The Next Step: No. 28, 21 October 1992

START FIGHTING NOW

the Bulletin of the Revolutionary Communist Party

TODAY

THE

MINERS

OF US

The eleventh-hour government's decision to phase-in the closure of 31 pits has brought no comfort to the 30 000 miners still set to lose their jobs. Nor has it brought any comfort to the three million people already on the dole, nor to the 200 000 others expected to join them before the end of the year. It is merely a public relations job to appease dissident Tory backbenchers. The widespread anger at the sacking of the miners gives us an opportunity to take a stand, not just against the pit closures, but against all redundancies. But to do that we need a new strategy for action. next step

TOMORROW

THE REST

Trying to appear moderate and reasonable in the hope of winning the support of Tory MPs or sympathetic vicars will get us nowhere.

The government might have made a tactical retreat in the face of backit has not bench opposition, but determination that we altered its must pay the price of their slump.

Tory MPs The humiliated who Michael Heseltine are the same. people who for decade have supported to the hilt the policy of privatisation and public expenditure They are the same people cuts. who at the Tory Party conference demanded a tough new austerity programme from the government.

They have no interest in, defending our jobs and living standards.

Public sympathy will not stop redundancies either. In recent years, groups of workers such as nurses and ambulance staff have relied on public sympathy rather than industrial muscle to win their demands. They certainly gained support from the public-but they lost their battles with the government. If we are to stop the coming redundancies we must take decisive action to defend our jobs and livelihoods. That means making common cause not with Tory MPs or middle class do-gooders 50p 21 October 1992 Issue No28 Editor: Kenan Malik but with other workers whose livelihoods are threatened by government policy. Teachers, health workers, council staff-they are next in line after the miners. We need to work out how we can act in concert to stop the government's job-cutting plans. We need to establish the unity across workplaces and unions that can give us the strength to stand up to the Tories.

And we need to win the arguments for the kind of hard-hitting industrial action that can force the Tories to back down. If we are going to stop the job cuts-we need to start the fightback now.

of pity way of defending jobs. 'Old men—or men made old-doubled over by the effects of pneumoconiosis on their lungs. Barrel chests stained blue with coal dust tattoos. Sad-eyed pit ponies of pale canaries in dark and the song cages. Welsh choirs and brass bands. The Durham Miners Gala and the Education Trust....Among the commuters, the plight of the miners has displaced the citizens of Sarajevo as the week's good cause.' (Sunday Telegraph, 18 October) The bitterly reactionary, Sunday Telegraph expressed pathies for the miners in terms that have echoed through the British media over the past week. Depicted as the threatened Hovis-advert proletarian specimens of heritage or pathetic as economic misfortune, become the object of a wave of middle class condescension and usually charitable sentiment to which he still clings.

When Arthur Scargill announced that the NUM leadership had decided to suspend holding a ballot of its members about taking industrial action to stop pit closures in favour of appealing to public opinion and trying to splits among the Tories, there was a virtually universal chorus contrast with 1984 was striking: The then Scargill's refusal to hold a ballot in favour of sanctioning action on an area-by-area basis became controversial issue of the whole dispute.

Three different positions emerged on the ballot issue. The Tory government, leadership and of

MOSE

condemned Scargill's refusal to hold a national ballot. They seized on this issue as a way of undermining the legitimacy of the dispute. They exploited the division that soon appeared between miners in areas immediately threatened by closures, who responded militantly, particularly in the Nottinghamshire area, whose jobs were not then regarded as in jeopardy, who, in the inclined to remain at work. The result was that the division in the union deepened and consolidated, and the output from the Notts coalfield ensured power supplies Furthermore, the split in the miners' ranks 2 the next step. The politics Appeals for public sympathy with the miners as the helpless victims of the Tory government are not only patronising, they are a useless champion Workers' mining communities. father and generations secretary who, pro-Tory, its sym- The contrast miners in casualties of the miners have of the British sort of reserved destruction or une miners Scargill—wrong again Many commentators claim that recent events have vindicated NUM leader Arthur Scargill's position in the 1984-85 strike. In fact, they confirm the disastrous consequences of the strategy he pursued then-and week last sporadic, was ineffective. foment miners were approval. things the most the Labour continuing the media leadership. encouraging could not win, of coal. and those, aggressive majority, were ballot. While that national were never threatened. 21 October 1992 for victims of distant famine or war. But miners don't want pity, charity or cultural conservation-they want jobs.

The irony that the disaffected Tory MP Winston Churchill should emerge as the against of the miners the government has not been lost on the Churchill's grandnamesake was detested by the home of miners as in 1910, despatched both troops and police to crush striking miners in Tonypandy in South Wales.

reflects the dramatic change in the public perception of the British society. When the miners were well organised and militant, they were hated and feared by all sections establishment and the middle classes. It is only since the defeat of the 1984-85 strike, and the effective union and its made it difficult to persuade other workers, particularly in transport, to take solidarity action. As a result, solidarity action and generally, uneven The left in general supported the Scargill position. It argued that militant already taking action and that holding a ballot would simply hold back, and risk giving the more moderate miners a veto over the continuation of the strike and the fight against closures. In fact, refusing to hold a ballot amounted to a bureaucratic evasion of a political problem: the Notts miners were to work and were clearly unconvinced by the strategy of the NUM Ducking ballot meant The which sectional militancy, while ignoring sectional moderation, which could keep up supplies The Revolutionary Communist Party argued in the early weeks of the strike that the only way to win was to organise campaign in favour of all-out action for jobs around a national leadership

NUM

attempted to justify strike action on the grounds that this was in the interests of the British coal industry, we argued that the interests of the miners must come first. Only through such a campaign, we militant traditions, that it has become safe to patronise the miners and the mining communities. The solidarity forged in oppressive labour relations, dangerous conditions, close, communities has given the miners their historic position as one strongly unionised and militant sections of the British working class. In particular in the turbulent years around the Firs World War, the miners vanguard of the labour movement. They were the core of the Triple Alliance (with rail and transport workers) and the main force in the 1926 General Strike. It would be difficult to find a Tory MP or a Tory newspaper expressing anything but the fiercest hostility and contempt for the miners through this period.

During the miners' strikes of 1972 and 1974, too, public opinion showed little for sympathy the miners. miners' industrial action brought down Edward government Conservative substantial wage rises, glimmer of a pro-miners revolt. The Tory tabloids and their more respectable media colleagues kept up a relentless barrage of abuse against the miners' pickets and their militant leaders.

In the early stages of the 1984-85 dispute, when there was still some chance of victory, public opinion ervedly hostile towards the miners and particularly towards their militant tactics But the longer the strike dragged on and larger loomed the inevitability of defeat, so public sympathy increased. Once the prospect working action had receded, charitable impulse collections for miners' families struck a popular chord. How the middle classes ove to relate to the working class as passive recipient of their munificence!

The current outpouring of sentimental tributes to the miners could the Notts argued, persuaded to come out and the fatal weakness of the strike be overcome: "The NUM's economic arguments made no sense at all to the Notts miners.

Anybody could see that there was a basic conflict between the miners' determination to save jobs and the employers' determination make coal to profitable. It was obvious to the Notts miners that a national strike would be damaging to the coal industry in Britain Nottinghamshire. They never be persuaded to accept the view that a strike was good for the relatively prosperous Notts coal industry.' (Our Day Will Come) It was obvious from the earliest stages of the dispute that if this argument was not carried in the course of the ballot campaign, then there was no prospect of a united national strike. Furthermore, if the miners could not achieve their own ranks, they could little expect other worker Inevitably the same divisive sectional arguments were also influential among other unions, with similar consequences.

backed by When Scargill, successfully manoeuvred to block ballot, the prospects for victory dispoliticians hailed have working often isolated, attempt to most of the were in the putting up more radical newspaper. When the health service successfully Heath's these workers have and won there was not a backbench workers themselves, have been conditions. unres- Was establishment class solidarity the middle class increased reveals the miners be minere or workers in other themselves. oeuvring mining could Today and tabloid editors. industry, within unity within action. with them. the left, main complaint now consequences of the 1985 defeat. Tory newspaper columnists the National Union of Mineworkers' (NUM) strategy of trying to flatter public opinion while making no organise militant industrial action. The Nottinghamshire-based Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) itself a scab union resulting from the split in the NUM during the 1984-85 dispute has emerged as a force of more or less equal status to the NUM. Now lacking any real union organisation capable of than token rhetorical resistance to pit closures, the miners are being patronised by every dissident Tory MP, tabloid editor, bishop, local vicar, and Those who counsel the advantages of winning public sympathy over the risks of industrial action should look at the fate of nurses, ambulance workers and other countless workers. disputes in recent years representatives of appealed for-and wonenormous popular support. Yet, in the absence of effective action by the and no solidarity action from other workers, health workers crushed, public sympathy notwithstanding. Nurses are now being sacked on qualification in London while many continue to endure poor pay and Meanwhile the ambulance service has become so demoralised that there are almost daily reports of people dying while listening to a recorded message from the 999 service The lesson of history is that workers only get sympathy and charity from the they are crushed when On the other hand, the only way to win respect and concessions from the employers and the government is by fighting for it. The sooner the miners get back to being hated by the middle classes and lose their new-found patronising friends the more likely they are to keep their jobs their living standards and their dignity.

appeared, even though the strike dragged on for many more months. One of the most demoralising aspect: of the ultimate defeat was that militan were inclined to blame other miners who drifted back to work earlier, unions, or even Through his skilful manand his militant rhetoric, Scargill managed to emerge relatively unscathed. What was even worse was that his policy of tying miners' livelihoods to the viability of the British coal industry also went largely unquestioned.

Scargill is still riding high, though now he presides over a decimated union which for the first time in history enjoys the patronage of Tories, bishops Making essentially the same plea for miners jobs in terms of the profitability of the British mining he now appeals for support than the establishment rather attempting to use the lever of industrial Yet the lowering of horizons is also striking: while in 1984 the miners set out to mobilise industrial action against all pit closures, in 1992 the discussion is about mobilising Tory backbenchers for a slightly longer consultation period. The is not about the closures, but about the manner of the announcement and the pace of events.

against redundancies. Winston Churchill, Rhodes Boyson and Dame Jill Knight are among the last people you would expect to support the miners. Like many of the current Tory dissidents, they are on the right wing of them the party, many Thatcherites, and all of whom have over the past decade supported the policies of mass unemployment and privatisation, public expenditure cuts. They gave their full support to the Tory government's frontal assault on mining during the 1984-85 strike. So why have they taken up the miners' cause?

The Tory opposition to the government's programme of pit closures has got nothing to do with the miners themselves.

Rather, the issue of the pit has become the catalyst for broader disaffection both within the establishment and the public at large. The government's troubles stem from of political malaise the sense gripping the ruling class. whammy of the slump and the end of the Cold War has disoriented the mainstream political parties throughout the world. For 40 years of the anti-communism acted as an ideological glue, binding Western societies together against the common enemy of the Soviet Union, and giving a sense of mission to the West. The demise of the old East-West divide has artificial means of winning allegiance in the West. The consequence has been to destabilise traditional political and to create a swell of allegiances discontent popular with politicians. This problem has been exacerbated by the impact of the slump, which has had a grievous impact on the lives of ordinary people throughout the world.

of the Cold War might have destroyed, for many people, the possibility of any alternative to the market system, but the capitalist system itself is facing severe crisis. Over the past period it has become increasingly clear that the advanced capitalist nations are not simply experiencing a recession but a full-blown depressionextended period of economic crisis an with no sign of recovery. The impact of mass unemployment, deficits, wild currency fluctuations, stock market crashes and the imposition austerity programmes have all led to a perception of a system out of control. The inabilitv of any Western government to find any answer to economic crisis has underscored the lack purpose felt in many Western societies.

The combination of orientation and economic created a widespread sense of grievance and insecurity in society and a the resentment towards political elites and movements appear responsible for predicament. affection looks set to cost poore Bush America, the presidential election and has created bandwagon around the outsider Ross Perot. In France, the public support for the lorry drivers strike earlier this year expressed the strength of public From Maastricht to the miners Why the Tories are in crisis Anger at the pit closures is the product of wider disaffection with government policy.

But we cannot defend miners' jobs if we allow Tory MPs to take the lead in the campaign diehard In this the such issue. communities all mainstream journalist closures that is The double sterling the slump. Black Western Cold War, to many reality this removed political leadership or policy resentment over at the closure programme. mainstream embarrassing The end on the issue of the slump.

dissidents. huge government of of the miners. present as the of direction and demands. political discrisis has deep established The which the current way government. Winston maverick win disenchantment. In Italy such disenchantment has led to the rapid growth of the separatist and racist Lega Nord.

But while there is a widespread sense of grievance, it is inchoate and unfocused.

context almost any issue potential to become a source of discontent. The Maastricht treaty was one The popular opposition to Maastricht, as revealed by the Danish and French referenda, was less a verdict on European integration than a rejection of Guardian politics. As Martin Woolacott observed, if they held a referendum on joining the would be doubt the result the same' (22 September 1992).

It is in this context that we need to understand the opposition to the pit closures. Until recently many people felt that Britain was exempt from the kind of political instability that has rent much of the Western world. No longer. The crisis has acted as a catalyst in transforming people's perceptions of Wednesday, when the government was forced to pull sterling out of the ERM, was a profound shock Britain's disaster Since then the plummeting of the pound, redundancies, continual stream the record number of bankruptcies and the spectacle of a government without has created fierce of the over the impact economic crisis. These resentments boiled announcement of the pit The extent of the Tory revolt has been for the and government could yet be terminal for the political Yet the ambitions of Michael Heseltine.

anti-Tory Toryism holds an even greater danger for us, because it has allowed the right wing to claim the moral high ground The only opposition to government policy today comes from within the Tory Party. Neither the Labour Party nor the trade union movement have been able to take advantage of the worst Tory crisis for more than a generation. Instead all made by Tory identing his send try back neen benchers to appear as the champions They have been able to themselves as the ones who understand the fears of working class communities devastated by the slump and force politicians who can the government to accede to working class result is that the widespread disaffection with Tory policies has been channelled into support for Tory politicians who have no differences in principle with government ministers.

climbdown Heseltine has reinforced the view that middle class Tory pressure is the best-and indeed only from the concessions concession did Churchill and his compatriots for the miners? The government has agreed not to be so precipitate in its sacking of the miners. Neither the miners' jobs nor those of hundreds of thousands of other public sector workers are safe Looking to Tory dissidents to fight our battles means accepting that we can never defend our jobs and living standards.

To take real advantage ficulties in which the itself, we need to provide a class focus for the disaffection that people feel, and to demonstrate how we can fight for jobs and living standards. The decimation of jobs has been miners' national disaster. It is not. The pit closure ating such action. on the government. that can bring the government to its knees.

issues such as racism and militarism.

effective support for the miners.

Churchill. the Tories. their system. programme of the diftardine on government und standards. impulse. cocucas: Action not sympathy The successful defence of jobs in the pits and elsewhere depends on industrial action and solidarity support to force employers and the government to back down. Now is the time to build a movement capable of mobilising and coordin- Trade union leaders and opposition politicians have put the emphasis on respectability and moderation, on signing petitions and organising well-behaved protests. That is a sure way of marching to defeat. The lesson of every trade union dispute has been that moderation does not pay. Furthermore, appeasing Tory demands for respectability can only help to strengthen government resolve in coming battles-such as those with public sector workers Any concessions workers have wrung from the authorities, they have done so only through struggle. This is clear by looking at past victories.

example, the miners won a famous victory against the Tory government by taking militant action, organising flying pickets to shut down sites such as Saltley Gates coke depot in Birmingham, and by being willing to defy the law. Victory was also achieved through successful solidarity action, as transport and other workers joined miners in stopping the movement of coke and coal.

Today, only similar resolve and militancy can prevent job cuts in the pits and elsewhere. The precise kind of action we need now will have to be worked out during the course of struggle. It might involve solidarity strikes, pit occupations, secondary picketing, guerilla action like blocking the movement of fuel, and so on. But the central aim must be to take action that can put maximum pressure To create hard-hitting solidarity action we need to win the arguments for support from wider groups of workers. Rail workers, power workers, health workers—all have a common interest in backing the miners. We need to win the argument first that the miners' fight is our fight—not in the sense that they require charitable support, but in the sense that we will all face the same fate as the miners unless we stand together. We need to win the argument too that solidarity means not extending sympathy but taking decisive industrial action Current workplace and union structures serve to divide us along sectional lines and make it harder to win such arguments. To build any solidarity we need therefore to create new networks which can link workers in different jobs, workplaces and unions. Through such a strategy we can begin to build a wider movement, which can challenge not simply the programme of pit closures but the broader problems that we face-from the Tories' new austerity drive to Some on the left have called for a general strike to back the miners. It would be a great achievement if we could mobilise such power behind the miners. But there is a great difference between calling for a general strike and creating the conditions in which such a show of solidarity could take place. Calling for a general strike in the abstract is an evasion of the real tasks involved in building strike? The TUC? Asking Norman Willis to call a general strike is like asking Madonna to run a convent. Such calls now will simply ensure that the opposition to the government's plans remains in the hands of the likes of Winston Building any kind of solidarity means organising action ourselves. We cannot avoid the hard graft involved in building a new and effective opposition to are a disaster for our class, inflicted by the capitalists in their attempt to salvage Nor the closure an isolated incident; it is rather part of a much broader onslaught class jobs and living cannot repulse that onslaught by trying to be respectable and appealing to middle England's charitable We can only do so by standing up for our rights and taking whatever action is necessary to defend our class.

In 1972, for Who, for example, would organise such a the next step • 21 October 1992 3

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Publisher Revolutionary Communist Party, BM RCP, London WC1N 3XX • c copyright • Printer Multiline Systems (TU) • Newsdesk (071) 375 1702 logic of the market. "The economics of the madhouse' That how critics have government's decision two-thirds of Britain's pits. Some backbench Tory rebels, such that the claim Churchill, industry is more efficient and productive than foreign industry. Others argue that electricity generated from coal is cheaper than that generated from decimation of the coal industry, they say, is irrational. In fact, the pit closures result from the economics, not of the madhouse, but of the capitalist market. From the capitalist point of view there is nothing irrational about throwing As chancellor Norman work. has remarked, for the capitalist class unemployment is a price well worth paying' in the cause of restoring profits.

The capitalist market only a job when it is profitable to do so. In a period of boom, industrialists are able to make profits relatively easily and hence there is a high level of employment. In a when profits are recession, shut down operations employers throw their workforce scrapheap. British workers have ticularly badly because of the backward, decrepit nature Britain's The unproductive state of British industry has made it uncompetitive on the world market, reducing profits government has responded by the more backward sectors of industry to go to the wall, cutting swathes through industry and putting millions on the dole.

The Tories had hoped that by getting rid of the more unproductive would end up with a leaner but they fitter' economy. Britain's economic malaise is such that the weeding out process has destroy virtually the whole of Britain's manufacturing base. The price of the market From a capitalist point of view, the pit closures are rational. If we want to stop the redundancies, we must reject the described the shut down Winston maximise as British coal The gas. As British 30 000 miners out of Lamont industry. provides squeezed, and the on to suffered partake-home pay. economy. In a slump, further. The SO. The allowing Germany, Critics of the enterprises, However the depth of helped of the A weekend of discussion and debate sponsored by Living Marxism The coal industry is no different from any other sector of the capitalist economy.

As far as the employers are concerned, the sole purpose of coal mining is to Where profits. pits are unprofitable, or insufficiently profitable, they are shut down. Like much of the rest of British industry, most of the coal mines are technologically backward and unprofitable and hence unviable in capitalist terms. The criterion of profitability has forced British Coal (and before it the National Coal Board) to shut down much of its operations, and to throw 700 000 miners out of work in the past 40 years.

Coal's latest proposals show, the slump has accelerated the destruction of what little remains of Britain's coal Economic recession has not only laid waste to much of British industry, it has also forced the government to cut back on public expenditure. Public spending is a drain on private profits. The money for state spending comes from taxation which is largely a deduction from the profits of industry and commerce. Even personal taxation in the end comes out of profits, as workers tend to compensate for higher taxes by winning wage rises that maintain In profitable times the capitalist class can afford to underwrite public spending.

the frailty of the economy means that they can no longer afford to do Britain, unlike reason that subsidise its coal does not industry is not that British ministers are less rational than German officials, but that the British economy is far weaker.

government's policy, from right-wing Tory rebels to left-wing mineworkers' leaders, might cavil at the impact of the pit closures but virtually all accept the strictures of the market. All are agreed that the market is the only way to organise society. All accept that the aim government's industrial policy Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 November 1992 must be to make Britain productive and competitive on the world market. But the only way to do this is the way that has already been marked out by the Tories by cutting jobs, and making the remaining workers work harder for less.

Throughout its existence, has tried to defend jobs by making an economic case for the throughout that time it has been forced to accept job losses and increases as a price for the maintenance of a profitable industry. During the bitter 1984-85

NUM,

strike, the leadership of Arthur Scargill, made the centrepiece of its fight the defence, not of miners' jobs, but of the Plan for Coal, government-Coal Board-NUM a joint strategy for the coal industry drawn up in 1974. But under the plan, nearly 100 pits had been shut during the previous decade.

The NUM policy of defending a capitalist strategy for the coal industry divided the miners and fatally weakened the strike (see p2). Since the miners' strike, both the NUM and its bitter rival, the UDM, have accepted the need to raise productivity to record levels to maintain a viable industry. This has meant continued pit closures, together with speed-ups for those left with jobs.

But, as the latest closure capitalists are not sentimental about their workforce: however many workers may make viability, if an operation is not sufficiently profitable, employers have no compunction about closing it down.

There can be no rational arguments against pit closures. Economic arguments are by definition arguments understanding the New World Order SSN 014 350 X 21 October 1992 • Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office interests. the NUM uneconomic can ons coal industry. And productivity the workforce. argument the from under market employers standards. not be not plans show make a profit? sacrifices in the interests of wage economic profits that are consistent with capitalist economicsin other words, arguments that are consistent with the interests of the capitalists. And the capitalists themselves are the best judges of what is in their Trying to prove that pit closures are trying to demonstrate to the capitalists that there is a different means of making profits- -in other words, a different way of exploiting Take, for example, the produced that electricity coal is cheaper than electricity produced by gas. If this were true it might save the jobs of a few thousand miners but equally, gas workers, who would now be working for an unprofitable industry, would find themselves on the dole.

The argument that pit closures do not make economic sense is self-defeating.

Linking jobs to the state of the industry for which we work allows the laws of the and the account books of the to determine our living Our starting point should make industry the need to profitable or viable, but the need to survive in this society. Capitalists do make their decisions according to the consequences for workers. So why should we care about their ability to Whether the pits are profitable or not, whether British coal is cheaper or dearer than imported coal, is irrelevant to the needs of miners. What miners need is a decent iob at a living -regardless of the state of British Coal's books. That means fighting for every job irrespective of the state of their