Miners rally broad movement of ilies back to work.
"When statements are made by those who lead us, it undermines every judge that's bending and twisting the rules, it undermines every part of the DHSS that's responding to the pressure of this government to hit the miners and their families.
resistance to Thatcher
"And we need to be saying quite clearly that we soon start the process of selection of parliamentary candidates.
The first British-state-wide conference of activists working in solidarity with the miners' strike was held in London on December 2. a very large number of participants. Despite the last-minute attempts of the organizers to limit the number of delegates because of lack of space, over 1,600 people turned up. An overflow meeting had to be organized to accomodate over 500 people. Gerry FOLEY brought into focus for the first time the movement that has grown up around the miners' strike and the changes it has set in motion in British politics. structured conference is scheduled for
The December 2 gathering was able to point up more clearly and dramatically the political stakes in the strike because it opened only a day after the courts appointed a trustee to take over the miners' union apparatus.
The court ruling put the fighting union leadership in a position where in order to plan the next stage of the strike it had to consider big new steps toward developing a way of functioning radically different from the traditional methods of British unions. In fact, if the British state concould only continue to operate in a semi-legal way, relying on its regional organiza-
At the very time of the conference a battle was underway in the miners' union executive over what course to take. That prevented the NUM leader Scargill from addressing the gathering, as he had pledged to do.
The political confrontation between the militant leadership and the reactionary Thatcher government was sharpening, and the political stakes in the struggle were escalating apace.
Coming from outside Britain, I was struck by the way the conference demonstrated the rallying of a full spectrum of social and political opposition movements in the British state around the miners' strike and the National Union of Miners. That also corresponded to the other story I went to Britain to cover. On the continent, a touring Lancashire miner had explained to me that the historic regions of north and south Wales, a small nation come together for the first time behind
"It's made them a
Historically, the major obstacle to the development of a national movement in Wales had been precisely this division between the predominately English-speaking industrial south of Wales and the predominately Welsh-speaking, largely agricultural, north and west of the country. [The small coal-mining area in the northInternational Viewpoint 24 December 1984
It attracted eastern part of Wales is not typical of this
Shortly after this, I noticed that the national conference of the Welsh nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, had elected a new left-wing leadership committed to supporting the strike.
Obviously, the miners' strike was having some very broad reverberations. conference on Sunday, December 2, before I went to Wales, put them in per-
In general, the political framework for this broad movement was provided by the existence of a broad, pluralist Labour Welsh development was closely related to this, but took a combined form. The Labour Party is dominant in south Wales, but as a party, is mainly a right-wing machine. The Welsh nationalist party, while much weaker in this region, is still strong enough to challenge Labour in a number of areas and has taken a more radical stance of support for the strike. over, it is stronger than Labour in the Welsh-speaking rural area.
At the same time, the growth of a left wing in the British Labour Party, in particular its tendency to break with economic positions that have been a cover for British chauvinism in the past, has been a strong encouragement to the left in the Welsh nationalist movement.
The Plaid left's major leader, Dafydd Elis Thomas, MP for a West Wales constituency and now president of the party, later told me in fact that the Welsh nationalist left no longer sees its struggle simply as organizing the Welsh people to achieve independence but as a part of a broader fight against the British capital-
In his address to the London conference, Ken Livingstone, one of the principal Labour-left leaders, stressed the importance of the Labour Party offering a governmental alternative for the miners, in particular in the face of strike breaking by the state and its courts:
"I believe it's time that we started to hear from those that lead us in parliament that another government will repay every penny that has been stolen from
"We will repay to every miner's family the money that's been stolen by this government through the DHSS [Department of Health and Social Services] in order to try to starve the miners and their fam-
We need to demand of everyone who sees themselves getting into parliament: "Will you actually vote to restore the money that's been stolen by this government? Will you vote to retire those judges who have twisted every rule and every law?"
That the strike had united all the victims of state repression was stressed by the spokesperson for the Kent Miners' Wives Committee, Kay Sutcliffe. mentioned youth and the unemployed, blacks, the Irish, feminists, pacifists and gays. Of all these groups, she said, have helped us and we will not let them
This unity of the oppressed was illustrated by a story told to me about a London gay group that adopted the Dowlais mine in South Wales, one of the areas in the state least affected by the new radical currents of the 1960s and 1970s. But as the strike progressed, a strong feeling of comradeship developed between the members of this mining community and
London group, representatives of which were given a royal welcome when they visited the area.
Gay and lesbian activists held a workshop at the conference and reported that they were regularly collecting for the miners and their families in the gay bars and meeting places in London.
In his speech to the conference, Tony Benn, the recognized leader of the Labour left, stressed that a new Labour Party had to be built on the model of the movement in solidarity with the miners:
"I am absolutely confident that the organisation that the NUM, the women's support groups, and other groups represented at the conference today have been able to achieve is going to transform the British Labour Party.
"Because Ill tell you something that has come to light in the course of the last nine months. That is the end of electoral parliamentarism.
"The idea that all you've got to do is be quiet, then canvass for a Labour candidate, and then when he or she gets into power wait for five years, be loyal to everything that's done, and then turn out again. That is not a way forward for us.
"The electoral politics that we tended to regard as being the nature of the Labour Party has got to be replaced and supplemented by the sort of action that and the women's support groups and this conference have carried
"I believe that what has happened over the last nine months [during the strike], apart from educating people has been to every single constituency party miners' groups, women's groups, women's action groups, that have no in-
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BRITAIN
active in support of the miners, and lutionary movement in a developed countention whatsoever of disbanding when the strike is over and are instruments ready and able to support any issue that is in the interests of working people. This means defending trade unionists, defending the blacks, defending the Irish who are under similar attack."
Benn's reference to the Irish drew a big round of applause. It was also notable that every speaker identified as coming from Wales drew a special round of ap plause. In fact, south Wales is the solidest area for the strike.
The report from the women's action groups' workshop was given by Hazel Jones from Mountain Ash in the Cynon valley of south Wales. The central point she made was the determination of women to maintain the role in social and political action that they have won in the framework of the strike and solidarity movement.
The importance of the women's support groups and the mobilization of women was a theme that ran through the conference from beginning to end was clearly one of the main results and driving forces of the radicalization in the strike movement, a constant in the thinking of the activists.
Dafydd Elis Thomas told me later, moreover, that he thought that feminism had been one of the most important forces breaking down the narrow economism that has separated the British labour movement from the movements of minority nationalities incorporated in the British state.
Another clear tendency in the thinking of activists and speakers was internationalism. Kay Suteliffe, for example, stressed the importance of the strike and solidarity movement as an example to the working class of other countries that were facing the same sort of austerity drive from the governments of the world capitalist crisis. Benn himself, although more implicated in the Labour Party past, pointed up this aspect:
"..a Labour Party that has to do its job has got to be comprehensive in character. It's got to be a party fit and therefore was invited to send a speaker the conference. The spokesperson pledged support for the miners in strong words that were no less resolute.
Livingstone responded, pledging that he would see that the council changed its attitude. A representative of the council's employees also spoke, supporting the miners while denouncing the council as a
The NUM representatives who addressed the conference expressed a powerful determination to win the strike, declaring that after nine months of sacrifices and confrontations with the police and courts, after the deaths of five brother miners in clashes and nine killed trying to scavenge coal for their families. A Yorkshire miner stressed the need for money for the strike above even human needs: "I have four kids myself, but the best Christmas present I can give them is to tell them that thousands of men are fighting with their father for their future. A future is more important than toys or A surprise for the fox hunters
A representative of railway in a scab mining area told how much a few determined activists could do in mounting secondary strikes.
"the dirty thirty," have succeeded in blocking a good part of the area's coal production. The action that he enjoyed the most, he said, was dumping coal waste on the favorite foxhunting run of the local gentry. Indeed, he expressed a salient lack of respect for country's monarchical and aristocratic traditions.
All proportions guarded, the conference reflected a movement that begins to give a concrete idea of what a mass revoBlack delegation in the Kent coalfields (DR)
try will probably look like, a movement involving all sections of the working people, a whole society reorganizing it-
In some ways, this process of unification is broadest in Wales, where the factors at work in Britain as a whole combine with specific Welsh features, such as the existence of a national liberation movement, a tradition of rural radicaland very tight-knit miners' comtradition that are the core of the nation.
The objective adopted by the Welsh nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, which has its greatest strength in the Welsh-speaking rural areas but also has substantial pockets of strength in some of the mining valleys, and a traditional attraction for radical young people in the high schools and universities, is to foster this unity. The new left leadership has thrown the party strongly behind the miners.
For example, "Why the Miners Must Win!" the editors of Plaid Cymru's English-language organ, the Welsh Nation, wrote in their Novem-
"A victory for the miners in their historic struggle against the Thatcher government is vital to the very future of the Welsh nation." The article ended: "The political priorities of a free Wales will be those of the Welsh working class and not those of Thatcherite Tories."
In the October issue, Dafydd Elis Thomas wrote: "The miners' struggle is indeed the national struggle, and Plaid Cymru branches throughout Wales should ensure that miners' support committees are established in their own locality." He explained:
"Free market forces cannot be allowed to destroy Welsh communities and the attack on our extractive industries and the communities dependent on them, must be resisted by all of us who are conappropriate for the magnitude of the struggle that faces us and truly representative of all the interests and problems that confront working people in the age
BLACK PEOPLE of high technology, nuclear weapons, multinational business and multinational
SUPPORT
It's got to be an international finance.
movement as well."
THE MINERS'
In this context, the conference also became a challenge to the Labour left itself.
STRACLES
It was held, for instance, in the Camden borough hall. The local council is dominated by forces identified with the Labour left. But the record of this council has some outstanding black spots, in particular as regards providing housing for poor families. A black mother and her children, rehoused in a firetrap, had been burned to death not long before. That sparked the formation of a housing action committee with a mainly black membership, which then proceeded to occupy the council chambers in protest against its dereliction. This committee also became
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International Viewpoint 24 December 1984
cerned about the rights of communities to determine their own future."
In fact, one of the themes that emerged most clearly from the London solidarity conference was the need to attack the logic of the capitalist system itself. Benn stressed that Thatcher's attack on NUM had nothing to do with declining profitability of the mines. Her objective was to break the NUM to make way for selling off the country's coal to private
Gerald Howells, national organizer of Plaid Cymru, made the same point to me about Thatcher's policy in the Welsh mining areas. He said that that was the only way to explain why the government had left such promising finds as the Margam field in south Wales undeveloped
The Welsh Farmers Action Committee leaders that I talked to in west Wales explained that they have come to realize that Thatcher's policy is to plow under the agricultural economy in Wales in order to replace it with forest plantations and tourism.
Somewhat haltingly — he had got out of the habit of speaking English, he said - John Howells, chairperson of the Farmthought the answer to that problem was. I started to make some very cautious points about the logic of the capitalist
"Yes," he said suddenly, his eyes lighting up, "that's exactly the problem. The market economy doesn't work." What was needed, he said, to the approval of the others, was a new kind of economic organization based on providing for the needs of human beings and commun-
That response bore out what Tyrone O'Sullivan told me, who is a leader of the miners in the Cynon valley and a repre sentative of the Labour left. one enduring lesson of this conflict is that capitalism offers no solutions."
based committee, chaired by a representative of the National Union of Mineworkers and including representatives of sympathetic Regional Councils of the TUC, union executives, broad lefts, Labour Parties, shop stewards committees, trades councils, miners' support committees and other bodies committed to a miners' victory.
The function of this committee will be to take all measures necessary to ensure victory.
It will develop a mass solidarity movement based on elected, recallable delegates from all miners support organisations, and will publish a weekly national bulletin, with regional supplements, giving information as to the mass picketing and other actions requested by the national and area executives of the NUM.
We resolve to abide by all such requests, including:
the building of representative