INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY.
Fourth International campaigns on the shop stewards' organisation raised over $100,000
In Denmark, too, supporters of the Fourth International were also able to play a full role in stopping the movement of coal from the port of Aarhus to Britain. The blockade of the coal by the for the miners local support committee in collaboration with the dockers (see IV, No 63, November 12, 1984) is an example of what can be done in other ports engaged in ship-
The struggle of the British miners is the most important for the British working class since the general strike of 1926. If the miners win, it will be a major step to socialist advance.
less government will try and spread their defeat to the rest of the working class.
But the strike is also of great international significance. If successful, it will be seen as a victory against all those governments pursuing the policies of austerity.
This is particularly so given the open way in which the Thatcher government is used as an example of the course to be followed by these governments. The miners' strike represents the highest point of the wave of struggles initiated by the West European working class in 1984. Its success or failure will influence the possibilities for further development of those struggles.
For this reason a major campaign of solidarity was launched in May of this year by the Fourth International and its sections to build international solidarity with the miners' strike. Below we reprint extracts from a report made to the United Secretariat of the Fourth International at its November meeting, assessing that campaign.
Steve ROBERTS
The aims of the campaign of solidarity were set out as follows:
- to get the truth out at an international level about the miners' strike through the organisation of speaking tours of miners and miners' wives.
- to raise material aid for the strikers and their families through initiatives of the sections, united-front campaigns and through the official trade-union and labour movement.
to try to stop all coal bound for
Britain through alerting the relevant unions in each country and waging a campaign within them for support of this kind.
The results exceeded expectations and are testimony to the resonance that inter-
If they lose, an utterly remorsenational solidarity has amongst the working class. Our comrades have so far been involved in organising a total of 16 speaking tours for miners and miners' wives in Belgium, France, West Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, the USA, Canada and Australia.
The miners and miners' wives on these tours have spoken at trade-union branch meetings, factory gates, in canteens, to union executives, on TV, radio and at press conferences. In addition, they have been able to meet miners from other countries to discuss the fight against pit closures.
Altogether £30,000 was raised through these tours. Supporters of the Fourth International have also been involved in the setting up of united front solidarity committees which have raised significant sums of money, for example, in the case of Denmark a national collection based ping coal to Britain. Belgian Fourth International supporters discussed with of ficials of the Kent coalfields what sort of action could be taken to stop coal going through Ghent and Antwerp.
One of the main political lessons of the strike has been the role of the miners' wives. The comrades of the GIM, German section of the Fourth International, organised a tour especially for a miner's wife and a woman from Greenham Common. This had a positive impact both within the women's liberation movement and the broader labour movement. Such tours could be organised now on a wider scale to renew support for the strike and spread the message to a wider audience in different countries.
The press of the sections of the Fourth International has done much to publicise the miners' cause and leaflets and posters have been produced in most European countries.
The Polish journal Inprekor (a journal that presents the point of view of the Fourth International) published dossiers in two issues on the miners' strike which put forward the initial positions taken by Polish miners on the strike and appealed for support amongst Polish workers. Some material from these dossiers was published in the Front Robotniczy, a bulletin published by Solidarnose members.
Through the work done in this strike the Fourth International has been able to reaffirm the practical necessity of internationalism as a strategy for the working-class movement. This has also shown the role an international combat organisation can play in taking action in a concerted and politically effective way.
Fund-raising Christmas postcard published by the LCR (French section of the Fourth International)
On a wider scale, international support is becoming more and more vital. The international bourgeois press is trying to kill off the strike based on the propaganda campaign about working miners underway in Britain. The British bourgeoisie pretend to have secured victory through legal manoeuvres and the sequestering of funds. But the majority of miners in Britain are determined not to give in to Thatcher, and concrete international support, that is, the blacking of all coal, could be decisive as the winter draws on.
The Fourth International has appealed to all its sections to do their utmost to get this kind of support. In the meantime, each and everyone of them is involved in stepping-up the collections of money, food and children's gifts for Christmas. In the New Year they will be organising specific tours of miners' wives and campaigning for more support in the labour movement as a whole.
International Viewpoint 24 December 1984
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about wages or even about saving some 20,000 jobs. They are also fighting a premeditated and calculated attempt to convert to the use of nuclear energy, which is inseparably linked to arming for nuc lear war. 'Jobs, not bombs,' as the striking miners' wives demand!
The problems of nuclear waste disposal, radioactivity and so on, have in fact not been solved in Britain any more than they have anywhere else. One only needs think of the Sellafield case [where the British government renamed an area where there had been illnesses and birth defects caused by high radiation levels in an attempt to take the curse off it], to say nothing of the predictable develop ment toward an atomic police state [because of the alleged special needs for pro-
Miners' strike: early morning picketing, April 1984, Staffordshire (England) (DR)