 'super-pits'. This would enable them to maintain almost the same level of output but to employ many less miners, This thinking was behind the proposal to merge Hucknall and Babbington collieries in South Nottinghamshire.
The government and the NCB are already seeking to claw back the ground won by the miners in February. Within days of the strikes ending, the papers gave front page coverage to a redundancy payment scheme, allegedly giving miners taking voluntary redundancy 'up to' £42,000. This was a classic management confidence trick. The figure included all state benefits and NCB pensions/allowances to which miners would be entitled anyway.
Moreover, the scheme contained clauses specifying that applicants for the top money had to have averaged at least £140 per week pay in the period leading up to their voluntary redundancy. Other clauses specified that applicants had to have been face workers for a longer period than most men manage. One informed NUM member told me that should his pit be approached with the redundancy scheme, no one would receive anything like £42,000 and the top payments would more likely be in the region of £8,000.
Nevertheless, with massive media backing, this will probably be the NCB's strategy in the coming months and years: make a big song and dance about supposedly high redundancy payments, claim that selected pits are nearing exhaustion and take them on one by one (with a 'decent' time interval in between), This would mean comparatively few enforced redundancies for miners already in the industry: some would be tempted by the voluntary redundancy scheme (mainly older men); others could be redeployed.
What it would mean is the massacre of future jobs for youth in mining areas, the destruction of mining communities whose pits were declared 'uneconomic', and the strengthening of the notion of miners as industrial gipsies who can be shuttled around the country to meet the needs of the NCB and the capitalist economy,
Why did it happen?
Some sections of the media have suggested that the whole of the miners' February action may have been a put-up job. The schema is as follows: the NCB heads knew that they couldn't meet the government's financial targets; so they provoked the NUM in such a way that they knew massive resistance would emerge; this would frighten the Tories into granting the Board more cash. Gormley himself suggested this in an interview with the Daily Mail.
This is unlikely, to put it mildly. The boosting of militancy resulting from successful industrial action not only strengthens the NUM against the NCB, but also the left within the NUM. Neither of these developments are in the interest of Ezra and his cronies — even if they coincidentally got the NCB off the hook of the Treasury's financial restrictions in the short term,
More likely, the Tories and the NCB had grown over-confident, The Board had seen a majority of NUM members accept what was effectively a 9 per cent offer in the previous wage agreement, The Tories had succeeded in defeating the trade union movement on issues such as the victimisation of Derek Robinson in British Leyland and the run-down of the steel industry. Relying on Gormley's ability to hinder any fightback, the Tories were keen to hammer home their attack on the working class. Evidently, they were not prepared for a pitched battle with the class's strongest regiment, But they may well have been confident in Gormley, the other right-wing tops of the Triple Alliance — Sirs (ISTC) and Weighell (NUR) — and Chapple's (EETPU) control over many power station workers — to sabotage any effective resistance, They were wrong.
Not only did the miners respond quickly and militantly to the NCB's threats, but rank and file transport workers, rail and steel workers showed a willingness to take solidarity action before their own leaders were able to sabotage the developing dispute. With the water workers and the civil service unions threatening national action, the Tories had to suddenly re-adjust their line, Questioned on the TV programme 'World at One' on why the government had not 'stood up' to the miners, Trade Minister Biffen (a close co-thinker of Thatcher in the Cabinet) replied: 'I didn't come into politics to be a kamikazi pilot.'
The miners' victory showed the weakness and divisions within the ruling class. Faced by an economic crisis of massive proportions, the capitalists and their parliamentary lap-dogs cannot reach full agreement. They agree that to resolve the crisis in favour of the banks and big business it is necessary to inflict a decisive defeat on the organised labour movement. But how to do this is a different matter.
Secondly, the February actions showed that, despite setbacks, the organised muscle of the working class had not been completely tamed, The action of the miners, and before them the Gardners' occupation, and the Liverpool and London dockers' defence of jobs, showed vividly that workers were willing to take industrial action to defend their interests. The crucial question was that of leadership. Where a clear and militant lead has been given — by the South Wales miners in February — the union membership has not failed to respond.
The effects of the miners' victory
The miners' victory increased the confidence and willingness to fight of all workers, as it did following the NUM's struggle in 1972. And the same is true in the mining industry itself. For example, at Sherwood Colliery in Mansfield — a pit with no real tradition of militancy — there were two stoppages over pay and conditions within a month of the February victory.
But the 'moderate' majority on the union executive cannot be relied upon to combat the NCB's new tactics of picking off individual pits and voluntary redundancy schemes, It is after all the same 'moderate' majority that agreed the productivity bonus scheme with the last Labour government, which more than anything else divided the miners' ranks, particularly their capacity to organise united wages struggles.
Nor are the NUM 'lefts' without their problems, Scargill's January ballot of his members helped pave the way for the successful strike in February, but when the Welsh miners struck he still argued for deferring Yorkshire's solidarity action till Monday 23 February. The NUM left is politically weak, Its leading figures — Scargill, McGahey, Williams and Collins — are either members of the Communist Party or influenced by its demand for import controls as the basic solution to the crisis of the British coal industry.
The NCB is quite happy to place the blame for the problems of British miners on their Polish, American or German counterparts. That draws attention away from the massive interest repayments the NCB makes to the banks, the bloodsucking of the nationalised coal industry by private equipment suppliers and coal product firms like Coalite, and the chaos of capitalist production for profit not social need.
Nevertheless for many miners the February action confirmed what they had learnt in 1972 and 1974 — that only militant action brings results. The clear difference in attitude of the 'moderates' and militants on the national executive and area leaderships towards such action — Gormley warning against it, the left backing the miners already out and organising solidarity action — has not been missed by the NUM membership. This can only strengthen the left at every level — from the pit, branch and area level to the NUM conference and the forthcoming presidential elections.
Scargill's campaign for the presidency is linked into the broader changes taking place in the labour movement. He frequently appears on the same platform as Tony Benn, attracting large audiences as in Mansfield in March when 600 miners and Labour Party members turned up to hear them. Scargill is also speaking on a wide range of issues. He recently addressed a rally to commemorate the defeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. This can only deepen awareness among miners of the need for broad political solutions to the crisis of the industry.
The Benn/Scargill axis also tends to undermine the traditional division of labour between the 'political' and 'economic' wings of the workers' movement. No longer is it left to Labour MPs to speak of politics in parliament while the unions bargain at the point of production. The unions can and should speak out on political matters, as Scargill does on disarmament, and as Joe Whelan, general secretary of Nottingham NUM, did at a May Day rally when he attacked Labour's spokesperson on Ireland, Don Concannon, for his statements on the Republican hunger strikes. Equally Labour Party members can and should campaign for socialist candidates in the unions like Bob Wright in the engineering union and Scargill in the NUM.
Scargill appears increasingly likely to be elected president when Gormley retires next year. Few miners, whatever their political convictions, are enthused at the prospect of having his right wing opponent Trevor Bell, leader of the clerical section COSA, as their leader. Even the right wing former Nottingham NUM leader Len Clarke has called for support for Scargill, coupled with a campaign to make him 'moderate' his behaviour!
Hopefully the NUM left won't take the easy option and wage a 'don't vote for a clerk' campaign, Scargill's campaign should be used to arm the membership with economic and political arguments to defend their jobs, wages and conditions against the Tory/NCB plans, It should also be used to build the campaign to get rid of the Tory government and the crazy capitalist system they defend.