Letter: Ideas and Struggle (1989)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ideas and Struggle

Dear Comrades,

I found an old copy of your magazine Socialist Standard at a friend's place. I was very interested to read it and there were several thought-provoking articles.

Have you got anything on Trotskyism? Several of my friends have very nearly joined such parties as the SWP. Militant and the RCP. A few years ago, I was on the periphery of the RCP, but their ruthless party building (and total rejection of real working class issues) turned me off . . . fortunately. I find that the Trotskyists have a very patronising attitude to the working class that I presume results from Lenin's theory that, on their own, workers can only reach a trade union consciousness and thus, hey presto, the need for the guiding light of a revolutionary party—it does not seem to have done that much guiding so far! And what do you think of anarchism? I have occasionally read anarchist papers—some of them are nothing more than liberal rubbish (such as Freedom), but others do have more sense (e.g. Direct Action) in that they emphasise the class rather than the culture!

I must say that I do have my differences with the SPGB analysis, particularly over how socialism will be achieved. I completely agree with you that a majority of the working class needs to be fighting for socialism, but. as Marx said, "ideas change in struggle". To me this means that at any time there is a possibility of real change because in mass struggle the ideas of the working class do change. For example, if the miners strike had spread to other sectors (as it had to in order to avoid defeat), then we might have seen a possible revolution. I think that it is very Leninist to underestimate the abilities and potential of the working class. You say "the democratic conquest of political power”— what about the real power in this society, the economic structure? Thatcher is merely a puppet of the bosses' interests. To talk of revolution in such mild terms makes me think of naivety such as what would you do if there was a military uprising against the new socialist government?

I also think that you emphasise educational activities far too much. I would never deny the importance of propaganda, but getting back to that original quote from Marx: “ideas change in struggle” . . . not through passive book reading. So I would argue that socialists should be fighting back against this rotten system in their own lives in the here and now (for example, agitating for a strike in their workplace, leafletting their community about the Poll Tax and helping to set up Anti-Poll Tax Unions) and supporting all other working class people in their struggles against class society. I think that it is only through such a movement as this that society will be changed—but I am very interested to hear what you have to say

Norman Davis

London, N16

REPLY
1. Yes, as Marx said, ideas change in struggle. But this does not mean to say that ideas change suddenly. In fact, the process of overcoming the overwhelming conditioning of capitalism is itself a long hard struggle. We do not underestimate the potential of the working class, as the Leninists do, when we say that the majority of workers are at present imbued with support for capitalism. There is a great potential for workers to make the transition to understand and want socialism instead, but we would be kidding ourselves and others if we accepted, for example, that if the miners' strike had spread "then we might have seen a possible revolution". The key precondition for a socialist revolution is that a majority should be socialists, fully conscious of their class position and their interests as workers in ending capitalism. If the miners' strike had benefited from greater solidarity amongst other workers, it would have improved the miners' position, and would have been a sign that class consciousness was growing. But that simple condition, of a majority of genuine socialists, still stands as an indispensable precondition for the revolutionary change we seek, and we continue to work with great determination to build up such a majority.

2. Yes, Thatcher is a puppet of the bosses' interests. But political power within capitalism cannot be overestimated—the bosses spend millions through their parties securing and organising political power. In Britain today, the state forces including the military are, as a matter of concrete fact, under the control of a parliamentary government which is given electoral support by the very workers whose interests it opposes. Many on the Left find it hard to face up to the harsh fact that capitalism, in all of its forms, does depend on the acquiescence and/or apathy of a majority of workers themselves. With the growth of a socialist majority, determined to end capitalism, the notion of a military uprising to prevent this is nonsensical. How would such a military force even exist or survive against the solid and hostile opposition of a socialist majority throughout society? The greater degree of class consciousness which that would entail on the part of the majority would make it more than likely that such a military sect would be starved of food, of power and electricity supplies, of uniforms, of weapons and of credibility.

3. You say that "passive book reading” and educational work are not enough on their own, but must be combined with active campaigning, e.g. against the poll tax, or for strikes at work, as, going back once again to Marx, "ideas change in struggle”. It is false to make such a rigid division between passive reading and active action. Reading and learning is itself an activity. Furthermore, the substance and subject matter of what socialists write and read about is, of course, the subject matter of the class struggle itself. And, on the other hand, a lot of so-called radical actions are actually nothing more than feeble attempts to reform and modify capitalism, to dress up oppression in a new guise. But, as far as trade union and strike action are concerned, or democratic efforts by workers to combine and improve (or just maintain) their wages and conditions of work, the Socialist Party fully supports such action. As active members of a whole range of trade unions, many of our members have worked very long and hard at such active struggle. But as a political party standing unequivocally for socialist revolution our role, which we carry out to the best of our abilities, is to put to our fellow workers the most urgent choice facing the entire human race now in 1989: are we. the deprived majority, going to allow the world's resources to remain harmfully in the hands of about 1-5 per cent of the population, or are we at last going to act on our true interests. and organise politically, consciously and democratically for the overthrow of capitalism, and the establishment of world socialism?

Editors.

Running Commentary: Rich and well (1985)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rich and well

 

After the successful operation to remove a cancerous growth from his colon, President Reagan advised Americans to have a medical check-up "if you think something isn't right". This might have rated as the most sensible words Reagan had uttered had the facilities been freely available.

In Britain we do have free health care, but that doesn't help the thousands of people who die from curable cancers every year because they aren't detected early enough. Take cervical cancer for example. If detected early enough there is an almost 100 per cent guarantee of a cure. And yet the screening programme, which was begun twenty years ago. has not improved survival rates: about 2.000 women die of this cancer each year (The Times, 23 July). At present there is a backlog of 25.000 samples waiting to be tested at one laboratory because of under-staffing. Similarly, cancer of the ovary causes 4,000 deaths a year in Britain. As yet there is no national screening programme because of the high cost of ultra-sound scanning equipment.

The moral of the story is clear: if you happen to be Ronald Reagan or any other member of the ruling class who can afford to pay for the best that medical science can offer, then your chances of early detection and cure of cancer are probably high. The rest of us, who have to rely on medical services restricted by considerations of cost, might very well end up as one of the 100 people who die in Britain every day from curable cancer of the breast, cervix, ovary or bowel.

Class “justice”

During the miners' strike 646 people were charged with offences of riot and unlawful assembly which, if proved, carry a possible maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Those cases are now being heard in court. Since their arrest those charged have been under the considerable strain of stringent bail conditions and in fear of the possible imposition of jail sentences if they were found guilty.

In July and August a succession of such cases have been thrown out or dropped for lack of evidence, the most notorious of which related to incidents at the Orgreave coking plant on 18 June last year. Fourteen of the 98 miners charged with riot or unlawful assembly on that day walked out of Sheffield Crown Court when the prosecution abandoned its case after 48 days of the trial. One of the policemen who gave evidence admitted that part of his written statement was inaccurate and that around 20 policemen present at Orgreave were given "rough dictation" of what they should write down. "We just wrote out what we were told" said PC Browning of Merseyside police.

The fact that similar cases against many other miners have also been dropped or lost should not blind us to the class nature of the “justice" being handed down: public order offences like unlawful assembly are inherently political since they can always be used by a nervous ruling class against what is seen as a threatening working class. In the case of the miners' strike the bringing of such charges against so many men served the intended purpose of removing as many as possible from the picket lines and criminalising miners in the eyes of their fellow workers. Once the strike was over there was no point in creating working-class heroes by convictions and imprisonment.

Suffocated

It took 20 years for the ban to be lifted on the showing of the film The War Game. But just in case you thought that freedom of speech was alive and well in Britain, in the same week as the screening a ban was imposed on another TV programme, At the Edge of the Union. It was to have shown interviews with representatives of two organisations in Northern Ireland which advocate the use of political violence. Despite the producers' claims that the programme did not advance the cause of either but rather aimed at exposing the similar backgrounds, motives and behaviour of the men interviewed, the Board of Governors of the BBC, under pressure from the government, decided to withdraw it.

There are a number of ways in which the ruling class can control the media. In Russia it is done directly by government censorship of what is broadcast; in the western "liberal" democracies the means used are more subtle. On the one hand it is achieved through the ownership of TV and radio stations by capitalists like Rupert Murdoch, who exercise effective editorial control through their control of the purse strings. In Britain, the BBC is supposed to be editorially independent although the Home Secretary has an effective veto over any programme.

In the case of the Northern Ireland programme he did not have to use that veto—a few well-chosen words to the BBC governors and they did his dirty work for him. This is not surprising really, when you consider some of the members of the capitalist class who sit on the BBC's Board: Chairman. Stuart Young, senior partner in the city accountants. Hacker Young; Lady Faulkner of Downpatrick; Watson Peat, member of the British Agricultural Council and a prominent figure in farming and food production; Sir John Johnston, former diplomat; Malcolm McAlpine, director of McAIpine construction company.

Margaret Thatcher, in a speech to the American Bar Association, made her intentions plain prior to the programme's banning: terrorists, she said, must be denied the "oxygen of publicity". But democracy also

requires "oxygen" — the oxygen of freely available information and freely expressed views. It is we, the workers, who are being suffocated by the curtailment of those freedoms. consistently starved of information which will enable us to make up our own minds.

Obituary: Janet Carter (2026)

Obituary from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to have to report that our comrade Janet Carter died at the beginning of May at the age of 89. During the Second World War she was evacuated from the East End of London to Cornwall. Janet first came across the Socialist Party when she bought a Socialist Standard at an anti-Vietnam war demonstration in Trafalgar Square in 1967. The following year she joined the Haringey branch, having previously briefly been a member of the Communist Party. Later she was a member of the Redbridge, North London and latterly our Online Central Branch.

Nationally, Janet took on various responsibilities, serving at times as General Secretary, Executive Committee member, and Central Branch Secretary. During the Miners’ Strike of 1984-5 she had two children of miners stay with the family. She had started work as a shorthand typist, and later, after doing a part-time degree course, worked as a qualified librarian. She worked at Walthamstow Central Library where for a while she was a union rep too. She was predeceased by her husband Joe who had also been a Party member. She was a calm, considered voice in the Party who widely commanded the respect of members. Our condolences go to her daughter and son and other members of her family.

Blogger's Note:

From an earlier post on the blog.

"In 2019, Janet [Carter] kindly agreed to be interviewed for an article in that year's Summer School publication, which had the theme of 'being a socialist in a capitalist world'. Carla Dee put together some questions and wrote up Janet's replies about her life as a socialist and the people she met. Here's the text of the interview".

How the miners can win (1984)

From the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The present conflict in the mines has been as prolonged and bitter as any since the miners were first organised nationally in 1841. Most of the written words and the many speeches and statements which have argued out the day-to-day details of the conflict treat it as though it had never happened before. Yet the history of miners' strikes shows that this is a re-enactment of past struggles and a part of continuing class conflict.

These arguments which evade seeing the dispute as part of continuing class struggle, play into the hands of the government. the National Coal Board and. through them, the capitalist class. From their point of view it is important that the basic issue of class struggle should remain concealed. These arguments focus attention on the particular personalities involved but the Thatchers. Scargills and McGregors who at present occupy the centre stage have only taken over from others who have all acted out the long-running drama which was written by capitalism when it was first established.

Moreover, the government and the Coal Board would wish the issues to be argued out solely in terms of the economic logic of the market system. In this scheme of things the profit motive is the dominant economic factor which must lay down the boundaries for what can happen. In this way. the possibilities of action are confined within a narrow economic framework in which the interests of capital override all others.

What is the capitalist view of the function of the miners? It does not and cannot see them as useful workers producing a vital source of energy. Capitalism sees miners through the distorted lens of its economics. It sees miners as exploitable human commodities, economic units of labour power with wages as their price. The economic factors which regulate the use of miners' labour are those which regulate capitalist production as a whole. In this view, the function of miners is to maintain the overall profitability of British capitalism. Therefore the production of coal as a saleable commodity for profit must be in some proportion with the general level of commodity production and sales existing throughout the whole economy.

The position at the beginning of the strike was an accumulation of 50 million tons of coal which was in excess of British capitalism’s requirements. Regardless of the human need for energy supplies, the further stockpiling of coal would have incurred costs which would have subtracted from the overall profit. Therefore, according to the logic of the market system, coal production had to be reduced. The least profitable mines which incurred the highest running costs in relation to output had to be closed and. regardless of the social consequences, miners had to be sacked.

The miners have not submitted passively to this logic. They are not economic automatons but real people with real needs and definite material interests as workers in their struggle with capital. But the miners were caught in a trap. Had they not gone on strike the mines would have closed and by striking they closed them themselves. This trap illustrates the ultimate impossibility of the position of workers under capitalism. By striking, the miners have themselves reduced coal production and reduced coal stocks. But this would have happened anyway with pit closures. In this way the forces of the market have dictated events.

In the conflict, the present economic depression and the accumulated stocks of coal have determined the relative strength of the combatants. But more than this, the conflict has brought out into the open the conflicting interests over which the combatants are engaged in continuous class war. The miners have pressed their interests as members of working communities with the need for material security, the need to be socially useful and the need for responsibility and power of decision-making in running the life of their communities. The deadlock which has existed in the strike is the irreconcilable pressure of these needs on an economic system which cannot provide for them. The miners' struggle has been against the dictates of an economic tyranny which hires and fires workers according to whether they can be profitably employed. It has been a struggle against an economic tyranny which determines the lives of communities without giving these communities any democratic voice.

Moreover, during the strike the miners have demonstrated how socialism could be run on the practical basis of their own voluntary co-operation. The mutual aid which has been carried on has been a magnificent example of this. The organisation of food supplies, the practical activities of providing meals and transport have been carried on by voluntary co-operation. Nobody has been paying the mining families money for doing all this. This is what the apologists for capitalism say can never happen, yet at the same time they use the brutal forces of the state to attempt to smash it.

The miners and their communities can look back through generations of struggle, back to the early seventies, the general strike, the great strikes of the nineteenth century and countless others in between. They can recognise now that the many strikes of the past resolved nothing; each was a dress rehearsal for the next. Nor is there anything new in their long experience of having to confront the brutal forces of the state.

With this experience they can treat the hypocritical claim that the law is neutral with the contempt it deserves. They know that the law is an instrument of class oppression. framed politically by governments in the interests of the capitalist class. The truncheons which have been wielded against the heads of strikers are the same state truncheons which have smashed workers in the past. There is nothing new about the imprisonment of workers and the use of handcuffs in the course of arbitrary arrest. Neither is there anything new in the use of the law in smashing working class organisation. The present state appropriation of funds repeats the anti working class actions of previous governments.

The Miner in October announced the headline "It's War". This is right — it's  class war. But in this war. and in all the conditions of continued class struggle the question must be asked — is the strategy right? Without a clearly defined objective there can be no final victory. It is more than obvious now that by confining working class struggle solely to trade union action over wages and conditions of employment workers have fought on a battle ground where they are boxed in by the economics of capitalism, where they remain totally vulnerable and only capable of defence.

Whereas capitalists, acting through the state, can present an organised and united front with the clear objective of maintaining the present system of exploitation, the Trade Union movement has no counter strategy for pursuing the interests of workers. In these circumstances, organised capital has no great difficulty in keeping the Trade Union movement weak and fragmented. It can play one set of workers off against another, exploiting their insecurities. The isolation felt by the miners has been an example of this. It is not that the steel workers, the road haulage workers, the dockers and railwaymen are insensitive to the needs and struggles of the miners. They too are boxed in by the economic insecurities of capitalism.

On the other side of the class war the capitalists have kept control of two overwhelmingly superior positions. Firstly they have kept ownership and control of the means of production and all the material resources of life. Secondly they have maintained control of the forces of the state, including the police and the armed forces.

The vital question now is this. Is it possible that workers can continue to concede these overwhelming advantages to the capitalist class and at the same time hope to win victory in the class war? Such a victory requires that the tactic of trade union defence stays. At the same time workers must go on the offensive with the clear political object of taking over the means of production and the forces of the state.

At the very most, trade union action should be regarded as a short-term expedient aimed at curbing the inroads of capital on the lives of workers. This would involve negotiation with employers or their state agents, and if necessary strike action. But the main thrust of working class organisation must be political and aimed uncompromisingly at stripping the capitalist class of their ownership and control of the means of life and therefore the abolition of capitalism. In this work there is no need in any' circumstances to negotiate with capitalists or their governments. The responsibility rests entirely with the working class itself and this work must develop entirely through its own political organisation. It is only by ensuring the rapid growth of the Socialist Party and the World Socialist Movement that workers can shift the field of battle to their own advantage in the class war. This is how the miners, and all other workers, can win.

In their strike, the miners have acted under the greatest difficulties and disadvantages. The great danger now is that faced by the immense forces of organised capital, including the National Coal Board, the government, the law, the state machinery and the hostile media, and not least having to struggle as working class families with all the conditions of material shortages, the miners might become demoralised and lapse into a mood of despair. Thoughts must be focussed on all the elements involved in the strike which show the direction which must be taken in the immediate future. The example of co-operation, of organisation, and the links which have been renewed nationally and internationally. must be built upon. By combining this co-operation and this organisation with the political work of organising for socialism, workers can convert their struggles into the most powerful force for social change. This is the positive and constructive thing that can emerge from the coal strike. With the World Socialist Movement. trade unions could contribute massively to bringing the issue of socialism before all workers throughout the world.

This need to link day-to-day resistance to capital with the political work of organising for a change in society was recognised by the Trade Union movement in its earliest days. The tragedy has been that in this country it has linked itself with the Labour Party. It did this in the mistaken idea that a Labour government could reform capitalism to the advantage of the working class. In particular it focussed its political aims on nationalisation. Socialists warned against these mistaken ideas at the beginning of the century when the Labour Party was formed. Inevitably the trade union link with the Labour Party and hopes invested in nationalisation have proved a completely useless diversion. The prolonged and bitter struggle of the miners against a nationalised capitalist industry is its own condemnation of nationalisation. Under the last Labour government unemployment doubled and unions had to fight as strenuously against its effects as ever they have had to do against a Tory government. But all that has been proved correct is the socialist stand that workers cannot solve their problems under capitalism. Political organisation must be directed at the abolition of capitalism.

For this purpose, the Socialist Party has never compromised socialist principles, nor supported any programme or cause which might damage working class interests or unity. We have kept our object clear. Workers can only solve their problems by organising to establish a society based on the common ownership of the means of life in which the people of the world co-operate to produce goods and provide services directly for need. This is the only way in which the miners, in co-operation with all other workers, can win.

Pieter Lawrence

Blogger's Note:

In this same issue of the Socialist Standard, there was an advert for an audio recording of a recent SPGB public meeting on the subject of the ongoing Miners' Strike. That audio recording is available on the SPGB website. It is worth listening to, as the speaker, Steve Coleman, was an excellent speaker. Click on the link:

The Miners Strike  – A Marxist Analysis

Speaker – Steve Coleman

Venue: Duke of York, Kings Cross, London

Date: 12th October 1984

Letter: The miners’ strike & the Socialist Party (1984)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard  

 

The miners’ strike & the Socialist Party

Dear Editors,

Naivete is not what one expects from the columns of the Socialist Standard but the article on the miners’ strike (September, 1984) comes very close to it in stating that the SPGB will support any strike between the robbers and robbed, except when they are political. It is implied that this strike is more than just a political action, thus qualifying it for SPGB support.

Well, as I think that it is just a political strike, and you think it isn’t the score is now one all, a draw. The article goes on to say that 120,000 miners can't all be wrong, to which I must reply that 60,000 other NCB workers say that they are. As you can't produce a ballot to show what the 120,000 think, and my 60,000 can, you lose on the re-count because you cannot substantiate your case.

You enter a very dangerous minefield in trying to decide what is a political strike and what is not. The SPGB has been explaining for eighty years that politics is but an expression of the economic facts of life, then, all of a sudden, hey presto . . . we have the purely political strike. The two examples given, "dockers against immigration" and “Labour’s day of Action” had their roots in economic problems confronting the working class and being directed to political ends. This is exactly how I see the miners’ strike. So what is the exact mix which will trigger off SPGB support for a strike? 85 per cent political and 15 per cent economic? Or 60 per cent and 40 per cent? Or even perhaps 51 per cent and 49 per cent? May we be informed please?

So, is the strike political then? Messrs. Scargill and Co. have made it very plain indeed that the mere mention of Thatcher gives them all indigestion and sleepless nights, and they want to bring down the government immediately. This strike was called when coal stocks were at an all-time high, summer time just round the corner, plenty of nuclear power and oil about and no ballot. It was either "daft" (Lord Gormley) or politically motivated. In your article you state that the Labour Government did exactly what the NCB now proposes but there was no strike. So, if given exactly the same conditions, the miners didn’t strike under Labour, and are striking under the Tories, what other reasons except political reasons can there be?

Will the SPGB support any strike? I can't believe that it would be so stupid. The Socialist Standard in the recent past has quoted items from the "propaganda press" showing that certain strikes are welcomed with gratitude and delight by the bosses and are pleased to prolong them to bring the workers to heel. Support for this kind of strike brings only extra poverty and extra subservience to the workers involved. You indicate that the miners’ strike may well be in this category.

The word "support” in my working class dictionary means "to hold up — assist - sustain”. Would the SPGB assist in the prolonging of these strikes? Did the early SPGB back the Hansom Cab workers in their struggles against the encroachments made by automobile manufacturers? Would they have backed the Sword-Pikestaff and Bow and Arrow Makers Union against the encroaching Rifle. Gunpowder and Bullet manufacturers? I think not. The kindest thing to do is sometimes to advise people to leave a dying industry and not support their unavailing efforts? If nuclear power eventually takes over from coal will the SPGB be there sustaining the last striking miners in the last pit?

Mr Scargill and the NUM Executive and their bully-boys remind me of an embryonic Hitler and his storm-troopers gagging the union and menacing those who disagree. The SPGB finds fault only with the gagging, keeping a respectful silence on the activities of Scargill’s storm troopers. Activities well known to everyone in England except the SPGB. This policy of putting all the violence down to police brutality can best be described as fifty per cent SPGB and fifty per cent Trotskyist. As the gagging of the union. the split in the union and the mass violence of the striking miners are all part of the same coin, your article betrays a dangerous naivete, the implications of which need to be debated. Working Nottinghamshire miners must be wondering who the SPGB thinks is harassing their homes, property and families if it isn’t the bully boys . . . maybe it’s the police. What is certain is that working Nottinghamshire miners will regard the SPGB as a party to shun, which is a very great pity, for even Mr Kinnock has come out of his mouse-hole and condemned all violence.

S Levitt

London NW3

Reply:

Against Capitalism

It is a clear sign that a critic is standing upon thin ice when he resorts to distortion in order to make a case. Consider these examples: 1) Levitt claims that the article in the September Standard states that the Socialist Party supports all strikes, except for those motivated by political intentions to reform capitalism. He then bases a large part of his criticism on the use of the word "support". If he re-reads the article he will see that the term he objects to is not even used. 2) Levitt claims that the article suggests that "120.000 miners can’t all be wrong". No such statement is made. Clearly, it would be foolish to say that because a number of workers are taking an action they must be right. 3) Levitt — whose silly hysteria about "storm troopers" we deal with below — claims that the Socialist Party has kept “a respectful silence” on the question of violence by picketing strikers (unlike Mr Kinnock whose moral stand wins the approval of our critic). As a subscriber to the Socialist Standard, our critic will have read the article "An Open letter to the Miners” (July, 1984) in which it is stated that "insofar as the reports of workers persecuting those who disagree with them are not false or exaggerated, socialists condemn unreservedly the anti-working-class intimidation of fellow miners”. Of course, this condemnation might not satisfy Levitt, whose own exaggerated description of the picketing resembles some of the most ignorant comment of the gutter press. 4) Levitt claims that the Socialist Party attributes all the violence to the police, whereas no such point is made in the article. In fact, the Socialist Party is not in the business of blaming one group or another for the violence which is endemic to the class war. So, four distortions in eight paragraphs: now let us try to make sense of the other fifty per cent.

Our critic suggests that it is difficult to determine what is a political strike, in the sense in which the term was used in the article. The difficulty does not trouble the Socialist Party: as far as we are concerned, the role of trade unions is to defend and improve the wages and conditions of workers under capitalism. In short, they have a defensive, economic function. Strikes intended to use working-class combination for the purpose of affecting the overall administration of capitalism are politically reformist and socialists oppose them. For example, when miners went on strike to oppose immigrant labour being introduced into British pits this was not an economic action; neither was Labour’s Day of Action, which was an attempted strike designed to show that a Labour government of capitalism would be better for workers than a Tory one.

Of course, no strike is entirely economic because there is no separation of politics and economics under capitalism. So, while the miners' strike is an economic strike, not very different from others conducted by other unions, it has a political dimension insofar as its result can affect the balance of political strength between organised labour and organised capital. It may well be true that the officials of the NUM want to get rid of the present government (so does the Socialist Party), but it is naive of our critic to think that 120,000 strikers have somehow been hoodwinked into striking for such a purpose.

Levitt cannot believe that socialists would be so stupid as to support any strike. We cannot believe that Levitt can be so stupid as to think that we might, when only four paragraphs earlier he acknowledges our opposition to strikes designed to reform capitalism. As for the question of "support" — a term not introduced by us — let us be clear that, as early as 1905, when the Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was published, the socialist view has been that trade unions are a necessity under capitalism and “any action on their part upon sound lines should be heartily supported". We do not exist as a party to advise unions on how to conduct their necessary struggles within capitalism, although, as socialist trade unionists, we do our best to ensure that our unions act on sound lines and that we support union action to the best of our abilities. We might add that socialists within the NUM have done precisely that during this miners’ strike. The role of the Socialist Party is to advocate socialism and to point out that beyond the sectional, limited and repetitive struggle of trade unions there is a revolutionary struggle to establish world socialism which is both urgent and more important than mere defensive actions.

Levitt suggests that the Socialist Party — in a spirit of kindness — should advise the miners to leave their dying industry. Having issued such advice, does he propose that we urge them to buy some bikes and travel the country looking for thriving industries? The Socialist Party does not exist to urge workers to fit in with the absurd economic priorities of capitalism. What we can say to the miners is that, with an estimated 300-years’ supply of coal underneath Britain, there is no reason why a socialist society need let the coal industry die. Of course, a socialist society might decide that there are other energy sources which are preferable to coal; if so, such a decision would neither be based on profit calculations nor cause hardship to men who had been miners in the past. We think that the growing rejection of the profit-based priorities of capitalism, which has led mine workers to challenge the NCB’s definition of “uneconomic", should be regarded with enthusiasm by socialists. Our task is to show the miners that only in socialism can the economic priorities which offend them be eliminated.

The remarks about picket-line violence are stale and naive. Certainly, socialists have emphasised time and time again, both in our propaganda and in our unions, that violent tactics should be avoided by workers who can win by force of numbers. But the state, which is an institution of legalised violence, will not simply sit back and let workers picket as they please. Laws allowing pickets to persuade non-strikers have been largely ignored during this strike — vans carrying strike-breakers (‘‘rebels”) have driven through picket lines at such speeds that it has been impossible for pickets to speak to their fellow-workers. So, mass picket lines have been formed in order to ensure that the strike-breakers either stop and listen or stay out of the colliery.

Does our critic really think that the condemnation of picket-line violence by Neil Kinnock will make any difference to the class struggle? After all, Thatcher. Kinnock and the other hypocrites who are appalled by picket-line violence are the same leaders who support the creation of war machines designed to murder civilian populations. The Socialist Party does not issue moral condemnations of selective acts of violence — we are busy advocating the case for the abolition of the social cause of such behaviour. We did not notice the Fleet Street propaganda rags condemning the picket-line murder of seven striking miners in South Africa (reported briefly on BBC’s Newsnight on 18 September).

Our critic is concerned that the working miners of Nottinghamshire will shun the Socialist Party because of what we have written about the strike. Well, they were shunning us before the strike started, but that did not stop us from trying to convince them of the validity of our case, which applies to all workers, whether unionised or not. striking or working, militant or conservative.

Editors.

Letter: A sane society (1984)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

A sane society

Dear Editors,

May I be allowed to say a few words on the miners’ strike of the kind I have not yet seen clearly expressed in the columns of the Standard?

Can I first of all get back to socialist basics and say that disputes like this one are inevitable in a social set-up in which the interests of one group of the population (wage and salary earners) are inherently opposed to the interests of the other group (employers, private or state). When the first group gains, the other loses, and vice versa. That is why even when workers say they don’t like other people’s strikes, they will always go on strike themselves if they consider it necessary.

Can I add that if strikes are, therefore, inevitable in the present society it is very much in the interest of the workers involved in them to see to it that their action is as democratically based as possible. Otherwise they play into the hands of their employers making it easy for the latter to use public opinion, the media and the forces of the state (police, judiciary, etc.) to make sure they come out on top — as in the present miners' dispute.

But there is of course no glory in strikes — not even in successful ones. They are an unpleasant necessity in a society divided into two groups with irreconcilable interests. And even if, in the present case, the NUM got its way, all it would be doing would be reserving for yet another generation of young men a future no sane society would reserve for any of its members — a future which consists of spending most of your waking hours during your whole working life in a hole under the ground. This is what "preserving mining communities" really means.

A sane society would use the technology now available to bring coal up from the ground solely by automation. As an article in the New Scientist magazine in September showed, the robot mine is a perfectly feasible proposition. The main reason it has not yet been developed is because, in the words of Tom Carr, director of the NCB's Mining Research and Development Establishment, "it’s too damn expensive to automate completely”.

And there we have it. What counts isn’t human wellbeing but cost and profit — which are of course at the crux of the present strike as well.

The alternative to this — and the one for which socialists stand — is a world in which cost and profit are not the criterion by which judgements are made. The alternative is a world in which human needs come first, in which there is no buying and selling, no employees and employers, and no strikes. This is the lesson to be drawn from the miners’ strike, whatever its outcome.

H. Moss 

Swansea

New pamphlet: The Strike Weapon (1986)

Party News from the September 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Available from Literature Dept, SPGB, 52 Clapham High Street, SW4 7UN. Price (inc. postage) 45p.

Blogger's Note:

The text of this pamphlet is available at the following link.

The Unions ten years after the miners’ defeat (1995)

From the February 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the 1984-85 miners’ strike baton-wielding police officers were a vivid warning of things to come as various anti-union laws promoted by the then Thatcher government have since stripped the unions in general of most of their powers — and a lot of their members.

It is now ten years since the miners marched back to work behind their banners following a 51-week strike that began in March 1984; sixteen years since the Tories began their overt assault on the working class; and seventeen years since the Economist leaked the “Ridley Plan” — an internal 'Tory Party document which was to be the blueprint for Thatcher’s assault on trade unions.

It is common now for trade unionists, assessing where they stand, to take their bearings from the 1984-5 strike and the defeat of the miners. When the strike ended, the NUM boasted 180,000 members. They now represent 8,000 miners at 17 pits. The impact of the miners’ defeat was phenomenal. “The wreckage of defeat,” wrote Steve Platt in a recent special trade union edition of the New Statesman and Society (18 November), “is still scattered around the national labour movement landscape like the relics of war on some recent battlefield”

For the Tories, the war didn’t end there. Since they came to power in 1979 they have implemented eight anti-union Acts, confining trade unions in a straitjacket of legislation and they have stooped to anti-union tactics not witnessed in Britain for ninety years.

Unions boast no victories these days, only the pyrrhic sort — that they still receive dues from 7 million members (12 million in 1979), that they still exist, surviving day-to-day like death-row inmates. They no longer call mass strikes and gain the support that the pickets at Saltley Gate Cokeworks secured when 10,000 Birmingham engineering workers downed tools and marched to their aid behind piper and banners in 1972. Their victories now are minuscule — fighting for individual rights, winning propitious tribunal hearings, and securing damages for members. Unions like the TGWIJ no longer call one-day strikes. Instead, they set up 24-hours legal advice helplines.

The roots of the present-day assault on trade unions go back two decades. Tories, like elephants, never forget. When they came to power in 1979 following the “Winter of Discontent”, it was with having endured two humiliating defeats at the hands of the miners in 1972 and 1974 that they placed the NUM so clearly in their sights. 'The Tories had long since accepted the fact that the miners, with their tradition of militancy, were the backbone of the trade-union movement — break the spine and the body crumbles, paralysed. Indeed, the Ridley Plan had carved the name on the bullet that killed miners’ solidarity five years before it was fired.

The Ridley Plan, like some Maoist strategy for guerrilla war, suggested where and when the Tories might win another show-down with the miners. It suggested the preparation of contingency plans - the building-up of coal stockpiles, the securing of overseas supplies, and it put on the agenda the recruitment of non-unionised haulage companies prepared to cross picket lines, the reduction of benefits to the families of striking miners and the rapid mobilisation of a huge paramilitary-like police force. When the Tories came to power, they only needed to bide their time and provoke a strike at a time favourable to themselves. They did this by announcing the closure of the Cortonwood Pit in March 1984. The rest is trade-union legend.

Anti-trade-union laws

Anti-trade-union legislation has been a major fetter on working-class unity over the last 16 years, and it is necessary to pin-point a few Acts before we can even take the temperature of the climate unions now operate in.

The 1980 Employment Act, for instance, made secondary picketing illegal and stole from unions the right to claim recognition from employers. It also made union members embroiled in sympathy strikes liable for damages should employers lose sufficient profits.

The 1982 Employment Act introduced periodic ballots on the closed shop, slimmed down the definition of an industrial dispute, outlawed industrial action against non-unionised firms and took away from striking workers the right to appeal should their action lead to their dismissal.

Such Acts were camouflaged as enhancing the freedom of the individual, of “improving the operation of the labour market by providing a balanced framework of industrial laws” as Norman Tebbitt went on record as saying in 1982.

David Coates sees the gulf between the “reality and rhetoric”, pointing out that:

“the freedom enhanced by those laws has been the freedom of capital, not labour. and the balance has been in reality the imbalance of class power ” (The Crisis of Labour, 1989, p. 123).

Under John Major the attack on unions has continued, keeping up the average since 1979 of one anti-union law every 20 months. The 1993 Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act, for instance, permitted firms to entice their employees away from their unions with various inducements.

Files can be filled with examples of companies that have made use of such laws - laws aimed at pushing trade unions and collective bargaining arrangements out of the door.

In April 1993 over 120 workers at J.W. Arrowsmiths, a Bristol printing company, found themselves dismissed when they decided not to abandon a work-to-rule and overtime ban in support of their pay claim. They were eventually locked out and given two weeks to denounce the GPMU and to accept a two-year pay freeze with lower shift and overtime rates. Only three workers signed the new bond.

Eleven months later and Caterpillar UK de-recognised MSF and GMB (APEX). They then offered workers a two percent pay rise and a £500 lump sum, along with health/legal benefits, if they denounced their unions and signed individual employment contracts.

“Human Resource Management” is now taking over from unions in many workplaces. Legislative constraints have prevented unions from operating inside many companies and workers now find they have to take on their capitalist paymasters single-handedly, denied the support of collective strength, being forced by circumstances to accept individualised employment contracts, performance and profit-related pay schemes, de-skilliing and their induction into the “flexible workforce”.

Class collaboration

The future appears bleak for workers, with employers looking to have it all their own way. Robert Taylor in his TUC-commissioned book, The Future of the Trade Unions, believes:

“unions . . . need to encourage employee share-ownership schemes . . . they are becoming institutions invaluable to employers, because they provide the stability that companies need as they carry through necessary change ” (chapter 9).

If unions are invaluable to employers it is only because they pose no threat to capitalism and help provide stability for them to amass huge profits, rather than fighting to improve the lot of the workers they are supposed to represent.

Apathy and sixteen years of disillusionment at the hands of a Tory government has soured the outlook of trade unionists and the leadership has done little to boost morale. When Arthur Scargill said that the “unions have not been marginalised by the Tories but by our own unwillingness to fight back”, it was John Monks, the TUC General Secretary, who retorted that Scargill's brand of defiance “was not a practical option” (Guardian, 7 September).

So long as leaders like Monks continue to rule the TUC, bowing to the whims and dictates of capitalism, the longer unions will remain a puppet of capitalism. Monks is all for reform. He promises a “mutually reinforcing package of reforms of the tax and benefit system”. He argues for “targeted public investment for rebuilding the industrial base” and believes “the conversion of individual unemployment benefits into a subsidy to the employer can benefit both employer, employee and the exchequer" (New Statesman and Society). Thus, capitalism prospers, becoming even more profitable at the expense of workers. Reform in reality becomes class collaboration.

Useless Labour Party

Neither can unions depend on the labour Party for support, if they ever could in the past. Indeed, the Labour Party has an outstanding historical record of betraying unions and deserting them in their hour of need. While Tony Blair had “considerable sympathy for the signal workers” during last year’s RMT strike, he argued that “this dispute is costing the country a great deal of money . . . people are entitled to take strike action, but it is not the function of politicians to start barging into industrial disputes” (Guardian, 7 September). Perhaps Blair is unaware that the Tories have been provoking strikes since they entered office and sending in their paramilitaries to crush resistance to their onslaught against working-class unity.

Conservative mentality

Blair later went further by saying that unions "do not want, nor will they get support from a Labour government", and declared that “at their best, unions represent in the workplace the values that Labour shares with the British people” (New Statesman and Society, 18 September). Certainly both Labour and the TUC have imbibed a conservative mentality, but what values labour shares with the working class is open to serious contention — certainly no commitment to end the profit system that ruins millions of lives every year.

For John Pilger, in the same trade union edition of the New Statesman and Society:

“Labour differs from the official conservatives only in tone . . . it would be hard to slip a cigarette paper between their views and those of the Tories . .  the trade unions have by default become the political opposition. ”

Insofar as Labour has acknowledged the inevitability of unemployment and refuses to support strikers, that would appear to be the case. As far back as 1984 the Labour Party was seeing trade unions as a hot potato and that supporting strikes would be an electoral liability. This is why the miners were given only tepid support and why RMT was ignored by Blair. Big union defeats would have reverberated through Walworth Road like the shock waves from an earthquake.

But the 1990s appear to have heralded the demise of trade unions as mobilisers of mass discontent born of workplace injustices. Just as Labour failed to harness the frustration and anger generated by the 1984-5 miners’ strike, so too have the unions failed to capitalise on sixteen years of Tory mayhem at the expense of their membership. In 1979, working days lost through strike action stood at 30 million. By 1993 it had dropped to 649,000 — a figure actually higher than the previous year — 528,000 — the lowest in 100 years!

There is indeed the potential for a real trade-union movement. Workers the length and breadth of the nation are crying out for representation. Some 800,000 workers every year take their employer-related grievances to the Citizens’ Advance Bureau. A recent survey found that only 6 percent of respondents felt secure at work. The 1992-3 pit closures brought more people out on the streets in protest that at any time during the 1984-5 strike. Research recently carried out by the Industrial Relations Unit of the University of Warwick, conducted with the co-operation of 12 unions, found that 72 percent of respondents joined a union for support. Some 31.2 percent sought out a union themselves.

There are many reasons why trade-union membership has fallen by 5 million in sixteen years — anti-union laws, Thatcher's premeditated attack on the traditionally strongly unionised manufacturing base, recession, unemployment, apathy and general disillusionment to name just a few.

Struggle for socialism

Trade unions have adopted a bunker mentality, afraid to pop their heads up in case they’re blown off. This is nothing new. Unions have always fought from a position of weakness. But it does not have to be this way. So long as unions continue to sec victories in securing crumbs from our masters’ tables, as long as they continue to acquiesce in and help perpetuate the capitalist system of production for profit, not use, and the exploitation of their members in the process, the longer and more futile will be their struggle.

Unions need broader objectives — long-term macro goals, not immediate micro victories. They need to harness their struggle to the movement for world socialism, to a system of society whose establishment will end the whole employer-employee relationship. Micro struggles can only be a rearguard action. In their efforts to coexist with capitalism unions will always fail, in theory and practice.

For Marx, they fail because they generally limit “themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organised forces as a lever for the emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system” (Value, Price and Profit).

John Bissett

Between the Lines: Some riots you see . . . (1985)

The Between the Lines column from the December 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some riots you see . . .

Riots on TV are not what they used to be. In the early 1980s we used to get panicky reporters appearing live on the scene, not quite knowing whether the BBC had insured their limbs. These days no sooner does a riot start than a team of dull-witted politicians are in the studio, there to throw cliches at us like chucking nuts at monkeys The Tory says that it's all caused by criminal elements who are taking advantage of easily-led workers. Then comes the Labourite — usually Gerald Kaufman whose jackets are worn to remind us what value we're getting for our colour TV licence — who talks about how the Tories invented unemployment and while the rioters are wrong they can be sympathised with, but then again the police are doing a good job, but then again they really shouldn't shoot people if they can possibly avoid it. but then again reports have shown . . . Riots on telly are becoming more boring than The Horse of the Year Show. One good thing about the revolution: it will only happen once.

. . . and some you don’t

Remember the pictures of the Orgreave riot shown during the miners' strike? Remember how we were urged to have pity on those poor police who were doing their best to defend the peace against the violent tactics of those horrible strikers? And now, long after the strike is over, we see another view of the riot (People to People, C4. 9pm. 27 September). Clear pictures and accounts demonstrated very forcefully that what occurred at Orgreave was a police riot that the police were out of control and dished out violence to peaceful pickets in a manner which would be more typical of the Polish or South African state machine. Those with eyes to see. and minds unblocked by prejudices which tell them that the police can never be the aggressors, saw camera shots of police beating up workers who had gone to Orgreave to further their trade-union interests. Why were these pictures never shown while the strike was on? The fact is that while the camera never lies, the liars are very capable of manipulating the evidence of the camera when it so suits them.

Real lives

The banned and then censored BBC2 documentary on "political extremism" in Northern Ireland turned out to be nothing very original or surprising. Both nationalists in the programme (for let it not be forgotten that the Unionists are nationalists too) showed themselves to be buried in the politics of working-class disunity, sloganising and violence. McGuinness came across as somewhat saner than the Unionist clown whose response to the murder of some Catholics was to declare that "Christmas has come early this year". In fact, most workers are more advanced in their thinking than the sort of politically retarded mis-leaders portrayed in this film.

If only every town . . .

Have you seen that appalling advert which concludes. "If only every town could be like Milton Keynes '. Have you ever been to Milton Keynes? Has the joker who dreamed up the advert ever lived in Milton Keynes? Perhaps he should be given a chance to live in one of the uniform workers' houses in the land of his dreams. And while we're at it. why not give Jimmy Savile a free pensioners' travel pass and let him travel round the country on second-class British Rail trains instead of the Rolls which he is more accustomed to sitting in? And why not let old Barratt live in one of the poverty-homes he is so eager to advertise on TV instead of the expensive mansion near Hexham which he lives in now? Let the shoddy goods which the ad-men try to sell us be consumed by the idle parasites — they are not good enough for the wealth- producers. For workers nothing but the best is good enough — and to be sure. Milton Keynes is nothing like the best.

Showing it like it is

There is a popular view on the Left that everything shown on television is lies. Plenty of what we see on TV is lies and distortion, but much of it is both useful in providing an insight into aspects of life which most of us never experience and helpful in indicating the manifold contradictions of capitalism. Of late we have been offered several documentary series worthy of note. BBC2's series Probation (Tuesdays. 9.30pm. ended 29 October) was one of those "fly-on-the-wall" efforts in which we were allowed to look in on the ruined lives and confused existences of workers dependent on probation officers. Two points emerged from the series: firstly, that, despite the claims of the human nature brigade, there are plenty of workers in our society who are genuinely eager to help other workers to get out of their mess: secondly, it became clear that those society sees fit to punish or cure are inevitably the victims of a system in need of punishment or cure. A society which leaves thousands of workers ill-educated, unemployed, frustratedly aggressive, vulnerable to dangerous escapism and tempted by goodies beyond their reach creates more casualties than the over-burdened probation officers can hope to help satisfactorily. At best, the probation service can ameliorate the difficulties of those who attract problems like light attracts moths; at worst it serves as a rather authoritarian, patronising and sermonising outfit which seeks to normalise those capitalist normality can do without.

Infuriating though it has been. Queens': a Cambridge College (Wednesdays. 8.20pm. BBC2) provides a glimpse into an institution where students are taught that they are part of an intellectual élite. The evidence of the cameras (which could be discriminate) is that an awful lot of Cambridge geniuses are bores, morons or both. In the first programme in the series we were shown a public school twit in an interview, attempting to gain a place to "read" history. He is asked why he wants to read history and answers that it is because looking at the past will help us to understand the present Fair enough. Then he is asked to give an example of this. He mumbles vaguely that if you look at the origins of the Middle East you will understand the Arab-Israeli war. He lists as his hobby "fantasy war games" highly appropriate for a Cambridge history scholar. Asked why he wants to "come up" to Cambridge he answers that he wants to be trained for leadership. He gets in. As does the Sloane Ranger who is applying for medicine, whose parents live in the Sudan, has enjoyed "surfing on the Nile", working on a leper colony (which was absolutely amazing") and wants to work "with Third World people in North London".

In the second programme we see a crowd of these "intellectuals" joining the Christian Society and one of them (a science student) recounting how Christ appeared to him one night in his study after he had screwed up his packet of cigarettes. Nobody asked him what he had in them. In the third programme we were irritated by an offensive law student with pretensions to being an orator. He addressed the Cambridge Union (membership. £18 a year) on why public schools must exist. Apparently they produce academic excellence. Odd that: he came from one and seemed exceptionally unoriginal in his thinking.

After The War Is Over (Fridays. 9.25pm. BBC2) showed very clearly that after the suffering of the Second World War workers had big expectations. Returning from the war, the wage slaves came to something other than a land fit for heroes. The series has been very successful in showing both the utter impotence of the reformism of the patronising post-war Labour government and the shoddiness to which workers had access in those days of never having it so good. The Ministry of Information propaganda films are particularly striking in their transparent aim of bluffing the workers into continuing the war effort after the war had supposedly been won.

All three series helped to show workers more about what has been and is going on in society. They were not exercises in deception, but full-scale. uncensored pictures of capitalist reality. Proof that television can be used in the battle for working-class knowledge.

Charles and Di

Your reviewer did not watch the interview of the happy Royals on ITV (Sunday. 20 October), but is expecting at any time now a letter from the Palace calling on him to meet with Charlie for a serious discussion about how to abolish poverty and other related matters which our heir contemplates in his spare time. Let it be noted here that whatever passes between us will be in confidence. Suffice to say that I can offer him some definite advice about how to avoid becoming the ruler of a divided nation — and it doesn't involve doing yoga and keeping off red meat.

Steve Coleman

Socialist Sonnet No. 173: Forty Years On (2024)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog 

Forty Years On

Forty years on from the colliers’ last stand,

When the Blues were so determined to break

Workers’ solidarity: what to make

Of it now? Was it no more than a grand

Gesture, final knockings of working class

Militancy, an end of defiance

Before a general, grudging compliance

With capitals’ world order coming to pass?

The Greens, who supported the miners then,

Would now surely campaign to close the mines,

While Red influence continues to decline

And reform proves a busted flush again.

Hope refracted through politics’ prism

Needs refocusing on socialism.

D. A.

Proper Gander: Crossing the line (2024)

The Proper Gander TV column from the March 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recent strikes by teachers, drivers, lawyers, medics and others have been a reminder that this kind of organised action is one of the few ways workers have to defend our position in capitalism. This latest wave of strike action, however effective in the short-term, hasn’t managed to resonate across wider society as much as the mid-80s miners’ strike did for the previous generation. To mark the 40th anniversary of this flashpoint, Channel 4 broadcast the documentary series Miners’ Strike 1984: The Battle For Britain. Without a spoken commentary and with sparse on-screen text to set the scene, the story is told by archive footage and new interviews with miners, police and solicitors, still affected by what happened, particularly at Orgreave.

In March 1984, the National Coal Board announced the closure of 20 collieries with an expected loss of 20,000 jobs. This triggered miners to strike in Yorkshire and Scotland, supported by the National Union of Mineworkers, then led by Arthur Scargill. The NUM called for action in all areas but didn’t hold a nationwide ballot, so regional branches instead voted on whether their members would withhold their labour. The strikes lasted almost a year, in which time communities changed forever, the violent nature of the state was exposed again and the NUM ended up weakened. These three aspects of the strike were covered in each episode of the documentary.

As described in the first part, communities such as Shirebrook in Derbyshire had built up over the decades around their local mines. As well as being the main employer in many towns and villages, a colliery would also run sports clubs and social events for employees’ families. So, when miners went on strike, they did so not just with the aim of defending their jobs, but also their communities. Unfortunately, these were damaged not just by the fight between the miners and the capitalist class’s representatives, but also that between miners who went on strike and those who continued to work. To shouts of ‘scab’, strike-breakers were driven to work on buses with grilles over the windows, guarded by police. The programme is quite sympathetic to the strike-breakers, emphasising the view that they continued to work because they were following the majority decision from ballots of local workers which were overturned by the NUM without a national vote. This, along with Scargill’s often-inflexible leadership style, raises questions about how democracy was managed in the union. Would it have been stronger if it had been more democratic?

The second episode focuses on how the state weaponised the police and courts against the strikers. The battle at Orgreave in South Yorkshire on 18 June 1984 was between strikers and lines of police equipped with truncheons, shields, crash helmets and horses. Footage recorded by the NUM and even the police shows the brutality of those in uniform. An interview with one of the officers saying they ‘never aimed for the head’ cuts to video of a dazed picketer with a bleeding head injury. Biased news reports at the time portrayed the miners as aggressors. Solicitor Gareth Peirce says it was ‘not accidental’ that police drove people away from the field where the confrontation began to the village, as doing this moved events to where others could be affected. This meant that those arrested could be charged under legislation applicable to ‘riots’, one of the criteria for which is that other people are frightened. Being found guilty of rioting could result in life imprisonment, whereas convictions for ‘unlawful assembly’ carried less harsh punishments.

Another method used by the police is described by one of the officers at Orgreave interviewed for the documentary. He says he found it ‘really bizarre’ when a senior detective dictated what he and his colleagues would write in their statements about what happened. Defence barrister Marguerite Russell says that there was ‘mass corruption’ in how the witness statements were recorded. However, all 55 miners at Orgreave charged with offences were found not guilty. One of those, Arthur Critchlow, tells us that how the charges were framed had a longer effect than the beatings. No police have faced disciplinary action for their conduct. Then-Chief Constable Tony Leonard tells us that the police were there to ‘protect’ people’s right to work as well as people’s right to picket. His words echoed those of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who also said she would ‘never negotiate with people who use violence to achieve their objective’ even when the police had used violence to achieve her objective. The battle of Orgreave and its aftermath demonstrate how the capitalist class uses parts of the state to protect its interests and keep workers subdued, although the documentary doesn’t explain it that way.

The third episode turns to other approaches used to oppose the strikers. We’re told that a pivotal character was David Hart, one of Thatcher’s advisers who was a ‘self-promoting Scarlet Pimpernel kind of figure’, according to then-Private Secretary Andrew Turnbull. Hart’s strategy involved the National Working Miners Committee, which had been formed with the aim of ending the strike by taking legal action against the NUM. Hart brought funds to the NWMC, including contributions from capitalists such as John Paul Getty, enabling it to afford renowned lawyers. They won in court when the strike was ruled illegal as it hadn’t been decided by a nationwide ballot. After Scargill refused to halt the strike, the High Court ordered that the NUM’s assets be sequestrated, and he was further knocked when links between the union and dodgy Libyan leader Gaddafi were reported. The strike was called off in March 1985. Thatcher, who Turnbull says didn’t want to risk her reputation being harmed by the unions, had won.

The series doesn’t present a comprehensive account of the strike, as there are only brief mentions of the National Coal Board, and none at all of the Trades Union Congress or the impact of cheaper coal imports from Poland. What the programme reveals about the tactics of the state are useful, but by dwelling on the motives and actions of figures like David Hart, Arthur Scargill and Thatcher, it doesn’t reach far enough to examine the strike’s wider economic context. There’s only a rushed outline at the end about how coal had become less profitable than the emerging financial services symbolised by the up-and-coming yuppies. Another episode to explore the strike’s place in the history of capitalism would have been welcome, but wouldn’t have been commissioned.

Mike Foster

Bloggr's Note:

The SPGB's 1985 pamphlet, The Strike Weapon: Lessons of the Miners’ Strike, is available at the following link.

Political pantomimes (1984)

From the October 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was just a year ago that Neil Kinnock, obviously appalled at being elected leader of the Labour Party, made his well-publicised attempt to throw himself into the sea, only to be thwarted when he lost his footing in the treacherous shingle of Brighton beach and was hauled to safety by his wife. Those were days of a sprouting optimism in the Labour Party. The awful experience of being led to predictable defeat by bungling Michael Foot had, the party members hoped as they left their conference, been put behind them. They now had a new pair at the helm — the so-called dream ticket of Kinnock and Hattersley, which was another way of saying that between them these two politicians were expected to be able to pander to every imaginable prejudice and misconception in the minds of the voters. With unemployment on the rise and the Tories’ luck surely due to run out. Labour could look forward to a year of improved fortunes; perhaps they would win a few by-elections, carry some important local authorities and set their sights on an early return to power.

The Conservatives too were euphoric — and with better reason than the Labour Party. Their election was in the bag and nothing is more likely to enthuse party members, from the silver coiffures of the constituencies to the ambitious back-benchers. than the prospect of a long period in government. The gamble of the Falklands war which, had it failed, might have wiped out their chances for a long time, had succeeded triumphantly. The atavistic appeal to workers' most miserable prejudices of patriotism had paid off; voters everywhere were convinced that the war had again proved that British soldiers, sailors and airmen are many times tougher, braver and more durable than any others. It was all very dramatic and heady. Of course there were a few people who had been killed, a few more who had been horribly maimed and disfigured who could not be shown to the cheering crowds at the “victory” parade. But they didn’t count; they were less likely to win votes than the marching ranks of those who had come back in one piece. The Falklands helped Thatcher slaughter Foot in the election; the list of politicians she has picked off grows impressively long — Heath, Callaghan, Foot . . . No wonder the Tories enjoyed themselves so much at the seaside last October for by their standards everything was going so well; if they ignored the unemployment figures they could feel the economy was coming right, if they ignored the mounting evidence of the sharpening of working class poverty they could proclaim that their policies were reaping a rich harvest.

But as they gather for their annual bout of morale-boosting this year, the two parties may be in different humour. For the Labour Party, Kinnock has not turned out to be the Kennedy-style vote winner they hoped for. A recent attempt to appear athletically informal backfired to such an extent that he was in danger of being stuck with the image of a rather foolish playboy — something he has since worked hard at expunging with some long, tedious contributions to what are called debates in the House of Commons. On the more delicate matters of policy — delicate because they require a skilful balancing act between warring factions within the party and because it is a matter of luck in their timing whether they are vote winners or losers — Kinnock has too often been exposed in his attempts to fudge the issues.

On nuclear weapons he declares that a Labour government under his leadership would scrap the Trident missile programme and turn the American nuclear bases out of Britain. In his rise to the top Kinnock trod the traditional left wing back bencher’s road of support for CND and this is too recent for him not to now make some gestures towards it. But what he now puts forward is a long, long way from the unilateral abandonment by British capitalism of its nuclear weapons stock. It is a long, long way from promising any solution to the horrifying prospect of a world nuclear conflict for even without Trident and cruise missiles the capitalist powers would still hold several times more weapons than would be needed to blow most of settled life off the face of the earth. But of course no one in their right mind would expect a Labour government, trying to protect the interests of the British capitalist class, to scrap their nuclear weapons, whatever the last party conference had said. Nobody in their right mind — which means nobody with the slightest knowledge of how the competitive system of capitalism has to work — would expect the other powers to be impressed by any such modification of policy as Kinnock promises. And no worker about to be changed into atomic vapour would worry about which weapon system was responsible, or what its name was. What this means is that as long as the support for capitalism, which is so tirelessly fostered by the Labour Party, continues the system will carry on in its inhuman, perilous way until perhaps the missiles fly and there are a few' minutes for the working class to regret their rejection of the revolutionary solution to it all.

If nuclear disarmament is liable to cost the Labour Party a lot of votes, the issue of strikes looms even larger in their nightmares of another June 1983. The working class attitude to strikes can be a curiously ambiguous affair. On the one hand most workers, whatever their prejudices and pretensions, are liable to be persuaded that only strike action can protect their interests. This is true of many groups of workers who at one time would not have been seen dead in a ditch with a picketing miner or docker. But now hospital employees, banking workers, and civil servants are among those who have used the strike weapon. Even “professional” (whatever that may mean) workers like teachers and engineers are prepared to come out to get better pay and conditions or to resist attacks on their standards. But on the other hand these workers are often quick to condemn other groups who take strike action. Another widespread inconsistency in workers’ attitudes towards strikes is the impression that somehow the Labour Party is invariably in favour of them. Of course this is quite unfair to the Labour Party who. when they have been in government, have always bitterly fought workers who stood against Labour’s attempts to cut back their standards. If Tory ministers now inveigh against the alleged excesses of pickets and urge other workers to break the picket lines, they are following the example set by members of the last Labour government, like Home Secretary Merlyn Rees and Prime Minister James Callaghan who, in that infamous winter of discontent, knew on which side of the picket line their sympathies lay.

So when he is confronted with something like the strike in the coal mines. Kinnock has a serious problem in assuaging several prejudices at once. This year’s Labour conference will give a lot of attention to the issue; there will be demonstrating workers urging all-out support for the miners, opposed by sober warnings about the effect this will have on Labour votes outside. This has been the story of many a Labour conference, as some members passionately joust for what they have been brought up to know as the soul of the party against those who are alive to the reality of a party which wants power over British capitalism and must not let a little thing like political theory or principle get in the way. Kinnock’s every word at this conference will be carefully probed by zealous media hacks who at the end will give their verdict on his capacity as a possible future prime minister, which means their rating of his ability to deceive. For him it promises to be a harrowing time and so far he has not shown too much agility when under such pressure. Perhaps this time he won’t slip up at the water’s edge.

The fact that the Tories are rather better at hiding their splits should not disguise their existence. For some time now they have been in trouble on a number of issues, bravely dismissed by them as a slight matter of slipping on banana skins. But this evasion cannot apply to the coal strike, which has its electoral perils for the government. At the moment they may well be gambling on beating the miners through a combination of starving them back to work and shaming them back as the strike leads to winter power cuts and an inevitable reaction from workers whose normally miserable lives are made even more so by being plunged into darker and colder conditions. But the most recent precedent for this, the three day week in 1973/74, did not turn out as a victory for the Heath government. Rather than being seen as the valiant defenders of civilisation against rampaging hordes of workshy saboteurs, that government were damned as causing a disruption to industry which could have been avoided through more sensitive and canny handling — the sort which the Labour Party, with its so-called social contract and Employment Minister Michael Foot, were only too anxious to provide.

It is history now. that Heath never recovered from that disaster which has left him sulking on his party’s back benches. If it turns out that Thatcher has similarly miscalculated. the same fate could await her. The suffering and the squalor of capitalism goes on untroubled by any realistic expectation in those two parties that they will ever bring it to an end. None of that matters; the leader is safe as long as they can work so successful a deceit on the working class that fear is conceived as happiness, disease as health, repression as freedom. Look carefully at Thatcher's speech at the Conservative conference this year; under the pressures of running British capitalism she is showing signs of wear and such are the disputes in her party now that it will need a truly slick performance by her if that inevitable standing ovation is to be really as rapturous and as heartfelt as it seems.

Is it too gloomy to predict that, as usual, both parties will succeed in their deceptions and that once again the workers will nourish this society with their bland acceptance of what should be unacceptable? Party conferences are designed as occasions when the morale batteries are recharged. It needs only some flashes of insight into social realities for them to become occasions of exposure and despair for the politicians and of exhilarating hope for the people.

Ivan