AND-FILE PAPER, THE MINEWORKER.
What effect has nationalisation had on the mining industry?
Clearly many workers saw the nationalisation of such a big and basic industry as the beginning of the end for capitalism in general. What did they actually get? Firstly a notice on every pit gate saying, "This pit is now the property of the people managed on their behalf by the National Coal Board", also a flag. More substantially came a huge safety reform programme and the bringing of the industry into something like a civilised method of operation. However, the workers turned up for work only to see the self-same gaffer who had served the owners previously. There was no control, it took very few years to learn that the Coal Board boss was the same kind of enemy as the private boss. The role of the Coal Board henceforth was to provide cheap fuel to private industry and a source of easy plunder to the mine supply industry: the miners meanwhile were to become the whipping boy as agents against inflation. How far has rationalisation weakened the miners?
In just over ten years to the present time NUM membership dropped from almost 800,000 miners to just under 300,000 today. Unemployment among miners is twice the national average and behind that figure lie miles of destroyed villages, thousands of uprooted communities of men from the North and Scotland who drifted from one area to another as the coalfields declined under the ravages of Robens. In ten years 15,000 men moved en bloc to exile among strangers, hundreds of miles away from their families and homes.
The response of the union was one of total surrender. Not one official strike against closures and redundancy. Just the reverse in fact, as the union bureaucrats such as Will Paynter burst a gut to help in the massacre. The men themselves over a long period fell into the mesmerised belief that the least trouble, the smallest strike, would lead to the closure of their collieries.
About three years ago the mask fell off, as the Coal Board had no apparent policy about closures. I, myself, was moved from a •profitable gas coal pit to work at a colliery in Yorkshire making a healthy loss each year. Coking coal pits all over Durham were being closed, while the same fuel was being imported to the tune of 11 million tons a What was the response of the miners to all this?
All over Wales, Scotland and Yorkshire the miners were waking up and mobilising towards a new offensive. Just before the surfacemen's strike of four years ago a new militant and political climate was emerging. We in The Mineworker were a reflection of it. We had seen that in every country militants were beginning to struggle, holding meetings, 11publishing leaflets, forcing through motions in the branches for an aggressive fight, but all in an unco-ordinated fashion. We resolved to call together from every area the leading militants, socialists and revolutionists in a broad united front based upon a common anti-capitalist struggle.
At the first meeting we christened ourselves The Mineworkers Internationale and adopted (after great difficulty with some of the CP comrades) a revolutionary programme and international perspective of giving voice to the miners of the world in our common fight against oppression. We helped in the Doncaster-Derbyshire area to build up a co-ordinated plan towards a national strike in support of the surfacemen which most people will remember resulted in an unofficial strike in what were to become the militant centres of the present period and recent struggles, i.e. Yorkshire, Wales and Scotland. We intervened in this fight with copies of the political voice of our group, The Mineworker, our message then as now as to draw out the political nature of all strikes in this epoch. What in your opinion is the political significance of the strike?
This present strike is the climax of the British class struggle of recent years, and marks a new phase of anti-capitalist fight. It is doubtful if a better example of how the class confronts capitalism in the course of what is ostensibly a wages claim can be found The Tory government has laid down the wage-rise level far below that necessary to keep pace with the rising cost of living. In this way they hope to reduce our living standards, this is an absolute necessity for capitalism in its state of crisis. The miners in a fantastic burst of class confidence will have none of this, they are driving forward to increase their standard of living and in so doing they become a catalyst in the anti-Tory struggle.
The miners have shown that it is not some kind of security they are looking for under capitalism, this is witnessed by their refusal to man safety posts or move machinery. The fight itself is more important than the wage claim. Never in my experience have men been more determined to fight, on the last shift on the last day miners emerged from my own colliery singing union songs and mimicking student demonstrations, chanting and linking arms. If news had been declared at that time that the strike was off there would have been a riot.
The Red Mole 7th Feb. 1972 Page 3