Monktonhall strike betrayed aye

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AFTER nearly eight bitter weeks of isolated strike action, a small majority of striking miners at Monktonhall Colliery voted last week to return to work on the urging of the Scottish area leadership.

The deal on which the return to work was argued is a complete sell-out; the basic grievances of the Monktonhall men are to be put into procedure. this includes talks on increases in productivity and job losses.

The sizeable minority who voted against this settlement. talking Communist Party-led Scottish Executive, showed that they expected to win more than this from two months on strike.

But the Scottish leaders had been determined from the outset to restrict the scope and impact of the Monktonhall fight. In place of preparation for area-wide and national extension of the struggle in defence of jobs and conditions, they offered only moral support, financial donations from other Scottish miners still at work, and a token one-day strike called just before the union's recall Special Conference, which virtually guaranteed that no other areas would be brought into the action.

The settlement comes amid a continuous flow of hot air from Stalinist Scottish President Mick McGahey against the latest threats from new Coal Board Chief Jan MacGregor.

"If Mr MacGregor thinks he can wipe out the so-called "peripheral coalfields in Scotland, South Wales, Northumberland, nent, etc., then obviously he is living in cloud cuckoo land," he told the Morning Star.

But with repeated examples of the abject refusal of the NUM Scottish area to call supporting action behind strikes and sit-ins at Kinneil, Cardowan and now Monktonhall, it seems more like MacGahey than MacGregor who has got it wrong.

And unless the NUM moves rapidly beyond its existing divisive policy of an overtime ban in pursuit of its wage demands, there is a real danger that MacGregor will notch up a further victory - on pay already standing by to grab

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yvny which was endorsed by the "left"