This Red Mole Broadsheet is the second produced by the International Marxist Group (British Section of the Fourth International) on the miners strike. The Red Mole itself (12 X pages) comes out fortnightly and costs 7½ p. Bulk orders (over 12) cost 5 p per copy. cash in advance, and are post-free. Subscriptions cost f1 for 6 months and £2 per year. The IMG makes an urgent appeal for funds to cover some of the cost of our work during the strike. We ask all non-miners to buy this broadsheet for as much as they can afford. Or they can send donations as quickly as possible to the following address:
The Treasurer, IMG, 182 Pentonville Road. London, N.1.
We will receipt any amount at/or over £1. For more information about the IMG write to the secretary IMG, same address. NAME ADDRESS UNION At the end of the National Union of students' demonstration in London, 5,000 students plus representatives from DATA No.5 Division marched on Hobart House, the NCB headquarters, to express their solidarity with the miners. But that march did not take place without a fierce struggle. The NUS demonstration was called in response to the Government's proposals on students unions, which if passed would emasculate them by cutting off their funds and preventing them from playing any positive role in the class struggle. Students have no economic power like workers, but they do have the power to get across certain political ideas and take certain political actions. That demonstration was a perfect opportunity to show what students can do in this way-not to divert students away from the question of union autonomy, but to show what the autonomy must mean in practice.
The problem was that the CP-led executive of NUS would have none of itall they wanted was a comfy afternoon stroll of 'protest'. They talked of course about solidarity; they even had Kent miners' leaders and CP member Jack Dunn on the platform. But when it came to solidarity in action, that was another thing altogether. They would not even allow a rank-and-file miner onto their platform before the march. The Left wing, chiefly the International Marxist Group and the I.S., work in the NUS through the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Students Unions. They were committed at their national conference to making the march one of solidarity with the miners, to bring out the real meaning of union autonomy. But even here there were cold feet. A proposal at the committee to try to change the route of the march so as to go via Hobart House was defeated-by the I.S.!
The IMG then decided to go ahead and try to organise this anyway, believing that this decision contradicted that of the conference, that it was necessary to differentiate the Liaison Committee quite clearly from the purely verbal solidarity of NUS, and that this move would win wide support from students. The response proved us to be correctin particular from those students, like those at Canterbury and Colchester, who have been most active on the picket lines. It should be noted that a contingent from DATA also marched to the Coal Board. Does the CP and the IS think this union is ultra-left? The march to Hobart House was not counterposed to work on the picket lines; on the contrary it was intended to reinforce it by demonstrating to a mass of students rather than the converted few the importance of the strike. Not to have led that march would have been to fail to try to extend the support among students for the strike at a time when the miners need every kind of support they can get. The role which students can play in the strike is relatively small compared to the potential power in action of the trade unions. Nevertheless, as many miners already realise, it is by no means insignificant, and every effort must be made to extend it and involve as many students as possible.