The Miners’ Strike (1972)

From the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

The National Coal Board was set up in 1947 to run the collieries the post-war Labour government bought from the old owners. Miners up and down the country celebrated vesting day, 1 January 1947, as the dawn of a new era; traditional Labour songs were sung and placards displayed claiming that the mines now belonged to the people. Few miners realised that nationalisation was merely an administrative change aimed at making the provision of coal for British capitalist industry more efficient (even if it did at the same time provide a framework within which real improvements in miners’ working conditions could be, and were, made).

The NCB’s task of supplying coal as cheaply as possible inevitably brought it into conflict with the miners whose wages were a large part of the costs of mining coal. Collective bargaining, strikes and even the prosecution of strikers continued. Lord Robens, who was NCB Chairman until last August, used to describe the Coal Board as “state capitalism”. He chose the right term. Despite nationalisation the collieries continued to be used to exploit the wage-labour of the miners. That the NCB does not make profits (does not extract surplus value from its employees) is a myth. It does, and always has done, even if this hasn’t always showed up in its own accounts.

The profits from the unpaid labour of the miners still found its way into the pockets of the capitalist class. First, coal was for many years sold to industry below its value so allowing private capitalist firms to make bigger profits. Second, the NCB has had to pay interest on the bonds given the old owners as compensation (for years of mercilessly exploiting the miners) or purchased by new investors. Since 1956 the NCB has borrowed money direct from the government so its interest payments—the fruits of course of the miners’ toil—now go directly into the pockets of the capitalists who own the National Debt.

Anticipating nationalisation the miners’ unions decided in 1945 to reorganise themselves to face the new employer. The Miners Federation of Great Britain, and its constituent unions, became the National Union of Mineworkers, and its “Areas”. Despite the name not all these Areas are geographical; some are trade or occupational catering for some craftsmen, clerks, foremen, etc. The NUM is supposed to be a national industrial union but still retains many of the features of a federation. The Areas, which until the Industrial Relations Act were registered trade unions in their own right, enjoy considerable autonomy. In fact the miner’s first loyalty is to his Area, not the national union, which often hinders the effectiveness of the NUM as a national industrial union. Militant and moderate Areas alike are equally guilty of sectionalism here.

1967 was a turning point in the mining industry. It saw the adoption of the Labour government’s fuel policy; the introduction of the National Power Loading Agreement (NPLA); and the beginning of moves to force the union’s national executive to take a more militant line on wages.

The Labour Party, including the NUM, had long called for a National Fuel Plan. When it came it can hardly have been what the miners expected for it provided for a drastic cut in coal production and a massive pit closure programme. Actually, as has now become evident—and this well shows that capitalist production can not in fact be planned—this policy was based on the temporarily low price of oil at the time it was drawn up. Since then oil prices have risen making coal more competitive so that the pit closure programme has been stopped or, as will probably be the case, delayed.

In the four years from April 1965 to April 1969 (all years of Labour government) 204 pits were closed. This caused considerable suffering and unrest in the coalfields and has helped prepare the ordinary miner for the present strike.

The NPLA was introduced to take account of the replacement of hand hewing by machine cutting. Previously colliers had been paid on a piecework system. Under the NPLA they switched to timework. Undoubtedly this meant reductions in pits where geological conditions were easier, even though the union’s leaders had a point when they said it was unfair that those in the older, and so harder-to-mine, coalfields should be penalised because of conditions beyond their control.

Up until 1967 the annual wages settlement with the NCB was put for approval to a vote of the Areas (with block voting in accordance with the Areas’ numerical size). But in 1968 the moderate majority on the union’s executive felt than an Area vote might turn down the settlement. So they by-passed Areas and put it straight to an individual vote, which accepted the settlement since the mass of any union’s membership—as the executive’s moderate majority well knew—tend to be moderate in the sense of thinking that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

In 1969 such was the pressure from militants, both in the Areas and on the executive, that the executive had to refer the settlement first to a special conference. The conference (with a voting system similar to an Area vote) did in fact reject the settlement, but an individual ballot again voted for a bird in the hand.

Not to be outmanoeuvred a third time the militant South Wales Area put down a resolution for the 1970 conference at the Isle of Man calling for a £5 a week increase for all grades and adding that a strike should be called if this was not conceded by the Coal Board. South Wales refused to allow their resolution to be “composited” (i.e. emasculated by a moderate-dominated business committee) and, despite the opposition of the executive, it was carried by a narrow majority.

There are three main grades in mining: the men doing ordinary jobs on the surface; the men doing ordinary jobs underground away from the coal face; and the men working at the face with machines, or “power-loaders”. After the 1970 conference the NUM was committed to calling a strike ballot if the Board did not offer to increase the wages of these three grades to £20, £22 and £30 respectively. The Board offered increases of £2.50. The resulting strike ballot gave 55½ percent in favour, well below the then required two-thirds. So the executive had no constitutional authority (nor, most of them, any desire) to call a strike. The Coal Board offered another 50p which was accepted by a majority of the executive and by another individual ballot.

At the 1971 conference the two-thirds rule was replaced by a 55 per cent rule and a resolution (a composite one at that!) calling for £26, £28 and £35 and a strike ballot “in the event of an unsatisfactory response” was carried unanimously. Not surprisingly the Coal Board’s offer of a mere £1.75 for most grades was unsatisfactory, not to say insulting. A special conference unanimously called for the strike ballot and an immediate ban on overtime. This time 59 per cent voted for the strike. A month’s notice to strike ( to comply with the Industrial Relations Act, and to get over the Christmas holiday period) from midnight on 8 January was given. The Board offered an extra 15p (yes, 15p!) a week—an offer so derisory as to suggest that the Board either wanted a strike or thought one inevitable (they may, for instance, believe that one big strike now will end the unofficial strikes which have become an annual event since 1968. Or they may want an excuse to resume the pit closure programme). Later they offered a few more pennies for some grades.

The strike ballot revealed that the largest Area, Yorkshire, with a 75 per cent strike vote, is now making the running in the NUM (the strike vote in South Wales and Scotland slumped drastically, but this was because under the NPLA powerloaders there were due for an increase from 31 December of £2.77½ a week—on top of the £1.90 the Board had offered, and so a very attractive bird in the hand). Yorkshire in fact supplied the figures of £26, £28 and £35 for what the union thinks the basic wage for the three grades should be.

A comment on these figures is in order since the Board has made such play of them. Since the three grades are now paid £18, £19 and £30 they represent increases of 44, 47 and 17 per cent respectively, or an increase of over 40 per cent on the Coal Board’s wages bill. But the miners are not really striking for an increase of this order. Their executive would have considered (and will consider) settling for much less. The strike is to get the Coal Board to offer more than the £1.90 they have—which to a power-loader is only 6.3 per cent, far less than the rise in the cost of living between November 1970 and November 1971.

Of course the figures are unrealistic in the sense that the union has no chance of obtaining them given its present bargaining position, but they are by no means unreasonable. After all, most people would demand a lot more than £28 a week before they would agree to go and work down a dirty, dusty, dangerous hole in the ground. Besides, the following statistics speak for themselves:

During the same period the cost of living (the index of retail prices) increased 27 per cent (These figures can all be checked in the official Department of Employment Gazette).

Over the past four years, in other words, the standard of living of the average miner had actually declined. It has been estimated that in order to restore the miners to the position they enjoyed in the wages league in 1967 (what might perhaps be called their relative standard of living) an increase in basic wages of at least £5 a week would be needed. The miners will be lucky to get half that, even by striking.

The whole sad episode of the miners’ wages illustrates the limitations of trade union action, including strikes. Trade unions can only work with labour market trends. Miners have slipped down the wages league for the simple reason that coal-mining is a relatively unprofitable and so declining industry, a fact their union cannot alter (indeed, some would argue that this strike is an expression of the miners frustration at this fact-of-capitalist-life). This does not mean that trade unions are useless. Far from it. Without their union, for all its previous moderation, the miners would have fared even more badly.

So the miners are striking to maintain and re-establish their standard of living. They should have the support of all other workers, despite the inconvenience the strike will cause some of them. Strikes inevitably cause inconvenience, not least to the strikers (and, remember, thanks to recent government legislation, the miners and the families will be existing below the official poverty line for the duration of the strike), because they are battles in the continuous class war between all workers and all capitalists over the control of the means of production. Resentment should not be directed against the strikers, or their union, or their union’s leaders, or even against the members of the Coal Board, but against the system which compels human beings to have to struggle like this just to get the basic necessities of life.

Adam Buick

Blogger's Note:

In the actual published Socialist Standard, the article was signed off as written by the mysterious initials of  'B.K.'. 'B. K.' was Adam Buick, writing under a temporary pen-name because of . . .  well, you know.

Review: January 1972 (1972)

The Review of the Month column from the February 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

The New Year came in to the ominous sound of politicians and economic experts assuring us that 1972 is going to be a boom time to remember. Ominous for those who recall, or who know about, all those other Januaries when the same forecasts from the same quarters turned sour. Most spectacularly, and most memorably, the year of the Great Crash—1929—was welcomed as a bumper year. There is plenty of evidence that the people who claim to control the economy of capitalism have no idea of what is happening but at times they make it too obvious.

Thus boom year 1972 opened with about one million out of work; what did they think, of the gay assurances on the city pages? of the reports of the bumper time many big investors had in 1971, and expect to better in 1972? It opened with the miners striking in a desperate attempt to hold the slide in their standard of living, with a strike. What sort of a boom is it, in the mining villages with only a ghost of a pit to remind them of the reality of capitalism’s economics—and its anarchy? When the experts tell us we are in for a good time, wise men take cover.

Some had to take cover literally, as the drums of poisonous chemicals from the sunken steamer came bobbing in on the tides along the beaches of southern England. This will not help the seaside landladies to get their share of boom time 1972. The incident sparked off, again, a great uproar about the environment and the way in which capitalism fouls the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat.

In some ways this is all to the good; after all, who chooses to take their holiday swim in a sea full of sodium cyanide? But it is fair to ask, where the environmentalists have been all this time, while socialists have been spelling out the facts on the pollution which capitalism has to cause. A clean world fit for humans to live in is an impossibility while society is organised on the basis of production for sale and profit. Capitalism pollutes and corrupts everything it touches, not simply our directly physical environment. We have been hammering home this lesson for over sixty years; and it still isn’t too late to do something about it.

Abroad

The freeing of Sheik Mujib Rahman gave the people of East Pakistan a new god to worship; presumably they now feel secure and certain in their future. Nobody should be misled into thinking that the scenes of massive, hysterical rapture which followed Mujib’s release could happen only in a country like Pakistan. The memory of Nazi Germany, and of the mass adulation given to Churchill, is too close for that. The mob emotion in Pakistan is a symptom of the political backwardness of its people; just like their counterparts in more “advanced” countries, they are sure to be disappointed when they find how frail, how humanly impotent against the demands of class society, their new god is.

Meanwhile, a few thousand miles across the world the first preparations for the election of a new god are under way. In America the Democratic Party are beginning to sort out the contenders for their nomination for the next presidential election. From now until August there will be a series of primary elections, which will be contested with an intensity of purpose so strong that it may disguise the true nature of the whole affair. The same old promises, dressed up in up-to-date terms, will be dragged out and offered. There will be the same old talk about qualities of leadership, as each candidate modestly puts himself forward as the new superman who can solve all the problems of the American workers simply by being in the White House. A great deal of money will be spent in the campaigns. And the end result will be another leader of capitalism.

Politics

For some time it has been muttered, that Heath was about to reshuffle his government (“reshuffle” is a good word — after it all we’ve still got the same old cards) and present us with a new set of political bosses. There was some surprise, that this had not happened immediately in the New Year — and probably some anguish from the hopefuls who were looking to take the first steps up the ladder of political ambition. To the workers of Britain it need not matter, who rules over the part of capitalism they happen to live in. Their resolution for 1972 should be to do something about getting rid of the system, with all its suppression, its poisons, its cynicism and despair.

Review: February 1972 (1972)

The Review of the Month column from the March 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

As the miners ended their strike in victory, it became clear that there had been a widespread miscalculation. The strength of the strikers — their solidarity, the effectiveness of their picketing — was underestimated by the government, by the press and, incidentally, also by the Socialist Standard. This strike was an example of effective trade union action; it was solid and well directed so that it demanded a rapid settlement. For the government, this defeat of their wages policy may be a chance for them to regroup and consider their next field of battle. The high level of unemployment is not the only similarity between the present and the twenties, when an apparently victorious miners’ strike preceded the General Strike and a victory for the capitalist class over the workers.

One of the most cynical statements on the strike came from Labour leader Harold Wilson, who supported the miners because they are a special case. It is not so long ago that Wilson was Prime Minister in a government which fought bitterly against strikers, whether their case was “special’’ (whatever that may mean) or not. In perhaps the most famous strike of Wilson’s time as Premier, the seamen were also said to be “special”. Their wages were comparatively low, they worked long hours often in unpleasant and dangerous conditions. And, like the miners, there was a large fund of goodwill for them, in memory of their particular suffering during the war. Wilson’s reaction to all of this was to oppose the seamen and, in one of his most wretched speeches, condemn them as misled by a small band of politically motivated wreckers. There is no reason to think that he is sincere now in his support for the miners; he is simply hoping to drive another nail into Heath’s well-studded coffin.

Abroad

President Nixon took off for his visit to China, which will probably do him no harm in this election year, declaring that he went with the object of talking about peace. The fact that the admittedly capitalist America can find common ground with the allegedly socialist China is proof that both countries have the same social system. In fact, what Nixon went to talk about was war. The subjects the leaders will discuss will be the clashing interests of their two capitalist powers in the Far East, how to carve up that piece of the world, how to establish more contact between the two states so that the processes of capitalist diplomacy can be more smoothly carried on. These are the superficial issues which spring from the conflicts of capitalism which are the cause of modern war. Whatever settlements Nixon may negotiate it is safe to say that other conflicts will emerge, if not between China and America then perhaps between the two in alliance and some other line-up. The plain fact, which is often overlooked amid all the emotion and the lies at such times, is that capitalism is a society of conflict and that war is its normality.

In Rhodesia the Smith government showed its racist teeth again in the imprisonment and ill-treatment of the Todds. The Smith government imprisons people without even the right of a trial, which most capitalist governments allow and which is a valuable safeguard, because it is a racist and therefore an openly repressive regime. But this type of imprisonment is a common method under capitalism. In the dictatorships of Eastern Europe it happens all the time and over this side of the world, the British government has of course used the same method in Northern Ireland. What this means is that a capitalist state will fight ruthlessly when it is threatened and that none are above using such methods.

Politics

The government’s narrow majority on the Common Market caused a tremendous uproar, mainly from Labour M.P.s who were screaming with fury like the baby whose bottle is stolen; they saw themselves robbed of a chance of power over British capitalism by the votes of a few Liberals who had done no more than vote in the way they had always said they would vote. This puts the vote, and the so-called debate which preceded it, into its proper perspective — another piece of the great, boring, futile game of capitalist politics.

One who always played that game in an especially petulant style finally chucked it in. Ray Gunter, ex-Minister of Labour, left the Labour benches with a characteristically illiterate letter. Gunter used his position as a Minister to fight working class wage claims tooth and nail. He was a strong advocate of tougher controls on immigration and a supporter of the racist laws passed under the Wilson government. He sent his resignation at a time when he was staying at a posh hotel in Durban, as a guest of the racist government of South Africa. All of this, from a man who calls himself a socialist— and who got away with it because he was in a party which also takes that name while standing for capitalism with every inhumanity that implies.

Review: January 1972 (1972)

The Review of the Month column from the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Home

It was fitting that, in the season of good-will and hand-outs, everyone should get so alarmed by the terrible news about the straitened circumstances in which the queen has been forced to live recently. It was rumoured last year, when she did not make the usual Christmas appearance on the box, that she had virtually gone on a genteel strike for more pay. Many workers must have taken time off from their efforts to balance their own budgets to give a sigh of relief that the figurehead of British capitalism will now be able to scrape by on the more comfortable wage of a million a year and that it will not, after all, be necessary to put up any of the castles and palaces or any of the other symbols of royal penury for sale.

Similar relief must have been felt at the news that our Members of Parliament and our Ministers are also to get a hefty rise. Apparently the inflation of the currency has meant that all these people in Parliament find the buying power of their wage getting less as time goes by. But what sympathy can there be for them, since they are constantly getting their jobs as MPs on the solemn promise that they can control inflation? A prime example of someone being hoist with their own petard, or whatever we might call it.

At the other end of the wages spectrum, the 280,000 members of the National Union of Mineworkers were voting for an official strike to start on January 9. The strike —the first national industrial action by the miners since the lock-out of 1926 — was decided on after three years of mounting militancy among the union’s activists, which forced the executive to drop their previous "moderate” policy of concern for the finances of the state capitalist National Coal Board. The miners’ demands may seem to be high but in fact they are asking for no more than enough to maintain or re-establish their standard of living. The press are unable to use one of their usual lies —that strikes are forced upon unwilling workers by their union — since in the secret ballot 59 per cent of miners (75 per cent in the largest coalfield, Yorkshire) voted to strike. In this latest battle in the continuous class struggle, the miners should have the full support of every member of the working class. They’ve got a better case than the queen.

Abroad

The war between India and Pakistan, as part of the long struggle they have waged against each other, was predictable from the earliest days of independence which was, let us remember, sold to us as a step towards peace and prosperity for the sub-continent. Both these nations are regular rattlers of the begging bowl, pleading their inability to support refugees, victims of natural disasters, famine and so on. Yet both seemed to find little difficulty in financing a war, which says something about the order of capitalism’s priorities. The conflict is of course more than a minor matter, since the three leading powers of world capitalism, as they all quickly showed, are vitally interested in what happens there. Russia in particular is determined that this shall be her exclusive area of influence. Altogether an ominous situation, showing again that this is no time of peace and security.

As the statesmen patted themselves on the back when they drew the borders of India and Pakistan in 1947, so they were busily congratulating themselves over their latest "settlement”, this time in Rhodesia. Of course this was a sellout but it was almost impossible, given the facts of life under capitalism, to see any other way out for the British ruling class. Those who were angry at the terms of the settlement should remind themselves that betrayals, of varying degrees of cynicism, are a constant feature of capitalist diplomacy.

Politics

The newspapers were almost damp with the tears of the leader writers, as the news came through that the Parliamentary Labour Party had turned down Barbara Castle as a member of their Shadow Cabinet. (In the event, as must have been expected, Wilson appointed her to his team anyway.) The theme of the comment was to regret this scurvy treatment of so fine and clever a woman. Yet Castle was one of the most prominent tricksters of the late unlamented Labour government; in her role as boss of employment she planned to restrict the bargaining power of the unions. This was her most famous achievement; apart from that she was always ready to defend all the Wilson government’s anti-working class measures on the grounds that she, a “left-wing socialist”, could be trusted to stand against anything which harmed working class interests. What this means is that she. was among the most cynical of this bunch of quacks and liars. Except for the fact that she would simply be replaced by another, equally cynical, politician, no member of the working class need mourn her departure.

Editorial: We can organise for socialism (1984)

Editorial from the July 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the miners came out on strike in 1972 they were given scanty chance of success for there were plentiful stocks of coal and competition from gas. oil and electricity was thought to have reduced the mines to the status of a dying industry. Who cared if the miners struck? The government were confident that they could simply sit it out.

In the event the miners won, partly by the tactic of sending pickets in strength to places which were not on strike but which were vital to industry, like power stations. In face of this threatened disruption the government capitulated; after the Wilberforce Enquiry the miners got a substantial pay rise. But inevitably that victory brought a reaction, for no government would happily concede so much industrial muscle to any group of workers. One reaction has been the industrial relations legislation which has outlawed picketing except in small numbers and then only at the pickets' own place of work. Of course the miners, realising that to conform to these laws would devitalise any strike, have tried to carry on much as before. On the other hand the government are determined that there shall never be another 1972; that is why the police have been out in such force during the miners' strike and why they have asserted the law with such vigour and with such disregard for legality.

The effect of this has been to place picketing squarely in the public eye and to make the picket, according to the political views of the person concerned, either a hero or a crazy, militant saboteur. Where do socialists stand on this issue?

A strike is the workers' weapon of last resort, with the unusual characteristic that it cannot be used without damaging the user. Just like other weapons, a strike has better chances of success if it is applied with maximum force; the most hopeful strike is one which is solidly unanimous. The implication in this is that such a strike follows a free, democratic decision with the strikers fully informed on what is at stake and sure that there is no other way of winning their point.

The function of a picket is to persuade workers against trying to work during a strike — against trying to blackleg — but in fact this often goes beyond mere discussion as the strikers mount a physical blockade of places of work so that nothing and nobody may move in or out of them. The present law is framed to prevent that happening and to reduce the "persuasion" to the most innocuous of discussion. Small wonder that the miners, with their long history of struggle, find the law such a frustration.

But it is necessary to ask why significant numbers of workers have to be persuaded to join a strike. Workers, after all. know what poverty is; they are familiar with the regular struggle to stretch a pay packet over the mortgage or the rent. food, clothes and travel, let alone such "luxuries" as a holiday. They know also that the employer does not easily concede a pay claim; indeed in present conditions the employers are likely to resist from the first to the last ditch. So why, in the face of this knowledge, should workers need to be persuaded to struggle to protect or to improve their living standards?

The importance of that question lies in the fact that, as we have said, the most effective strike is one supported by the total workforce, in a democratic decision taken with full information. Union leaders sometimes imply that they would welcome this but in reality they would almost certainly find it pretty difficult to deal with for it implies a level of consciousness higher than anything to be observed at present. Class conscious workers are few and far between at the moment; they are aware that capitalism is a society of two classes, defined by the way they get their living, and that these two classes are in continual, unavoidable conflict. While capitalism lasts this conflict will be over the division of wealth: the end of it will be the last stage in struggle — the dispossession of the capitalists and the transformation of the means of life into the property of the human community. It also implies a knowledge that class conscious, democratic workers have no use for leaders to formulate and hand down decisions to them — and. as history teaches, so often to betray the interests they are supposed to represent. But even a strike by such workers would still be a defensive act over the division of wealth: whatever its outcome it would leave capitalism intact.

This prospect is less dismal than it may seem, for such a strike would be evidence of the development of a mass movement asking some fundamentally important questions about society. Even if the strikers won, their class consciousness would forbid them to be satisfied with some relatively paltry wage rise when they could have the world, free of the problems of capitalism. Democratic and class conscious organisation on the industrial field is unlikely to take place unless there was also the same type of development on the political field, where the act of abolishing capitalism must take place. Workers who have seen through capitalism so that they appreciated the need to organise a strike of maximum power would also have grasped the urgency of political action to end capitalism and would be separately organised for that as well.

As the revolution draws near, socialists will be everywhere, running all sorts of organisations from a basis of democratic class consciousness. The majority of the world's people will be demanding, not the defensive restrictions of industrial action, but the acquisitive freedoms of an entire social takeover. They will organise the revolution for socialism because they will know that nothing less will do.

Socialism will be a classless society, free of all the conflicts and repressions of capitalism. Trade unions, as one expression of a class divided society, will not exist. In socialism human beings will co-operate in a massive communal effort for the common good. It will be a world of abundance, with free access to its wealth. People will read in their histories of these dark days of class conflict and poverty and they will wonder why, for so long, their forebears seemed to prefer to live like warring beasts rather than flourish like human beings.

The Miners' last stand (1972)

From the March 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

A coalface worker from Scotland writes about the strike.

The present struggle of the miners has been a long and complicated one eventually forcing them to strike work. It began as far back as the end of the second world war, when in Britain, as elsewhere in the world, there was a shortage of fuel. There had been no large investments into plant and machinery; coal was still being hewn and drawn by hand. Vast amounts of capital were required to modernise coalmining by introducing mechanisation. Higher coal output was essential to the capitalist class as a whole, but the coalmines were owned by independent capitalists, who were not prepared to invest large amounts into an industry which did not have a secure future. This was the main reason the Labour government nationalised the industry, the usual procedure when the interests of the capitalist class as a whole are being jeopardised commercially by a group which owns a key industry.

From the time of nationalisation, the NUM pursued a policy of moderation, being under the false illusion that nationalisation and the Labour government were in the workers’ interests and would lead to vast improvements eventually. This enabled the NCB to provide coal at prices below those prevailing on the world markets. The miners were just getting over these illusions when in 1956 came the crunch.

Coal, the miners were told, is finished; it cannot compete with other fuels. Governments showed that oil, natural gas, and nuclear power, were cheaper and more efficient than coal, and started to run down coal production. The number of collieries fell from 840 in 1956 to 299 in 1970. The labour force declined from 697,400 in 1956 to 295,650 in 1970. The chairman of the NCB, year after year, asked for productivity, and because of fear of redundancies, the miners responded. Output per man shift in 1956 was 24.8 cwts; in 1970 it was 43.4 cwts. and in 1971 was 46.9 cwts. Earnings, however, did not rise in conjunction with productivity. In 1956 the miner was top of an earnings table of 17 industries, in 1970 he was 13th in the table, 4th from the bottom.

Yet still the industry declined; the mining communities were broken up; villages deserted, many families moving home as many as three or four times. The unemployment rate for miners is over 8 per cent. The miners were treated as capitalism always treats its unwanted, in a callous and degrading manner.

In the collieries that remained, mechanisation took over almost completely. 240 HP machines cutting coal into fine power and spewing it out at over 3 tons per minute, creating a permanent cloud of dust at the coalface. This will give miners pneumoconiosis, the dreaded lung disease, and conjunctivitis, the eye disease, much earlier than ever.

In the late 60’s, however, things began to change again. In 1966 the National Power Loading Agreement, was signed. This agreement meant that over the next five years up to 1971, the lower-paid areas, Scotland, South Wales, etc., would be brought up to the same wage level as the higher-paid areas of Notts and Kent. In reality this agreement has meant that the wages in the high-paid areas have practically stood still to allow the low-paid areas to catch up. This has led previously unmilitant areas like Notts to become as militant as the more traditional militant areas of Scotland and South Wales.

Government policies here and abroad in the years 1968-69, of running down coal production, have proved to have been very shortsighted, and have led to the present world-wide shortage of coking coal. This is seen in Britain, by millions of tons of coal being imported from Australia at up to £35 per ton. The N.C.B. are trying to reopen mines, and are surveying for new deposits. In America and Russia vast coalfields are being opened up, but will not be in operation till 1975-76.

The miner sees himself in a better position for bargaining than he has been in for many years. He is not going to let the chance pass as he did in the 1950s. For the first time in their history all the coalfields arc on the same wage level; they are united going for the same thing, £26 surface, £28 under ground, and £35 coalface, with corresponding increases for craftsmen. They are more militant than ever before, as has been seen by the unofficial strikes in 1968-69-70. In a national ballot in October 1970, 55 per cent voted to strike, after rejecting an offer from Lord Robens of £2.50, the highest ever offered in their history. Union rules prevented a strike then by demanding a 66 per cent vote to call a strike. Even so 100,000 miners struck work unofficially, and the offer was increased.

In November 1971, an overtime ban was put into operation, and a national ballot gave the executive the majority to call a strike. The NCB offer of £1.75 to £1.80, was well below the £5 to £9 asked for, the £9 being to bring the lowest paid underground man from £19 to £28. After weeks of talks and no increase in the offer, a strike was called to start on 8 January. After more talks the offer was increased by 10p per week, with some vague talk about extra holidays provided there was extra production. This brought the offer up from a 7.1 per cent increase to 7.8 per cent, keeping it under the government’s ceiling of 8 per cent. This too was rejected.

The miners believe that a lot of other demands they will soon be making depend on the outcome of this strike: A better pension (at present the miner gets £1.50 per week after 50 years service); usually he has some disablement from working over the years in arduous conditions; the re-introduction of the six-hour day, which the miner had after the first war, but lost in the lockouts of the 1920s; three weeks holidays which many industries already have.

The NUM have the backing of the railway unions, the Transport and General Workers Union, and the seamen’s and dockers unions, who refuse to go through miners’ picket lines. This has meant that they have been successful in picketing power stations, and to a lesser degree the docks.

There has been some confusion, however, and unwelcomed publicity about the picketing of coalboard offices. The staff of these offices belong to different unions, the Colliery Officials and Staffs Association, which is affiliated to the NUM and, mainly in the area offices, the Clerical and Administrative Workers Union. The NUM have instructed these unions that there will have to be staff working during the strike, to allow payment of income tax rebates to strikers, sick pay to miners on compensation, and pensions to widows and retired miners. COSA called all its members out saying, “one out, all out”, and the others nearly all worked on. This led to some offices working and some not, and the NCB saying that tax rebates may not be payed out. The NUM made it clear that they would not picket offices, but some misinformed NUM members and striking COSA members picketed some area offices in an angry and vile manner. The TV and press have made great play of this. The NUM have cleared this up, however, by making their pickets go to places that will benefit the strike more.

Despite what the NCB say, in Scotland the NUM have covered safety for personnel underground; they supply winding enginemen, boiler firemen, engineers, blacksmiths and electricians to stand by as long as officials are going underground. They are not, however, in most cases going to supply men to save machinery and equipment, which is more of a worry to the NCB as every day the strike lasts the more this equipment is crushed at the coal face. The price of this electronic and hydraulic face equipment is very expensive and will cost the NCB millions of pounds to replace.

All this is taking place in a country where one coalmine was in operation where only a handful of men went underground, and no one worked at the coalface while the machines were in operation; production was all controlled from the surface. This, however, proved unprofitable due to the high cost and maintenance of the machinery, as coal like every other commodity under capitalism is produced for a profit on the market, and not for social use. Men’s health and lives are available at a cheaper rate than machines.

The miners are struggling to maintain their standard of living under capitalism, and while we support workers in this struggle, we see that at the end of the day workers will still be in the same position; they will still be wage slaves subject to the anarchistic and wasteful economic laws of capitalism.

We, therefore, urge workers to join with us in the political field, to abolish capitalism and set up a worldwide, classless, wageless society, where the wealth of the world is produced for the common use of mankind, and not for profit. Then people like miners will not have to survive from week to week, on the pittance they get for spending a great deal of their time, crawling on their bellies, filling their lungs with dust, at some gas-filled, wet and treacherous coalface.

A. MCG.

One nation — an emaciated myth (1988)

From the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Few things are more consistently misrepresented than the past and now the Tory Wets are at it, with their talk of One Nation. There was, they tell us, something called One Nation Toryism when decency was the politician’s guiding principle. When those who held wealth and power and privilege regarded themselves as under an agonising obligation to the rest, who had little or none of those things. The poor and the sick had to be looked after — and of course kept poor — through a charitable concern for their welfare. Naturally there will be disputes occasionally to mar this blissful arrangement but these can be settled through a process of consensus, taking all interests into account so that the final decision is acceptable to everyone. Confrontation - the bitter, head-on fight to the death — is in very bad taste. Apparently One Nation Toryism operated in the past and as a result everyone kept their place and England was a green and pleasant land awash with milk and honey.

So far nobody has actually been able to tell us when that was and what it was like and why, if life then was so relaxed and serene, the principle of One Nation was ever allowed to decline into Divided Britain under Margaret Thatcher, who enjoys nothing so much as a good day’s searing confrontation with Neil Kinnock, the unions, the BBC or her own back benchers. Just how much some of those back benchers are in the grip of nostalgia for One Britain was made clear recently when Ted Heath attacked the government’s proposals on education reform on the grounds that they violated the sacred principles of real, caring Toryism. But it is less than 20 years ago when Heath was himself Prime Minister. Was there One Nation then? Have we forgotten something about life in Britain in the 1970s?

Heath, like Thatcher, was the offspring of a small-town grocer. He was brought up in Broadstairs on the Kent coast. Now there is much to recommend Broadstairs, a rambling town with white cliffs, sandy bays and rock pools which give it the air of a seaside town out of Enid Blyton. But it hardly seems a place likely to spawn a charismatic political leader and so it turned out to be with Heath — a dogged, stubborn man who lacked the art of showing himself as a person of real warmth or of clear principles. Of course this was not why he was sacked as Tory leader. In the eyes of his party, his real crime was to lose an election, in circumstances which seemed to make it almost entirely his fault.

And that is what makes his talk now about One Britain rather strange. Heath came to power in June 1970 after a campaign in which his party promised to do something to stop what seemed to be the unstoppable rise in prices. The Tory programme made it quite clear that they would apply a different economic strategy from that of previous Labour and Conservative governments. Harder-headed, more rigorous standards would be applied, the screw would be tightened on state subsidies to ailing companies and those which could not compete effectively enough would be abandoned — lame ducks as prey to the economic foxes and vultures. There would be an end to government intervention in wage disputes, which would be left to sort themselves out under the influence of market forces; Labour’s Prices and Incomes Board would be abolished.

The idea was partly to encourage employers to resist wage claims and the government led the way in this by enforcing the policy on its own employees who, apart from anything else, were among the weakest in their bargaining power. The postmen were a vital test case; they took their dispute to the lengths of a strike but theirs was an industry due for the sweeping changes which have since come about. Their defeat was predictable, as was the bitterness with which they faced it. It was no time to talk to a postman about One Nation Toryism.

The same can be said about the decision to abolish free school milk, which had once been held up as an example to the world of how a caring state ensured that no child should grow up with easily avoidable diseases of malnutrition. It can be said too about the rise in the price of school dinners, an early step towards their eventual virtual abolition. School dinners had been valued as a social service, an assurance that even the poorest kids would get at least one substantial meal each day (not to mention the poorly paid teachers). Thatcher was Minister of Education at the time; she later said that the attacks she received over these cuts would send her home weeping — a touching vision.

But Heath was perhaps a little before his time in these policies and it soon became apparent that if British capitalism was to compete in its established markets there was an urgent need for help from the state. In early 1972 Heath did his famous U-turn, when he reversed many of the policies on which his election victory had been based. Huge subsidies were made available to industry; Rolls Royce and Upper Clyde Shipbuilders were two of the more famous companies saved from collapse. Having abolished the Labour government’s Industrial Development Corporation, which organised these types of operation, Heath’s government now set up the Industrial Development Executive, whose function was almost exactly the same. In place of Labour’s Prices and Incomes Board we had a Price Commission and a Wages Board. Now committed to a policy of interference in wage disputes the government were faced with a series of them, in particular a strike by civil servants — the first in history.

The abandonment of the principle of non-interference was finally signalled with the imposition of a statutory 90-day freeze on wage rises, to be relaxed gradually over a long period. This was accompanied by an erosion of trade union bargaining power in the Industrial Relations Bill. The Labour Party attacks on this Bill ignored the fact that many of its proposals were similar to those in the previous Labour government’s White Paper In Place of Strife. When the Bill became law it did nothing to reduce tension and its inoperable nature was made clear in June 1973 when some dockers were imprisoned for contempt of court after refusing to appear before the Industrial Relations Court. The judge concerned was interpreting the Act correctly; he was doing what the government and parliament had wanted. But an acutely embarrassed government could foresee an unending procession of eager trade union martyrs pressing through the prison gates. Something had to be done to wangle out of this impasse of their own making. The Official Solicitor was urged to think of a way out; this shadowy figure enjoyed a brief spell of fame, the dockers were released and the Act and the Court thereafter discredited.

This monumental muddle came to a head with the oil crisis of 1973, as the miners, the electrical power workers and the train drivers were taking action over pay claims. The miners had already won a spectacular victory in their strike of 1972, when the flying pickets came onto the scene, Arthur Scargill first made his name and the Wilberforce Enquiry came down emphatically on the miners’ side. There is no need here to recount the story of the Three Day Week, the State of Emergency, the power cuts, the unlit shop fronts, the blank television screens after 10.30pm. It was hardly an ideal vision of One Nation. After that, no Prime Minister should have hoped to win an election (although in fact Heath almost pulled it off).

Perhaps Heath made some terrible mistake. Perhaps he simply got his timing wrong — many of his policies are in operation now, more appropriate to the interests of British capitalism in recession in the 1980s than they were in the 1970s. But one policy he did not try through all those crises was that of One Nation Toryism. For example his bitter denunciation of the miners in 1973 allowed nothing about the dangers of their job. In March that year seven miners were killed by floodwater; in May another seven in a collapse; in July 18 in a pit cage crash. At that time pneumoconiosis held some 40,000 miners in its painful, incurable grip. These workers were part of the useful, productive people in society; Heath’s policies, like those of all governments, were designed to protect the interests of the unproductive, parasitic minority of the capitalist class.

This class, when Heath lost power in 1974, still owned most of the wealth of Britain. The richest one per cent of the population held 22.5 per cent of the wealth and the richest ten per cent held 57.5 per cent. (In fact they increased their share considerably under the subsequent Labour government, who asserted that they would squeeze the rich until the pips squeaked; Labour has always claimed to be the real proponent of the One Nation principle.) That is the real, fundamental condition of society which makes all the talk of One Nation so much deceit. This is a class divided society of riches and poverty, of opulence and malnutrition, of palaces and slums. It is a society of conflict, of coercion of the many by the few, of exploitation. To attempt to revive the emaciated concept of One Nation hints that the Tory Wets must be getting desperate. It should be laid to rest, with all the other false theories by which capitalism lives on.

Ivan 

The World on Our Backs (1980)

Book Review from the January 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

The World on Our Backs by Malcolm Pitt, Lawrence & Wishart, £2.95

The 1972 Miners' strike was classic confirmation of the socialist case on industrial action: by combining in unions, and by appropriate use of the strike weapon, workers can force their capitalist employers to disgorge a little more of the wealth taken from them in the process of exploitation.

This book, written by one of the Kent miners, is a somewhat anecdotal account of their picketing of power stations and coal depots in the South East, and particularly the London area, in the course of the strike. It was of course this picketing which, by closing down the power stations, eventually forced the Conservative government of the time to back down through the face-saving formula of a Court of Enquiry. In record time—the strike was still in progress—the miners were awarded a substantial wage increase, way outside the limits the government was trying to impose.

Normally, the longer a strike goes on the less chance there is of a successful outcome, but in this case the miners enjoyed considerable public sympathy, which deterred the government from taking tough action (such as using the troops to move coal). Above all the strikers benefitted from the solidarity of transport workers, without whose refusal to cross picket lines the power stations would not have been closed.

A point which is often overlooked regarding the strike is that it was essentially defensive: most miners had suffered a cut in their living standards and were merely demanding that a previous standard be restored. As Pitt makes clear, many faceworkers, especially in Yorkshire, Nottingham and Kent were actually earning less money than they had been five years previously—thanks to a new wage structure introduced with the agreement of the National Union of Miners which essentially only benefitted face workers in low productivity areas. It was this that made the miners so determined to fight.

According to Pitt (who joined the so-called Communist Party in 1974) "the miners' determined offensive on the picket line sparked off a whole process of united trade union action that opened up a completely new stage in the progress of the working class to Socialism". This is nonsense. The miners' strike of 1972 (and of 1974) was purely defensive action on the issue of wages. Necessary, heroic even, but still nothing to do with socialism—the abolition of the wages system by political action. Until socialism is achieved trade union activity, including strikes, will be necessary, just to maintain living standards. However, such running fast to stand still will not remain forever the objective which the working class sets itself.

Adam Buick