The miners can win

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IT IS miners who are standing up to the massed ranks of semi-militarised police.

But it is the entire labour movement which is now being probed and tested.

The brutally candid Lord Denning, former Master of the Rolls, put the issue squarely: "The trade unions are on trial" • The trial is a trial of strength, which the Tories and the police are turning into a trial of naked force.

Thousands of police have been drawn from forces all over the country to fight the miners. They are ferried around in convoys of buses, billeted in church halls and other substitutes for a gendarmerie barracks.

They are centrally organised, coordinated, deployed and directed from a war centre at Scotland Yard.

They have occupied parts of Britain and imposed a state of siege there.

The police have blockaded the highways. to direct law-abiding citizens on trade union business as to where they can and cannot go. They have stretched the law. Possibly they are breaking the law.

As the present Master of the Rolls, one of those who interpret the law said recently.

"The legal system is not in practice even-handed as between employers and unions: current functions put the courts almost entirely in the business of aestra nin or preming the latter, grievances"

Class law

That is the basic truth here. the law is class law. The development of police-state Toryism, the limited measures of controlled civil war which the Tories are now using, are the continuation by other, physical force, means of their legislation to shackle the They have passed laws to stop workers using their muscle in industrial disputes. They have outlawed the most effective weapon developed by the postwar labour movement - the mass picket.

Now they must make the laws they have enacted stick at the pit heads. To do that they have to deploy more muscle than the miners. That is what is happening.

The Coal Board took a tactical decision not to use the courts against the Yorkshire miners for fear that that would unite the miners against them. But they hold that option in reserve.

They have been preparing for this showdown for the last 12 years, since 15,000 pickets -miners, engineers, and others -closed Saltley coke depot in Birmingham and won the 1972 miners' strike.

Look at what Tuesday's Times says on the subject.

"Since the 1972 coal strike every civil contingency planner in Whitehall has had the words 'Saltley Coke Depot' engraved on their heart... The event changed the landscape of industrial relations in Britain for a decade. It became the symbol of naked trade union power used ruthlessly and successfully.

Coordinated

"Saltley caused a fundamentai rethink in Whitehall. It led to... the foundation • of the Civil Contingencies Unit (CCU) in the Cabinet Office. The CCU remeins Whitehall's 'doom watch' organisation. It keeps constantly updated files on 16 essential industries and services, assesses their vulnerability to trades disputes and the degree of relief that can be won by policing or by putting in troops as alternative labour...

"[The miners' dispute] is being treated in Whitehall as primarily a law and order issue, hence the attention devoted to the National Recording Centre at New Scotland Yard from which the rapid reinforcement, using 7000 officers, of local police forces in the coalfields is being coordinated"

That's why the miners must win. The miners are entitled to labour movement support because they are fighting for their jobs. But it is not just a miners' issue: in the most immediate and direct sense of the words, the miners fight for us all.

The miners are right to fight, and the miners can win.

Despite the efforts of the police thugs, the strike is spreading. More pits were out on Wednesday (21st) than on Monday, despite the police-state Toryism in the coalfields.

Police thuggery 'Picketing out' a pit fened and hardened the determination of militant miners. They are not intimidated. The leaders of the Yorkshire miners at present are showing the labour movement what a difference good, loyal leadership can make in a serious Behind the official leaders stand a mass of rank and file leaders throughout the Yorkshire coal fields, who are the organisers of the strike.

The militants of the NUM are right to fight and to push ahead in the hope that other miners will join them. The NUM general secretary Peter Heathfield said it very well:

"Can you justifiably say to miners working in relatively successful coalfields: 'You have a right to determine whether people WOrKHR fields can defend suit jobs! coal.

The call for a national ballot at this stage of the fight is in fact a call for demobilisation and capitulation.

The miners can win, even it -tragically - not every miner joins the overwhelming majority of miners now on strike. Working class solidarity can tip the balance for the NUM.

The policies of the National Union of Railwaymen and the TGWU not to cross miners' picket lines can be utilised to create a way to victory for the miners.

Neither the Tories nor their centralised gendarmerie are invincible. They are seemingly strong only because of the divisions in the ranks of the NUM and because of the general depression in the labour movement.

They are strong only because of the miserable quality of the TUC leadership, who do nothing to mobilise support for the miners and their picket lines.

*No coal should pass the ports or travel on rail.

* No miners' picket should be left isolated to face the police. Rally to the picket lines!

* Trade union branches should demand that the TUC organise a general strike against Tory anti-union laws, against cuts, and in support of the miners.

#The Labour Party should come off the fence. Neil Kinnock's weaseling in the middle of the road is a disgrace to the Labour Party. Kinnock should do like Labour Party chair Eric Heffer, and stand on the line with the * Labour councils should follow Sheffield's lead and object on Police Committees to the deployment of local police on lory police-state duty in the coalfields. They should refuse to pay them.

*The Labour Party should take the issue to the country. The Tories are creating a centralised national police force, and without any popular mandate or popular licence to do so.

It is part of the same drive as the abolition of major areas of local government.

If the labour movement throws itself into this fight, the miners can win.

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THE RECENT industrial and political offensives - of the miners, Liverpool City Council, the GCHQ Day of Action and Benn's victory at Chesterfield all show that both the power and the will to take on the Tories are there - if union leaderships are ready for the fight. The Cheltenham affair reinforces the lesson learnt during the NGA dispute, that the present leadership is not ready and willing to take on that fight. fight.

In this situation the need to build an organisation to link up those prepared to give a lead is ever more urgent.

The March 24 BLOC conference in Sheffield is expected to attract 1,500 delegates from union branches and stewards' committees.

It could provide the forum to develop strategy for organising and mobilising the ranks beyond the limits set by our present leaders in the fight against Thatcherism. This strategy must take account of the need to mobilise on all fronts where JOHN HARRIS Miners at Edlington, near Doncaster By Ch ASTM Broad 48 g Aris Jones, secretary, S Manchester Left.

workers are under attack and to develop our capability to organise a political and industrial offensive.

Such a strategy would not be limited to the legislative challenges, exemplified by the NUJ/ Dimbleby and the NGA disputes or the attack on the poltical levy and links with the Labour Party.

Our strategy would also include a firm basis in developing political and industrial struggle at workplace, local, district and regional levels.

We have to develop both the confidence of workers and the credibility of Broad Left initiatives by responding swiftly and effectively, wherever and whenever workers are under attack.

This requires us to give leadership at workplace, local, district, regional and national levels.

It is in this context that must criticise those who, like the Socialist Workers Partu counterpose the workplace to the wider trades union and labour movement and reject working in the lattter. The consequence of their analysis is their failure to help build Broad lefts within the unions. They will nonetheless be present in force at the BLOC conference. We recognise the right of these comrades to be present at the conference, but urge them to reconsider their mistaken strategy and join with us in developing a Broad Left capable of leading the fightback.

At the same time we must reflect on the organisational deficiencies which led to the lack of success of Broad Lefts in CPSA and the POEU. Our comrades of Militant are over-optimistic in perceiving a working class movement surging irresistibly to the left. be one before his be comes to possibility.

That is why the BLOC conference has to be more than a rally. We must first organise the Broad Left itself to reflect our strategy.

Around twenty unions are involved in BLOC and most have regional or divisional Broad Left organisations as we do in ASTMS. These must first be deepened within unions to establish firmer roots in the workplace and develop the capability to organise action.

They must then be broadened to link up action by forming local and regional BLOCs. This has already been recognised by Militant supporters.

However, this recognition has not been constructively implemented. In Manchester, a meeting was convened far too hastily, with only a few days notice, to establish "a local committee of BLOC' . Few Broad Lefts were aware of the initiative, and the original error was compounded by establishing a steering committee to be replenished from the floor of a BLOC regional conference of which fewer still were aware.

Structures

Broad based, representative local and regional structures are required rather than hasty initiatives which lead to narrow, paper organisations. BLOC should now set itself the task of building the required structures by convening local steering committees based on all affiliated Broad lefts. This will allow us to build inter-union solidarity by giving mutual support in action.

We need to discuss at the BLOC conference the kind of structure and organisation we require. We must als discuss the key tasks that structure will perform. These key tasks must include building support for disputes and the launching of a major campaign against the anti-union legislation. These laws are central to the Tory THE enduring strength and militancy of Britain's unions in the 1970s - no matter how spor20: 0y adic, uneven and incomplete -combined with the emergence of a hard left around Tony Benn in the Labuur Party - no matter how limited its perspective and success - to constitute a major problem for British capital In earlier measures, the 1980 and 1982 Employment Acts and in King's Trade Union Bill, the Tories have sought to use the law as an additional weapon to mass unemployment to weaken and remould Britain's unions.

'hey have sought to undermine neir organisational base by assing laws on the closed shop ¡tended to cut membership. JOHN HARRIS hey have attempted to curtail nions' ability to protect their lembers by outlawing solidary strikes, secondary picketing nd boycotts. They have sought › limit members' involvement 1 the unions and make unions iss democratic and more open • pressures from employer and ate by bringing in secret allots for union elections and dustrial action. They have