Close the pits, close the country

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SuPPorT's GEORgE MARSH Yorkshire miners in dispute, September last year IT would be self-deluding to pretend that today's miners' strike is anything but an uphill struggle. The miners are divided. The price is now being paid for the weaknesses of the past period. Conditions are very different from those prevailing in the victorious struggles of the early '70s.

Nevertneless, a look at those strikes can provide lessons and encouragement. for miners doing battle today. 1969-1972 On January 1 1947 the postwar Labour government nationalised the mines and the miners took a holiday. The industry was falling apart. Truth to tell the bosses were glad to get rid of it in exchange for high compensation.

And it made little difference to the miners who had fought the long bitter years for public ownership and who sang the Red Flag that freezing New Year's Day.

As Lawrence Day, ex-NUM General Secretary, commented: "Far from seeing a realisation of his hopes and dreams, the miner can look back upon the post-war period as a time of confusion and disappointment. He has been persuaded to greater effort by successive governments and he has responded. He has been crushed by government policies which have obliterated whole mining communities in the national interest and he has accepted that tragedy in the manner born from years of living and working with imminent disaster."

Until the mid-sixties the majority of miners worked for payment by results. In many areas this produced strong organisation at pit level. It was needed. Right wing leaders like Sir William Lawther, Sir Sidney Ford and Communist Party member Will Paynter were in bed with the bosses.

As Alf Robens, chair of the NCB said of Paynter,: "His purpose was to lead men away from damaging the industry and away from the destructive influences that were challenging the official leadership. Paynter was still a Communist which made his speech all the more remarkable but his devotion to the union and Mesı picte: of a Birmingham depot, 1972 Mellroy the men always came before his party affiliations ... He told his hearers that he accepted that the Board's offer of 9/6 (45p) a week on the minimum was the most the industry could afford. Paynter saved the day. Harold Wilson was on the platform that day and congratulated Will Paynter on his courage."

There was a lot of that kind of courage around the top of the NUM in the '50s and '60s. Right wing giants, men who made Joe Gormley appear a pillar of principle, trod the boards, their treachery dwarfing the pitiful antics of the Sid vincents, the Trevor Bells and the other supine squirts of the '70s and '80s.

Nonetheless, with piecework, the miners climbed the wages league table throughout the '50s. By the turn of the decade, many faceworkers could earn up to twice the national average.

There was another side to matters. In 1955 the closures began. Between then and 1970 the number of pits was halved from 600 to 300 and the workforce fell from 700,000 to 270,000. Initially most miners found work easily. Later it became more difficult.

By the end of the '50s international shortages of coal which had put the NUM in a good bargaining position was coming to an end.

The Wilberforce Report in 1972 could claim 'from a position in which average weekly earnings in coal mining had stood well above average earnings in manufacturing industry, the industry found itself in 1971 in the reverse situation where its workers earned substantially less on average than those in manufacturing."

This was accomplished through the replacement of piecework by what was called the National Power Loading Agreement. The 1966-7 NCB report specifically stated that with this measuredtime system, "wages can be more effectively controlled."

As Wilberforce commented through the new system the NCB, from 1964, had aimed to reduce wage drift by removing wage bargaining from pit and area level to the national level."

The introduction of measured day work (MDW) went hand in hand with the fear of redundancy. The number of days lost on strikes per 1,000 employees collapsed from 778 in the mid-'50s to 225 in the early '60s, to 125 in 1968.

As the jobs bonfire flamed, the NPLA was used to level wages down into national rates. Miners actually suffered wage reductions in the heart of the prosperous sixties while productivity soared.

One widely publicised example at the time was faceworkers at Houghton Main: in 1966 they were earning 100-120 shillings (£5-£6) per shift. By 1971 they were getting the NPLA rate of 89s 10d (£4.50) per shift.

But the militancy which had characterised the years 1900-1926 and which had smouldered through the thirties, was not quite burnt out. A storm was gathering.

In the autumn of 1969 the NUM was claiming an increase of 27s 6d (£1.37½) and a reduction in working hours. The claim was piss poor. It was less than many workers were winning in increases.

Pits in Yorkshire stopped. So did some in South Wales. On the second day of the strike Alf Robens accepted the claim. The militants stayed out another fortnight. They were attacked not only by the board but by new general secretary Lawrence Daly, who having campaigned on a programme of 'guerrilla strikes' now argued that the powder should be kept dry for a big struggle in 1970.

The Board's 1970 offer of £2.50 against a claim of £5 was the highest they had ever made. In relation to the NPLA, inflation and the successful militancy of other groups of workers, it did not amount to much. 55% of the miners voted for strike action.

In those days you néeded a two-thirds majority. Daly went back to the table. Yorkshire miners went on flying pickets. There were stoppages in Yorkshire. 50,000 out of 70,000 came out. In South Wales, Scotland, Kent and Durham over 100,000 miners struck. * The movement was defeated by lack of leadership from the lett, a red-scare press campaign and the kind of right wing chicanery Jack Jones and Sid Vincent are trying on today:

after a vote on the Yorkshire Executive, 43-33, for an all-out strike, (so close because secretary Syd SchoMIONL delegates to change their. votes) Syd advised the 33 delegates to That fer their pits back. democracy for you!

Instead of calling a delegate conference, the NEC organised a national ballot. The momentum had gone and it favoured a return to work.

Nonetheless lessons had been learnt which would pay off in 1972. It renewed confidence and it revived the flying picket.

When the 1972 strike began again over a derisory offer, the odds looked stacked against the miners. Heath was seen then as a firm and decisive leader like Thatcher today. He had had the power workers for breakfast.

After a bitter stoppage, the postal workers had been decisively beaten. His policy that each big wage increase should be smaller than the last was gathering momentum.

'Coal stocks away from the pițs" , The Times said on 6 January 1972, "are large enough to withstand a strike for weeks" • They added, "if it does not spread"

There was a total stock of 31.8 million tonnes. Defeat was indeed certain •if the strike did not spread"

The militancy was intense. At 140 pits all the safety men were withdrawn. Feelings bottled up for years broke forth.

It was all too much for Gormley. Faced with the first national stoppage since 1926, he muttered "the men are being a damn sight more militant than we would want to be."

Too true. Taking the strike into their own hands, the rank and file picketed the docks - Cardiff, Middlesbrough, Hull, Dover. Imported coal was sent back.

Next, the power stations were ringed and movement of coal by road and rail halted. •To stop coal being taken to Battersea Power Station miners commandeered a ferry boat and addressed the crews of the coal boats with loudhailers.

This was necessary because as the dispute began, the EETPU were negotiating for power workers. Joining their claim to the NUM's would have toppled Heath two years ahead of schedule. But Frank Chapple came to the rescue and settled for what the miners were being offered.

The need to try to bring the power workers out as well as picketing to stop coal movement, however, should not be forgotten today.

By the third week of the duel, three power stations were out of action. * another crunch was the coal depots. There were 130,000 tons of coke at Saltley where Scargill won his spurs.

A picket began with nine members on February 4. by the following Monday there were 600 pickets from local factories building sites and Warwick University.

A meeting of the AUEW Birmingham East District voted for a walk-out on the Thursday. 11,000 workers gathered at Saltley and the gates slammed shut and stayed shut.

After seven weeks with Britain blacked out, Heath sued for peace. Lord Wilberforce, in charge of the face-saving inquiry, stated 'We looked into the whites of their eyes and calculated how much we could get away with."

The miners didn't get the full claim, but they won a great victory. For the first time since 1926 they were really back in business.

Close down the mines then close down the whole bloody country. That was the logic of a miners' strike in 1972 and it remains the only logic for a miners' strike today.

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