Terview Vie Paul Tton

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NUM Branch and Secretary, Notts Miners Rank and File rank and file of both the unions and the Labour Party, when he said last Saturday in Nottingham:

"We will not accept the destruction of whole mining communities and the workers together, we cannot be defeated.

"We will not accept pit closures as dictated by MacGregor and Mrs Thatcher. We will not allow them to destroy the trade union movement, DIE ment for a general strike. Immediately — whatever the leaders do — the rank and file must make the day of action called by the Scottish TUC into a one-day general strike throughout Britain. Secretary, Bevercoates Strike Committee.

FOR A LONG time, a lot of our lads who have been out on strike have felt isolated, especially because they knew that other areas regarded the whole of Nottinghamshire as a scab county.

It's been a pleasant lift for the Kent miners, who walked across the border expecting to get kicked from pillar to post, to find that there are Notts miners out on strike. And the Notts miners themselves have got a boost from finding out that they were not just small, isolated groups.

In actual fact there are many thousands of miners out on strike in the Nottinghamshire coalfield - somewhere between 7000 and 10,000.

They are the younger ment, on the whole.

At first, when we put the overtime ban on, we had our worries about the younger miners who hadn't been through '72 and "74. If anyone was going to let us down, it was the younger element.

In actual fact the opposite has been true. The younger element have come through magnificently. They understand the situation, and they understand the political motives behind it.

What's also been a big help is that the wives understand and are prepared to back their husbands and to show their own support.

There's certainly coal being produced in Nottingham. Because the pits are highly mechanised, isn't difficult for them to produce coal even with a number of miners on strike.

But a substantial number of young faceworkers are on strike. There is no way that the Coal Board can be truthful in claiming that the pits in Nottinghamshire are working normally.

When the pickets first came into Nottinghamshire, there was an immediate response from some men. Those men went out on picket lines, and attracted a few more.

But they hadn't been able to get together. So in every branch in the Nottinghamshire coalfield you had a small hard core, varying in numbers, who felt that they were on their own.

Then we managed to get representatives : ogether from the various branches. The first meeting was just a meeting of Ollerton and Bevercoates and perhaps two or three other branches. Then the word got round, and at the second meeting, last Monday, we had between 400 and 500 men, representing 17 branches.

Whether the area decision today, not to back the alteration in the ballot percentage needed for a strike, is going to react them adversely, don't know. I hope that if we can get the lads together this coming Thursday, get them up to Sheffield [for the NUM conferencel, and again identify with one another, that will keep them strong.

The prime objective of the committee we have set up is to organise the picketing in Notts - to get the Notts coalfield to identify itself with the National Union of Mineworkers and to bring this coalfield to a standstill.

The second objective is to raise finance to achieve that, with petrol for the pickets and hardship money for the single lads who have been out on strike for five weeks and haven't received a penny from anywhere.

I think the area vote against changing the ballot percentage for a strike has exposed a myth. Certain elements in the Notts coalfield have been bandying the word democracy about until it is nearly ragged. The decision shows that the opposition to a strike in Notts has got absolutely nothing to do with democracy ....• • Nobody can argue that 50 per cent plus one isn't a democratic decision. Every other single decision that we take - decisions at branch meetings, elections, or whatever - is done on a majority of 50 per cent plus one. The strike decision is the only one where we are required to go above 50 per cent plus one.

This proves to me that what a lot of the men in Notts are interested in is not democracy, but smashing the strike, smashing the overtime ban, and, in fact, smashing the union.

Henry Richardson's |the Notts area general secretary's) statement last Friday that it was time that we stopped scabbing and stood on our feet, gave a hell of a litt to a lot of men.

So did Saturday's demonstration. think it was damn good public relations exercise, not exclusively for the Notts miners, but for the large numbers of Kent, Yorkshire and other people, to see a large contingent of Notts miners who are in support of the strike.

We've had support from other trade unionists, too. We've had lorry drivers who will roll up to a picket line and say they won't cross.

But the thing that has upset me - and we've got no way of checking on it - is the large amount of bus-drivers that are still continuing to go through and deliver men to the pit. And still, a large number of trains are running, though I don't know how many are running on schedule and how many railworkers are working under some form of threat.

The support from the wives has been important, too. In '72 and '74 the wives certainly gave support, but it wasn't as open and as well organised.

Again, it's the younger wives that are actually organising, getting out onto the streets with posters and banners. At the demonstration in Mansfield there were contingents of Kent wives, South Wales wives, Scottish and Yorkshire wives.

I'm very proud of this union. I've been in it for something like 30 years.

I'm a miner at Bevercoates colliery, and I'm the branch secretary, and I owe a certain amount of allegiance to the men who elected me. I'll see that I do my job to the best of my ability.

But owe my first allegiance to the National Union of Mineworkers. The National Union of Mineworkers is in dispute, and therefore I am in dispute. That's an overriding factor in my attitude towards the issues.

The only way I see us coming together and becoming once more a national union is that we've got to all come out, we've got to win the dispute, and then we've got to go back united.

If anyone believes that having this ballot is going to settle the battle, then they are living in cloud-cuckoo land. The only thing that the ballot is going to do is finish us back at square one, with some men still going to work and some men not.

The ballot is going counter-productive.

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Socialist Organíser no. 175 April 19 1984 Page

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NOTTS MINERTY FOR THE STDIK