Miners: go for full claim

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"strike happy" workers could be made scapegoats for the closure. Even the local Tory MP condemned the closure.

Workers responded to the announcement of the closure by drawing up plans for a sit-in and for making contact with local power workers, but before they could contact the power workers management got wind of their plans and shut off the power 8½ hours ahead of schedule.

BACO say they are willing to sell the smelter if a buyer should emerge but the possibility of this can be ruled out since the abrupt cut-off of power has caused damage that would cost over £l million to put right.

If the closure announcement was bad news to workers in the area it was good news for BACO sharęholders. Shares rose by over 25% and BACO emerged £67 million better off as a result of negotiations with the government who have agreed to write off massive debts. ON JANUARY 14-15 the National Union of Mineworkers will ballot its members on its current wage claim. It is important that the outcome of the ballot shows clearly to the national and local leadership that we want the full claim, and if that means a national strike, then so be it.

It is absolutely vital that we make up lost ground on the wages front. Look at the In the financial year ending April 1981, gas had gone up 28 per cent, electricity 27 per cent, tobacco 23 per cent, rates 21 per cent and rents 43 per cent. Official government figures admit to an average increase in prices of 10.9 per cent per year, though 15 per cent is probably more accurate.

On top of all this, the recent mini-budget has put another £4 to £5 on our weekly bills.

Yet in last year's wage settlement we received just over 9 per cent, with a bit on the bonus. So ever since then we have been falling steadily behind. We need the full claim of 23 per cent to catch up, and we need it on the basic rate.

The Coal Board's offer on which we are to vote, if accepted, would in actual fact mean a drastic decline in real wages. Surface workers, for exampie, the industry's 'forgotten legion! as someone rightly called them, will get a rise of a mere £6.95 before tax.

Arguments

This is not even worth thinking about. Let's show the Board and the government that this time we won't be bought off.

The December special issue of the Coal Board's publication Coal News contains a number of arguments in support of the offer which need looking at. ONE: The National Coal Board says it is the best offer yet made by an industry to any group of workers in the current wages round.

This may even be true. it is, it only goes to show (Dinnington NUM) that everyone else has been getting next to nothing -and it's necessary for the miners to help clear the way for better rises in future.

Destroyed The NCB also forgot to mention a few pay rises, like the 101.7 per cent increase for Cabinet Ministers between June 1980 and 1981, or the £2500 a week increase which Prince Charles gave himself not long back. Or the over 20 per cent for our friends in blue, just recently.

TWO: There is the by now familiar cry that the industry can't afford the claim, and that closures will follow if the claim is conceded. This was the old argument used by the Board and the right wing in the union to justify the meagre wage rises throughout the '50s and '60s. Yet it didn't stop the industry being nearly destroyed. The number of pits went down from 850 in 1955 to 293 in 1970.

If anyone still thinks that low wage increases protect jobs, then we can only say they • have not learned from history.

THREE: The Board are also claiming that because miners have travel allowances and a fuel allowance, inflation is not hitting us so bad. What a load of rubbish. Many miners still walk to the pit, and the fuel allowance, weicome as it is, can in no way compensate for the increase in just about every other basic essential. It's time the Board coughed up, and if they won't do it voluntarily then let's make them.

Forged

If it is a strike, there must be no doubts that a direct confrontation with the Government is on the cards. This is something we should not try to hide or run away from. The Tories would dearly like to give us a good kicking, and if they succeed it would be a great step backwards for the Scargill vorking class.

But if we can mobilise he rest of the working class lehind us, and there is no eason why we shouldn't, provided we don't take that upport for granted but vork for it - then there is 10 doubt that we can win ›ur claim.

Not only that, but a nighty movement can be orged, building up to a general strike which can smash the Tories' antipicket laws and go on to bring the government down.