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

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.

The Miners’ Strike (2004)

From the March 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty years ago this month began one of the most disastrous strikes in the history of the working class in Britain. Not only were the aims of the strike not achieved but the strikers’ union was split and reduced to an ineffective rump. It wasn’t even a case of living to fight another day.

It used to be said that workers can learn as much from an unsuccessful strike as from a successful one. So what, then, were the main lessons of the 1984/5 miners’ strike?

That in the end the logic of capitalism will always win out. The declared aim of the strike was to keep open pits which by capitalism’s standards were “uneconomic”, i.e. were not making the going rate of profit (some were not actually unprofitable in the sense of not making a profit, but the profit wasn’t big enough compared with what could have been obtained if the capital had been invested elsewhere). A government can keep an “uneconomic” activity going for strategic reasons that benefit the capitalist class as a whole, such as security of supply, and the coal industry had in fact been maintained at previous levels for this reason  while coal was a strategic home energy source for electricity stations to power industry. But, by the 1980s, North Sea oil and gas was being developed as an alternative and cheaper home source of energy and the government had decided that the time had come to stop subsidising the coal industry. In the absence of strategic security-of-supply considerations, no government can afford to tax the capitalist class to pay keep unprofitable production units open, but will be obliged by international competitive pressures to apply the capitalist rule of “no profit, no production” and close them down.

That no strike can stop a government determined to have its way. Both sides  the government and the NUM leadership  were aware that the issue of keeping the pits open was going to be a trial of strength. We now know that the government had planned for the show-down well before it occurred, so that it took place on their terms and at a time convenient to them. It was no co-incidence that the government, via the notorious hatchet-man MacGregor they had appointed to run the NCB, provoked the strike at the end of winter when stockpiles had been built up and when the demand for coal would be less.

The NUM leadership openly declared that the aim of the strike was to try to force the government to change its policy (to in effect continue subsidising the coal industry). The NUM President, Arthur Scargill, even unwisely suggested that the aim was to bring about a change of government (as if a Labour government would have behaved any differently, in fact had behaved any differently in the mid-60s when they closed more pits than Thatcher and MacGregor were planning). This provided the government with a weapon to use in the propaganda war to win popular support.

But the government had other weapons in its arsenal, particularly its control of the police force, which was used to contain and ultimately break the strike. Once they had realised that the government was not going to change its mind, the best thing for the NUM to have done would have been to taken the government’s superior strength into account and settle on the best terms possible in the circumstances , such as big redundancy payments and perhaps keeping open some of the pits that were making some profit even if less than the going rate.

This would not have been cowardice or betrayal, but a recognition of the harsh fact that under capitalism the workers are a subordinate class with only limited powers to affect the course of events, certainly far less than those of governments, an unequal distribution of power that is at the very basis of capitalism. Trade union activity, including strikes, is necessary as long as capitalism lasts but it can’t work wonders. Strikes are essentially a trial of strength, testing the situation; once it has become clear  what the respective strengths of the two sides are as can happen fairly rapidly, though not always  then both sides know where they stand and a settlement can be negated on that basis. Once it had become clear in the miners’ strike that the government was not going to concede and was in fact in the far stronger position, there was no point in going on with the strike.

Don’t follow leaders

The leadership of the NUM, and in particular Scargill (a former member of the Communist Party who had only left it because they backed someone else rather than him in an election for a union post) and the Vice-President, Mick McGahey (a member of the Communist Party), held the view that union activity consisted in an active minority “giving a lead” to the normally passive majority in the expectation that they would follow.

In other words, they didn’t trust the membership. This led to another grave mistake in the NUM’s strategy: the refusal to hold a ballot before launching the strike. This was doubly stupid. First, because it provided the government with another propaganda weapon. Second, because a ballot would probably have given a majority for a strike anyway. But consulting the membership and allowing them to have the final say as to whether or not to launch it was not part of the mindset of Scargill and the others: they were leaders and they were going to lead. Ultimately, they led the miners to unnecessary hardship and disaster in a strike that went on for much longer than it need have done.

Calling a national strike without a national strike ballot was contrary to the NUM’s rules. It was therefore at least understandable that some miners and union officials should not feel bound by an unconstitutional decision. Thus in Nottingham the majority of miners continued working. The Scargill leadership’s response was to sent in pickets to, if it came to it, try to coerce the Nottingham miners into striking. Of course to have any chance of being effective a strike has to be a solid as possible, but coercing workers who could argue a democratic case for not striking at that moment was bound to be counter-productive. Maybe the leaders of the Nottingham miners weren’t being sincere and were just using the lack of a ballot as a pretext (most Nottingham pits were profitable), but Scargill’s tactics here ultimately led to the break-up of the NUM.

Socialists, as class-conscious workers ourselves, are on the side of our fellow workers involved in industrial disputes with employers, but this does not mean that this is unconditional. Strikes should not be aimed at other groups of workers and should always be run democratically with control remaining in the hands of those making the sacrifice of going on strike; paid union officials should be their servants not their masters or leaders. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all decisions have to be taken by secret ballot; decisions could also be taken by democratically-mandated delegates. But whatever the decision-making procedure adopted it should be democratic.

Were these lessons learned? Not by Scargill for one, who went on to set up his own party  the SLP  with the same leadership-based policies and tactics as the former Communist Party. Many miners, and others too, did, however, learn the hard way that the government is a class government, or, as Marx and Engels put it, “the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”, and that the function of the police is not to give traffic directions or help old ladies across the road but to enforce the will of the government.

But few drew the conclusion that, if the exploitation and oppression of the working class is to be ended, we need to win control of the machinery of government so as to at least ensure that it is not used against us. In other words, the way forward lies in political action. Industrial action, though necessary from time to time, is essentially only defensive and has severe limitations due to the subordinate position of workers under capitalism. What is needed is political action to usher in a classless society of common ownership and democratic control where production will be for use and not for profit.

Adam Buick

The Socialist Party’s analysis of the miners’ strike The Strike Weapon: Lessons of the Miners’ Strike, published in 1985 can be downloaded here from the internet .

Communist slogans for capitalism (1946)

From the October 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Leading Communist Arthur Horner, like the Jack Horner of old, has stuck his finger into the Trades Union pie, and pulled out a nice fat plum—the post of General Secretary to the National Union of Mineworkers. After the cheers of the C.P.G.B. have subsided, let us see if this appointment benefits the mineworkers, or the mine-owners.

Addressing a mass meeting of miners at Tonypandy, he said :—

“Production needs are so great that the time has come to apply the slogan “ If a man won’t work, neither shall he eat ” (Daily Express, 26/8/46). 

Horner, of course, has learned this brutal slave-driving threat from the source of all Communist inspiration—Soviet Russia, and although this self-same slogan was incorporated in the first Russian Constitution of 1918 for the new “Socialist State,” it is difficult to understand why Horner shall proclaim it in Capitalist Britain, unless it is for the extraction of more surplus-value from the miners. Perhaps he, like the Daily Herald, imagines that Britain is now a “Socialist State” !

This wolf in Marxist clothing continues:—

“The present manpower cannot produce the coal that Britain needs to maintain full employment.”

With unemployment figures growing all round him, this so-called ”leader” of the proletariat dares to suggest that “full employment” is even possible under Capitalism, which demands a constant reserve army of unemployed to act as a lever against the struggles of employed workers, much less that it is actually in existence now.

The next “ gem ” (he certainly “went the whole hog” at Tonypandy !):—

“ A large increase of manpower for the pits is vital if there is to be a rapid restoration of coal exports.”

Instead of telling the miners about Marxism, or Communism, this “revolutionary” is forced, by the very nature of his position as ”Labour Tamer ” in the capitalist circus, to sidetrack and confuse the workers’ minds with that old, old capitalist motto, “ Export or die,” which is so necessary (for the capitalist class) at this stage to beat rival capitalist states in the race to hustle commodities into the markets of the world.

Impressively, Horner juggles with figures containing heaps of 000’s, concluding that :—

“If we can restore the 1939 position . . . we can .. . wipe out the American loan and the burden its commitments represent.”

For these few words of cheer the British Capitalist class (who bear the “burden”) will have cause to thank “Comrade” Horner, and perhaps arrange a knighthood for him—who knows? But the matter should not interest the working class of either America or Britain, whose “burden” under Capitalism has always been that of “ making both ends meet ’’—whose wages represent the cost of keeping them fit for reproducing their work and their class. It is absurd to suggest that the American loan is anything but a business arrangement between the master class of America and Britain, and the millions that Horner quotes are of no interest to the working class of either country.

Speaking of unemployment in Wales (having already talked about “maintaining full employment”), Horner, like a Stalin contemplating a “purge,” says:—

“ The cause of the failure must be traced and ruthlessly eradicated.”

For once we can agree, but as the only answer to the social evils of the day is the abolition of the system of society that Horner is supporting, and the institution of a system based on common ownership of the means of life instead of private or state ownership, the task is left to us Socialists to explain to the miners of Tonypandy and workers, wherever the Socialist message can penetrate, their position in society to-day.

Armed with sound Socialist knowledge, and the will to unite for victory, the working class will achieve its emancipation, in spite of the confusion and disillusion spread by office-seeking Communist opportunists.

Michael La Touche

Editorial: Can't the Engineers meet the Miners? (1957)

Editorial from the June 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

There were two items of news in the Press during the first week of May that had a certain importance in themselves, but which gain greatly in significance when brought together. They both dealt with nationalisation. The first was from the engineers.

"Leaders of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, at their annual policy-making conference at Eastbourne, yesterday adopted a resolution calling for nationalisation of the motor car industry. The resolution stated that lack of planning in the industry had been a contributory factor in the decline in car production in the past year and that nationalisation would establish full employment in a planned and prosperous economy' " (News-Chronicle, 3/5/57).

The second related to the miners, being a report of a speech at a South Wales Miners' Conference by the President, Mr. Will Paynter.

  “Mr. Paynter said that ten years' nationalisation had shattered illusions that the workers would exercise a decisive control in running the industry. Nationalisation changed the form of control for the better, but fundamentally for industry remained a source of profit for the previous owners and big business generally. Participation of the workers in control and direction of the industry was non-existent, and consultation was superficial and largely window-dressing.

Miners' wages and conditions had not improved to the measure that could be reasonably expected. Nationalisation had been deliberately used to provide coal to big industry at low prices to enhance their profits. It had also been exploited by the State in meeting financial burdens that legitimately were liabilities for the Exchequer.

'Nationalisation is not an end in itself, it is a means to an end. Its role and function today reveals the "end" as being a cheap product for capitalist industry to strengthen and perpetuate capitalism'" (Manchester Guardian, 7/5/57). 

The S.P.G.B. has been telling the miners and engineers for 50 years that nationalisation would not solve the problems of the workers. Now that the miners, with 10 years enlightening experience behind them, are discovering the truth of what we said, may we invite them first to dissuade the engineers from wasting their time, then to get together with the latter to study the case for Socialism?

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.

The Labour College. Our Criticism "Answered." (1919)

From the September 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the May issue of this journal I dealt with certain statements which appeared in the "Plebs Magazine" for April. Among these was a long paragraph by Mr. W. W. Craik, in which he attempts to explain the meaning of capital. As that paragraph was misleading I pointed out where it was wrong and gave a a definition of capital more in accordance with Socialist knowledge and principle. An anonymous writer in the July issue of the "Plebs" attempts to rescue Mr. Craik from the results of his ignorance of Socialist economics by declaring that the definition used by him was that of an opponent which he was endeavouring to ridicule. I give here the writer's remarks.

The May number of the Socialist Standard, the organ of that truculent band of last-ditchers, the S.P.G.B., contained an article entitled "Economics at the Central Labour College," which "was full to overflowing of instructive and edifying information. It was signed "F.F." Whether those initials stood for Fearful Fool or Funny Fellow we are unable, except on the evidence of the article itself, to conjecture, Give ear: —

  The mistaken notions of the S.W. miners and the Liberal politics of the Labour Party form the basis of the College instruction, which is carried back to the T.U. and I.L.P. branches as independent and scientific knowledge of the working-class position.

  Comment (on which would only spoil  its touching simplicity. We quote it to show how much the man who wrote it is in touch with the world outside his hermitage.
"F.F." has also something to say about W. W. Craik's article in the April "Plebs," the unsoundness and anti-Marxian character of the economic views expressed in which are duly exposed. As thus :

  Mr. W. W. Craik, dealing with the Coal Commission, asks a simple question in economics— "What is Capital?" But although economics is an important subject at the College, and a correct definition of capital is very essential to that subject, the writer seems quite unable to give one. "What is capital?" he asks. "Wealth used to produce more wealth," he replies.'

And then follows a criticism of this alleged "reply" ! . . . . This is a new method of controversy indeed! I quote some ridiculous remark made by an opponent, and instantly a high-browed S.P.G.B.'er leaps up and accuses me of having uttered the very nonsense which I am doing my best to ridicule! " F.F." should read articles before he reviews them. He might then save himself some time which he could devote to the study of Marx, That he stands in some need of such a course of study is fairly evident from his assertion that capital is a thing, and that the source of capitalist power is the political machinery.

In Mr. Craik's article there is no mention of opponents. The definition is imputed to no one; it is not in quotes, nor is it questioned by Mr. Craik. He says : "But does not capital make some of this wealth possible? Does it not contribute to the creation of value? What is capital? Wealth used to produce more wealth! That does not tell us much, not even who produces it."

Such a definition is a favourite one with anti-Socialists because it includes practically all wealth, and makes the wage worker a capitalist by virtue of his tools. If Mr. Craik disagreed with it why did he repeat the fallacy in another form, and in the same paragraph ? He said :

  "Capital is the ownership of labour, the ownership of the labour of yesterday and of to-day, of the labour materialised in the pit props, the steel cage, the winding engine, and of the living labour which sets all in motion and embodies itself in the saleable product coal, in the value and price of coal and, therefore, in the forms of revenue which are derived from value—the wages of the labourer, the profits of the coal-owner and coal merchant, and the royalties of the landowner."

In this sweeping definition, which is undoubtedly the product of Mr. Craik's brain, all wealth is included, with the exception of virgin soil, undiscovered minerals, and such other forms of natural wealth not yet appropriated or transformed by the application, of human energy. Mr. Craik's champion says that "F.F." should really read articles before he reviews them. From the foregoing it will be seen that it is Mr. Craik's apologist who does not read his articles. Instead, he indulges in silly guesses as to whether "F.F." stands for Fearful Fool or Funny Fellow—all in the name of education.

Following on his remark about reading articles before reviewing them, the writer of the "Plebs Bookshelf" says: 

  He [the present writer] might then save himself some time which he could devote to the study of Marx. That he stands in some need of such a coarse of study is fairly evident from his assertion that capital is a thing, and that the source of capitalist power is the political machinery.

This statement at once puts the Labour College out of all decent discussion. To deliberately misquote an opponent is not only contemptible, it is an admission of a bad case. Below is the paragraph referred to as it appeared in the May "SS."

  Now it must be obvious that capital is something that is owned, and not the act of ownership, and Mr. Craik is only adding to the confusion that already prevails when he tells the "Plebs" readers that capital is the ownership of pit props, winding gear, machinery, etc. Adam Smith's definition that capital is 'wealth used for the production of profit' is a far more scientific one, and always good enough for the Socialist, because it can easily be shown that there are no profits without exploitation.

It will at once be seen that the Labour College prefers to misrepresent its opponents rather than admit itself in the wrong or attempt to discuss the question at issue with the object of ascertaining the truth. The lack of understanding and the confusion of the workers today is largely due to false or ill-considered definitions of economic terms. Nowhere is this more forcibly shown than in the works of Marx. In every chapter of "Value, Price, and Profit" economic errors like that of Mr. Craik are exposed, and in simple language Marx shows that there is no need for fantastic hypotheses, the Socialist philosophy being built entirely on facts.

Similarly, there is no need to draw conclusions from anything but facts, with regard to the inference of the Labour College that the source of capitalist power is not the political machinery. What is power? The control of physical force. What physical force do the workers control that is at all comparable with the armed forces controlled through Parliament by the capitalist class ?

The Industrial Unionists and Direct Actionists have been repeatedly challenged to show how the workers can overcome the organised forces that are used against them by the ruling class. The only reply vouchsafed is to ridicule the notion that the armed forces will be used, or to assert that the soldiers will not shoot, or to claim that they will be Industrial Unionists too, or other nonsense of that kind. But they never attempt to meet the Socialist argument that the workers, possessing as they do, the majority of the votes, can, by organising as a political party, capture Parliament and control the armed forces, as a first step towards expropriating the capitalist clats and establishing Socialism.

But the Labour College is not alone in denying the political character of the class struggle. The numerous adventurers in the trade union movement advocating what is called "Direct Action," all claim that the working class can afford to ignore the political fight. Though none of them ever produce a single argument that would justify its adoption by the workers as a means to their emancipation. They are thus the best friends of the ruling class because they persuade the workers to continue their present fruitless struggles on the industrial field, while leaving the real power in the hands of their masters.

The South Wales Miners in particular are enamoured of this doctrine, and in small matters affecting their working conditions have carried it further than most trade unionists. But on questions where the mine owners have elected to oppose them they have been no more successful than other sections of the workers.

Notwithstanding the repeated failures of the strikes to effect anything of importance for them, they cling to it and use it more frequently than most workers, as a weapon against the master class. But frequently as they are in collision with the masters, they have not yet learned that the forces that beat them in every strike are placed under capitalist control by their votes. They still continue to vote Liberal and Liberal-Labour, thus placing in the hands of their enemies or their agents, the power that defeats them on the industrial field.

This wooden-headed policy is applauded by the Labour College because the South Wales Miners is one of the two unions that owns that institution, and, as Philip Snowden once said in connection with the I.L.P. in similar circumstances, "those who pay the piper call the tune. "The "Plebs Magazine" for December 1916 Says ''The Central Labour College is owned and controlled by the South Wales Miners and the National Union of Railwaymen." But this in itself would not justify me saying, as I did in the May "S.S.," "The mistaken notions of the South Wales Miners, and the Liberal politics of the Labour Party, form the basis of the College instruction, which is carried back to the trade union and I.L.P. branches as independent and scientific knowledge of the working-class position. Thus neither the College nor unions can get beyond the compromising and reform attitude of the Labour Party."

What does justify the statement is the fact that the pages of the "Plebs Magazine" are almost entirely devoted to the advocacy of ideas that dominate that union. The "Plebs" is an organ for advertising the methods of the South Wales Miners, and the College is an institution that confirms them in their sterile methods by educating new misleaders on the lines of the old.

If the Labour College wants to prove that it is a genuine working-class institution, established for the purpose of giving the working class a sound knowledge of their slave position in capitalist society, their writers will need to do something more than refer to our indictment as "touching simplicity." Before they can justify their pretension to be an educational centre, fitting the working class for its historic mission—the abolition of class rule and the establishment of Socialism—they must not only understand Socialism themselves: they must unlearn the fraudulent practice of making statements they cannot prove, and denying truths merely because they are unpleasant to
 them or their supporters.

F. Foan

Against the odds? (1984)

From the May 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under capitalism production is carried on for profit but governments nevertheless have a certain leeway to choose, for political or strategic reasons, to subsidise industries that would otherwise go to the wall. The coal industry in Britain is a case in point. But money diverted to subsidising unprofitable industries is money that could otherwise have been used to invest in modernising profitable industries to enable them to compete better on the world market. Thus the logic of capitalism decrees that subsidies should be kept to a minimum.

The present Conservative government, under pressure like governments everywhere from competitive conditions on the world market, has decided to prune subsidies to industry. And they have imported an American businessman, Ian MacGregor, to help them do this. After having wielded his axe in the steel industry more or less successfully, he has now been given the task of doing a similar hatchet job on the coal industry.

It was inevitable that the NUM. under its present leadership, should have responded to this challenge. Its President, Arthur Scargill, has never disguised the fact that he has always wanted a strike both on the wages and on the pit closures issues. But the NUM Rulebook only authorises strikes under two circumstances: a national strike after a ballot in which 55 per cent of those taking part vote for strike action, and an area strike on a simple authorisation from the National Executive Committee. The NEC’s recommendation to strike having been turned down on two occasions since Scargill's election to the presidency in 1982 (without doubt because most members felt that, with 3 million unemployed, the moment wasn’t propitious), the only alternative for the NUM leadership was to authorise area strikes as they did at the March NEC meeting.

In doing so they took the risk of splitting the union since the NUM is still to a large extent what it was officially called until 1945: “The Miners’ Federation of Great Britain"; in other words, it is a federation of area unions (which are registered trade unions in their own right) enjoying a certain amount of autonomy. This led to some Areas (Yorkshire, Scotland, Durham) deciding to strike while others (Nottingham. Midlands, Lancashire) decided not to. When miners from striking areas decided to picket pits in non-striking areas the scene was set for the clashes between miner and miner — and the intervention of the State — which the capitalist media have been gleefully chronicling.

We have always held that the details of how a particular struggle against a capitalist (or state capitalist) employer should be waged must be decided by the group of workers immediately involved. Beyond that all we have offered is general advice based on past experience of the class struggle: any strike action should be decided and organised democratically; the chances of winning should be carefully weighed up; is the employer deliberately provoking a strike for his own ends; don’t trust leaders; don’t let politicians and political groups interfere; recognise that a strike is not a simple disagreement between “social partners’’ but an aspect of a conflict between two classes with antagonistic and irreconcilable interests.

What then can be said of the chances of the present miners’ strike succeeding? The first point to notice is that, in calling for unprofitable pits to be kept open, the NUM leaders are in effect calling on the government to make a political decision to continue to subsidise the coal industry to the same extent as before. We can understand why miners would want to make such a demand but are not sure that it is a legitimate trade union demand. Experience has shown that, in such circumstances, the best that can be obtained is better redundancy terms (higher lump sums, bigger and longer weekly payments, and so on). We would have thought, therefore, that a more intelligent approach would have been to raise this demand, being prepared of course to strike to back it up if necessary.

But, as the NUM leadership has decided to fight on the issue of maintaining the government's subsidy to the coal industry, we are bound to say that victory on this issue seems much less likely, not to say highly improbable (look at what happened to the steelworkers when they went on strike against MacGregor). A long strike can work, as the previous relatively successful miners’ strikes in 1972 and 1974 showed, but this requires favourable circumstances such as the full backing of the men and women involved and the sympathy of the general public. But the full backing of the miners is precisely what is lacking in this particular case. Miners have voted twice since 1982 against national strike action, and. though their opinion might have shifted since, this is by no means certain and it obviously hasn't in Nottingham and the Midlands. So to have launched into a strike, with a dubious objective and a divided membership, would seem to have been rather imprudent.

The capitalist press have of course concentrated on vilifying Arthur Scargill but he undoubtedly does have the support of a majority of miners in his home area of Yorkshire and in a number of other areas too. He is clearly more acceptable, from a trade union point of view, than his predecessor Joe (now, naturally. Lord) Gormley, who wheeled and dealed with the Coal Board, the Labour Party and the government behind the miners’ backs in the posh restaurants of London. Even so, Scargill is open to criticism from a trade union point of view, first and foremost because like a number of others who want to lead the working class he is not and never has been a democrat.

Though no longer a card-carrying member of the so-called Communist Party, he is still a staunch supporter of Russian state capitalism (to the extent of opposing the emergence of free trade unionism in Poland). As an unrepentant Leninist he believes that he has a right to go against the wishes of a majority of his members, to “give them a lead" as he would put it; set them in motion, people like him think, and by the dynamic of the situation they'll follow. Undoubtedly the traditional solidarity of miners once on strike, even of those opposed to strike action, has played a part in this strike, but Scargill and other we-know-better-than-the-mass-of-the-workers militants are playing with fire here. If he doesn’t want to go down in trade union histroy as the man that split the miners' union he's sooner or later going to have to take into account the fact that perhaps a majority of his members didn't want to strike.

Adam Buick

"Huffing and Puffing" (1973)

From the April 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Futile Talk by a Trade Union leader

The president of the Mineworkers’ Union, Joe Gormley, is making stroppy noises about the Government. He says: “The time for huffing and puffing is over” . . . "The Unions must put their feet where their mouth is” . . . “If you can’t abide the Government’s policies, then you must change the Government” — and that, he says, “Must mean the Trade Union Congress calling a General Strike”.

All this in the News of the World (18 February), which is appalled and calls on responsible trade-union leaders to “drag Mr. Gormley back from the brink”. He doesn’t think the Tories will win the next election, although he carefully avoids mentioning which party might win in the event of a Tory defeat.

The election (to be forced by a General Strike) will be about “rising prices”, “land speculation” and “property racketeers”. Obviously, Mr. Gormley had an election programme along these lines in mind. One wonders why the vociferous Gormley, who prides himself on his outspokenness and says it sometimes makes him unpopular, is so coy about this.

It is patently obvious that the only possible outcome of a Tory election defeat is a Labour Party victory and a Labour government. If Gormley is under the mistaken impression that this will in any way improve the lot of the workers, or increase the freedom of the trade unions, we must remind him that it was the postwar Labour government which prosecuted gas workers (who are on strike today under Tory rule without being prosecuted). The gasworkers were sentenced to a month’s imprisonment, later changed to a fine of £50 each.

Another of the ineffable Joe’s pipe-dreams is the notion that a Tory election defeat (and therefore Labour victory) can satisfactorily deal with rising prices, land speculation, and property racketeers. It was a Labour government which in addition to printing too many bank-notes, like the Tories, deliberately devalued the pound, or inflated the currency, increasing prices.

That a responsible official of a very large Union can so try to deflect attention from the Union’s real business (getting an increase in wages) shows how much they still have to learn of the economics of capitalism. Wages are also a price, and every trade-unionist wants this price to rise. The stupid folly of the TUC in allowing the Government to kid them that higher prices are the result of wage increases is doing much harm to the trade union movement.

As an organized political party seeking political power through the ballot, the Socialist Party of Great Britain have this to say to Gormley. Your talk about General Strikes to bring down governments is a counsel of folly and despair. If the organized trade-unionists made up a majority of the electorate (which they do not) then they could do this constitutionally anyway, but if they did it as an organized group they would be acting as a political party, not a trade union. But trade unions are not organized on political principles, but on trade or job qualifications.

Having defeated the Tories and returned a Labour (or TUC) government, they would then be faced with the job of all governments — running the country; and we have forty years of experience and six previous Labour governments to tell us exactly what they would do. Even if Joe Gormley himself were appointed Prime Minister, he would do what every PM does: protect capitalism, because he would not have been elected and have had no mandate to do anything else. He would have been elected to patch up capitalism (rising prices, etc., etc.).

As Mr. Wilson told the TUC once: "The job of a Government is to govern.” How much more money and time is the Mineworkers’ Union going to pour into the futile and useless Labour Party? For more than forty years they backed nationalization of the coal mines. This was eventually implemented, and notices were stuck up outside coal-pits saying: “These mines now belong to the People.” And organizations like “Age-Concern” now say that more elderly people are dying of cold than ever, because they cannot obtain enough of “their own” coal. Miners are still striking for increases in wages, as they did when the pits were privately owned.

Finally, about the General Strike. A General Strike, like all strikes, is a merely negative action. It is workers refusing to work, sitting down, or going home. It may remove or bring down a government. If the general-strikers (as in Italy now) are not Socialists, they will re-elect a non-Socialist — that is, a capitalist — government and the whole daft business starts all over again. For this reason, we have always consistently opposed the idea that capitalism can be damaged by political strikes. No mere strike action can help the establishment of Socialism, which is a positive measure where everybody does something to help. Of course, trade unions will have a hand in this.

The General Council of the TUC has given the answer to Gormley: “A total and continuous stoppage was ruled out because it would not be possible.” (Guardian, 28 Feb. 1973). Perhaps Joe Gormley will now stop “huffing and puffing” about political general strikes.

Horatio.

A Fight to the Finish (1985)

Book Review from the November 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Strike, Sunday Times Insight Team. (Coronet Books £2.50)

This book is unlikely to find much favour among left wing activists, preoccupied as they are with weaving over the calamitous reality of the coal strike a blanket of myths:

• that it was all caused by the malevolent intent of Thatcher, MacGregor and the rest; 
• that Arthur Scargill was a saviour of the working class, crucified by the media;
• that the miners were struggling for "their" jobs and "their" communities:
• that the coal industry can and should be run for the benefit and comfort of the miners under a capitalist society;
• that it can all be put to rights by the election of another Labour government who will release the gaoled miners, repay the fines imposed by the courts, re-employ the sacked strikers, restore the union's sequestrated funds . . .

The British coal industry, which in its heyday contributed so much to the profits of the capitalist class, has been in continuous decline since the First World War. In 1913 there were 3.000 working pits producing some 300m tonnes a year; when the industry was nationalised in 1947 there were under one thousand turning out 200m tonnes a year. Even so, the industry in 1947 supplied about 90 per cent of the primary energy requirements in Britain. One plan after another — none of them having much basis in reality — promised heavier investment, busier pits, higher production. more secure jobs. At times — for example in the oil crisis of 1973/4 — the optimism was tinged with hysteria. In the event, the plans were undermined by competition from other energy sources, notably oil and natural gas and by 1974 coal was filling barely one third of the total fuel market in Britain. The profitability of individual pits came under the accountants' scrutiny and many of those which weighed in the wrong side of the balance sheet were closed. This happened under Labour governments as well as under the Tories and when Heath's 1970 victory threw out the Wilson government there were less than 300 active pits.

To begin with, the closures — in spite of the dramatic changes they wrought, for example in the Rhondda which was left with only one pit — were accomplished with little opposition. British capitalism at large was still booming enough to provide plenty of other jobs to miners who were offered seductive redundancy terms. In general the NUM co-operated quietly under a succession of leaders who liked to think they were craftily applying the politics of the possible. But as the slump deepened the miners' resistance to redundancy. to uprooting themselves and their families, stiffened. In 1981, by an emphatic majority, they elected as their president, the much loved, much hated Arthur Scargill.

The new NUM President had been prominent in — perhaps largely responsible for — the miners' victories in 1972 and 1974 and he appeared to be obsessed by, and to have learned nothing from, the experiences. It is difficult to explain his policies and actions other than through a resolve to engage the government in a titanic, no-compromise fight to the finish, at whatever cost. But if the government had been defeated in the 1970s. and had beat an apparently humiliating retreat over closures in 1981, by 1984 they were ready for a war of attrition with whichever trade union was prepared to go over the top. Nicholas Ridley, now Minister for Transport, contributed importantly to the government's strategy and there could have been few more obvious choices for the new Chairman of the NCB than Ian MacGregor (who had first been approached, as a prospective hatchet man for British Leyland. by a Labour Industry Secretary). MacGregor later described the strike as a poker game, in which the first one to blink was the loser: 'I don't intend to blink".

Thereafter, the government's tactics could hardly be faulted. Most vitally they kept the power stations supplied with coal by using small, non-union road transport firms and by importing coal through minor ports like Flixborough. Thus an exceptionally severe winter was survived without any power cuts. They hastily appeased other strikes — in the docks and by the pit deputies — which posed a crucial threat to their strategy. Any possible sympathy among other important unions was diverted with a propaganda campaign which emphasised the comparatively large redundancy payments on offer to the miners. They consistently harped on the NUM's refusal to hold a ballot, which was Scargill's most damaging mistake. Finally, the whole policy was asserted by a massive, massively organised, police presence which did not baulk at breaking the law in order to frustrate the pickets.

Against that the miners could oppose their courage, their ingenuity, their tradition of militancy — and Scargill's empty rhetoric. Unity they could not offer, for Scargill's refusal to hold a ballot had prevented that. As the going got tougher Scargill tried to conceal reality beneath bluster and with claims of an imminent victory, reminiscent of Hitler's last days in the Berlin bunker. The time came when with each day out the miners' resolve was bound to weaken. The NCB response to this was to harden its face, refusing Scargill's desperate appeal to return to a settlement which he had earlier refused. Perhaps the breaking point came at Christmas, when the miners' poignant celebrations were followed by a sickening sense of anti-climax. There was little else for them to do but surrender. leaving the NUM and the rest of the union movement with little strength to resist the employers' onslaughts.

This is not to say that all was well on the other side of the barricades, where MacGregor was a disaster in the cynical, slippery game of ruling class propaganda. At times the divisions in the NCB management were almost as marked as those in the NUM. What counted in the end. above the influences of any personalities, were the basic facts that coal is a commodity — produced for sale and profit — and that the endurance of workers on strike is limited by their inability to survive without an income. As happened in 1926. the miners were really starved into submission.

Strike is a compact, informative account of that year of conflict but its sympathies show through. Andrew Neil, editor of the Sunday Times, introduces the book with glowing praise as ". . . impartial and well-informed . . . accurate . .. scoop of the year. . ." while assuring us that the Insight team work independently of the paper's editorial policy, which is " . . for the sake of liberal democracy, economic recovery and the rolling back of union power''. Perhaps that is why Strike, so illuminating on some issues, gives so little attention to the savage behaviour of the police and to their other illegal policies, such as the obstruction of public thoroughfares, which have such serious implications for political and trade union activity. It is similarly scant about the stoicism and courage of the miners and their families in sustaining so long and bitter a struggle.

This is not a comfortable book for left wingers because of the lessons which can be drawn from it by the class conscious. Workers have no "right" to their jobs; they are employed only on the prospect that their labour will yield profit to the capitalists. In a class divided society conflict is inevitable but in this the strike should be a weapon of last resort, not the plaything of a leader. Strikes should proceed on a democratic decision and ideally should be brief as well as concentrated. It is vital to separate the struggles on the industrial field, which are about the division of wealth under capitalism, from that on the political field, which is concerned with the revolution to dispossess the capitalists of their monopoly of the means of life. It is on the political field, and not the industrial, that the working class is able to contest with the state, to control it for their own emancipation.

For the workers to ignore these lessons is futile and dangerous. History is a guide for future action and that of the coal strike points unwaveringly to the urgent need for a new social system.

Ivan

The Grimethorpe Miners (1947)

From the October 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

For those who have eyes to see there are lots of valuable lessons to be learned from the strike of the Grimethorpe miners against the efforts of the National Coal Board and the Union to make them do more work. The mines were nationalised only on January 1st, 1947, but within a few months the determined resistance of a few hundred men backed by thousands of other Yorkshire miners who struck in sympathy, showed the hollowness of the claim that Nationalisation and Labour Government can solve the problems of the workers. When Nationalisation took place Labour Party supporters welcomed it as a new era of industrial peace and the death of private profit, but socialists warned the workers not to be deceived into thinking that wage-slavery in the mines would be altered in any way. It has not taken long to reveal in the clearest fashion that the difference between private and state capitalism is not worth the workers’ votes.

In May of this year the National Union of Mineworkers made an agreement with the National Coal Board for a change-over to a five-day week, without loss of pay, on the understanding that the Union would co-operate with the employers, the Coal Board, to “promote every possible and reasonable means of ensuring that the maximum output of coal is produced.” The Union specifically pledged itself to co-operate with the management in persuading the workers to accept re-assessments of work which would mean in many cases cutting down the number of men required for a particular piece of work. The Union undertook that it would “not countenance any restriction of effort by workmen resulting in failure to perform the work so assessed.” (The full agreement was published in the Ministry of Labour Gazette, May, 1947)

The dangers of an agreement which binds the union to help the employers bring pressure on its own members are obvious. If the members of the N.U.M. understood and approved of this the responsibility rests on them and not only on their Communist General Secretary and the other officials who signed the agreement. There is, however, much evidence to show that the members went into it without realising what they were accepting. This may be partly due to a temporary lack of contact between the members and the executive, resulting from the recent changeover from a federation of county associations to a centralised national union. In addition it is certainly due to the close tie-up between the national officials of the Union and the Government, which results in the former imagining that it is their job to give orders to their members rather than take them. The comment of the Manchester Guardian is to the point: “The Union leaders took a great risk in giving the Government the assurances they did without being sure that the miners were really willing to attend regularly and to do a full shift’s work. It will not do to put all the blame on a minority of ‘bad ‘ miners. A little slacking has to be taken into account in any calculation. Either the union officials misjudged the temper of their men or they did not do as much as they knew to be necessary to explain what the five-day week meant. This failure is not surprising. The N.U.M.’s constant concern with the handling of national policy in Downing Street and Whitehall has left its leaders with too little time for the details of affairs in the pits. . . . The Union will have to make a bold effort now to regain the full confidence of the miners. Like the National Coal Board it will not do that unless it can restore the close touch with local problems that has to some extent been lost by its conversion to a centralised organisation.” (Manchester Guardian, 9/9/47)

The amazing situation developed of the miners’ officials denouncing their own members in terms that the former coal owners could not have exceeded for arrogance.

Mr. Lawther, President of the Union, told the strikers they were “acting as criminals at this time of the nation’s peril.” He actually invited the Coal Board to prosecute: “Let them issue summonses against these men, no matter how many there may be. I would say that even though there were 100,000 on strike.” (Daily Mail, 29/8/47)

The Communist General Secretary, Mr. Arthur Horner, was nearly as bad. In a statement to the Press (Daily Herald, 28/8/47) Mr. Horner said that the strikers “must be regarded as an alien force and treated as an enemy of the true interests of the majority of the miners of this country.” What some of the miners think of these swollen-headed gentlemen may be judged by the words “Burn Will Lawther” painted up at the entrance to the Grimethorpe colliery and by the comment made by a miner to a representative of the Star (9/9/47) –

  “Mr. Horner seems to have forgotten that he is our servant and is acting as if he were our lord and master. We pay him to fight our battles and not to fight against us.”

This miner was right and the sooner all workers take steps to bring their would-be dictators into line the better for the trade union movement.

One aspect of this must not be forgotten. Years ago the Communist Party popularised the slogan “Watch Your Leaders.” If ever it was necessary to do so it certainly is now when Communists like Mr. Horner have reached positions of eminence in the unions. A letter published by the Daily Worker (13/9/47) pointed out how closely Horner’s phrases resembled those for which the Communists used to denounce Mr. J. H. Thomas. Not that the idea behind the slogan is a sound one. Against the Communist idea that what the workers need is “better leaders” (who all turn out to be just like their predecessors) the Socialist urges the need to get rid of leadership.

The bitter experience of the Grimethorpe miners brings out clearly that nationalisation has changed nothing, except perhaps that it is harder for the men to fight the National Coal Board than it was to fight the local mine-owners. The following statement by a Daily Herald reporter was published on August 30th:

  “The real point of their grievance seems to be that in the general reorganisation of work underground involved by the change, men may be put on to other jobs at which they earn less money. A joint committee of miner’s delegates and representatives of the Coal Board decided on the increased stint. The Grimethorpe men complain now that they had no representative on this joint committee, and that the decision to increase the stint came as a bombshell. . . . They also complain that the divisional Coal Board officials are the same officials they had before the Government took over.” 

Those foolish optimists who fancied that the bitterness of the class struggle, if not the struggle itself, disappears when the employer is the State might note the remarks of a Daily Mirror representative. He wrote (6/9/47) –

  “How they hate the Divisional Officers of the Board! Big salaries, big cars, big offices, big titles —but they don’t go down the mines.” One miner remarked “What do these — know about it? They couldn’t get themselves enough coal to boil an egg.”

The National Coal Board’s attitude to the workers was expressed by one of the Board’s spokesmen:

   “This is the test case of our authority. It is the first real test we have had, and at such an early stage in our career we cannot afford to have our prestige shaken by withdrawing the extra stint order.” (Evening Standard, 4/9/47)

The miners have indeed exchanged one hard master for another.

Another illusion cherished by Labourites is that when an industry is nationalised human aspects and the well-being of the workers no longer have to take second place to financial considerations. Since the mines have got to pay their way, including the necessity of meeting the cost of compensating the former owners, it is obvious that this cannot be. It remained for the Communist General Secretary of the Miners’ Union to dot the i’s and cross the t’s of this fact. In his statement denouncing unofficial strikes and urging increased production he disclosed that at a secret session of miner’s delegates in July he told them that “the Coal Board is at the present time losing money in a very serious fashion.” (Daily Herald, 28/8/47). There was a time when miners’ officials would have told the employers that the finance of the industry was their affair or would, as in 1926, have told the owners to go to the Conservative Government for a subsidy if they couldn’t manage otherwise. Now, under a Labour Government, this Communist conveys the employing Board’s lament to the workers, and instead of demanding a five-day week unconditionally urges the workers in effect to work harder to put the Board’s finances on a profitable basis.

Whatever else may come out of the Grimethorpe strike it should teach some miners at least not to put their trust in Nationalisation, or in Labour administration of capitalism, or in leaders, Communists included.

Edgar Hardcastle