The essential condition for any political advances of the left must be its organisation from top to bottom inside the labour movement around a class struggle programme. This could be one positive outcome of the miners' strike. The miners may not at this stage be able to achieve the total victory they have been hoping for, but the left in Britain must live up to the example they have set and continue the fight. Nationally and internationally, the labour movement must continue to fight to defend the NUM in its battle for jobs and for trade union freedoms.
### Fourth International discusses the miners' strike At its recent congress the Fourth International held a special meeting on the British miners' strike to discuss the current stage of the strike and the international solidarity campaign.
Supporters from all over Europe gathered to hear a report on the present stage of the strike and an assessment of the solidarity campaign. Below we reprint the text of that report and following that some extracts from the discussion which followed outlining the impact of the strike in different countries and the work that has been done.
I will start out by reminding people of some of the facts of the dispute. Approximately 147,000 miners have been involved in this strike in a union comprising 180,000 members. During the period of the strike there have been in the region of 20,000 arrests and 9,000 of those have already been found guilty. As a result, 600 people have been sacked because of the charges. Ten thousand remain to have their cases heard, including, unfortunately, three young miners on a murder charge. In the course of the strike six miners have died.
Just these statistics reveal how important this strike has been within the class struggle. From the point of view of the British class struggle this strike is the most important since the 1926 general strike, though this was under different circumstances. The most important feature of the strike has been the role of the Scargill leadership of the NUM because unlike in every strike of major national significance in recent years, this is a leadership of a national union that genuinely wants to win the strike and pursues every possible means to that end.
Although there have been some debates about the precise tactics in the strike, the one accusation that no one can make against Scargill is that he has tried to sell out the strike. Whatever the outcome, whether there is a defeat or a victory, it will not be because Scargill betrayed the strike. This is very important for us. It means there is a section of the leadership of the labour movement which plays a class struggle role. Our perspectives, therefore, are very straight forward: we want to generalise the kind of leadership that exists within the NUM to the whole of the labour movement and to every issue that confronts the working class in its immediate struggle. The existence of such a class struggle leadership on this issue inside the British labour movement means that an important element in building a class struggle left wing is clearly in place. Our orientation to the leadership that has led this strike is one of complete non-sectarianism, one of complete solidarity and support and is one of linking ourselves and our political current to the struggle that they have waged and to the alternative they have put forward. We seek with them to generalise that to the whole of the labour movement.
This will continue to have an enormous impact on the labour movement after the strike because all those who are supporting the strike will draw a very simple lesson out of the strike. The issue that is posed in the British labour movement is do you want a leadership of the likes of Kinnock [the Labour Party leader] and Willis [the present leader of the Trades Union Congress] or do you want to fight for a leadership like that of Arthur Scargill? The choice that divides the labour movement
That is the choice that divides and will continue to divide the entire British labour movement and the Labour Party itself. Because when a balance sheet is drawn of the strike, it will ask was Scargill correct in his answer to Thatcher and to the austerity drive of the ruling class? Was he correct to answer that we have to wage the most ferocious class struggle and the most ferocious industrial struggle to turn this round? Was he correct and was the strike leadership correct? Or, were Willis and Kinnock correct when they said we should negotiate, we should talk to the Tories, we should avoid class struggle; it is doomed to failure?.
The next most important aspect of the strike, in my view, is the role of women in relation to the strike. The fact that when this strike began nobody
International Viewpoint 25 February 1985
would have believed the mobilisation of the women that occurred in support of the strike. In fact one of the things which the government quite clearly gambled on and has traditionally gambled on is the fact that they thought the wives of those on strike would act as a pressure and could be mobilised in a way that we have seen in the past in the British labour movement, to pressurise their husbands to go back to work.
On the contrary, within the first few weeks of the strike the miners' wives organised themselves as miners' wives and as women's groups of the NUM even though they were not members of the NUM themselves.
Not only have the women been mobilised around the strike in their traditional role (though organising meals and food parcels has involved tremendous sacrifices) but also they have played the role of speaking at meetings, mobilising and organising their own demonstration and pickets.
This activity has had a tremendous impact on women in general and one finds in many areas a miners' solidarity committee and, as a sub-committee or a parallel to it, a women's solidarity committee which mobilises all the women's organisations in a particular area in support of the strike. It also has had a tremendous impact on the labor movement in general and on the NUM itself. There is no doubt that the general sexist attitude which existed among miners and which exists amongst most working class men, was prevalent, with sexist slogans being used on demonstrations, etc. In the first few months of the strike this was ruled out.
In fact this strike has had an impact on all social layers. We have seen the mobilisation of black people, the setting up of black groups in solidarity with the strike, different sections of the unions supporting the strike and also the mobilisation of gay people in support of the miners. The social layers mobilised behind the strike on the explicit understanding that the victory of the strike would take their own struggles forward. That understanding has begun to bring together chief elements of a class struggle left wing in the labour movement of which one began to see the first elements at the Labour Party conference last October. Black people campaign for separate caucuses
The NUM waged a successful struggle to get the Labour Party to support the NUM. What was important was that it was women, gays and blacks who mobilised around that idea and the NUM responded by, throughout the conference, sometimes being the only union to support the demands of those oppressed groups. On the question of women, it supported entirely their demands. Black people in the conference had been arguing the right for separate black caucuses in the Labour Party. The NUM International Viewpoint 25 February 1985 supported that demand and, I think I am right in saying, it was the only union to do so. The NUM also sent messages of support to the gays organising in the conference.
In the context of the strike the question of solidarity is vital. As supporters of the Fourth International in Britain, we have played a leading role in the solidarity movement. We have waged the fight for that solidarity to be implemented at a national level and generalised. In this context the role the European sections, in particular, have played in building international solidarity is very important.
The strike today is at a very difficult stage. The situation is on a knife's edge. There is no doubt that without action from major sections of the labour movement this strike cannot continue for much longer. In that context, we fight for action from the rest of the labour movement but we also have to have a
SNOWDOWN WOMENS SUPPORT GROUP
The discussion which followed this introduction illustrates the tremendous rank and file support from workers across Europe with the struggle which the British miners are waging. Many workers, especially in countries like West Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands with right-wing governments, understand the need to fight Thatcher's government and have expressed the desire that their own trade-union leaders should fight back in the way that the Scargill leadership has done. In Sweden more and more workers are afraid that the right-wing policies of the Social Democratic government will pave the way for a Thatchertype government.
This rank and file support has consisted of thousands of pounds being collected for the miners - in West Germany the DGB (the general trade-union confederation) and IG Metall (engineering union) launched a campaign for an hour's wage and in Denmark over $300,000 has been raised — and of solidarity committees being set up in all the major towns across Europe. This has been matched by the extreme reluctance of the trade-union bureaucracy to take similar action. In the discussion it was suggested that perhaps they too have noticed the example of Scargill and are afraid that workers will want them to do the same!
The speaker from the German section of the Fourth International, the GIM, realistic grasp of the situation. While we have been at this congress, in Britain the bourgeois press have been saying that the discussion on the NUM executive is whether to return without a settlement because they think it is impossible for them to make any settlements accepting pit closures.
This indicates that the situation of the strike is very serious indeed.
The point I want to stress is that after being on strike for 11 months, even when they go back, the hardship in the communities will be intense. You cannot recover from a year with no income in a matter of weeks. Therefore, where there are possibilities for continuing the solidarity work internationally, it should be continued whatever happens. Whatever can be done by the international workers" movement in the next months will be vital in the task of confronting the problems after the strike, and the task of rebuilding the NUM in Britain. Dutch women's band plays for Kent miners (DR) confirmed that this was the case in West Germany. Here the right-wing mineworkers' union stated that they disagreed with the aims of the strike and explained that when their industry had been ailing, they had been prepared to make sacrifices (that is, sacrifice people's jobs). They felt that Scargill, too, should help the bosses out. Arthur Scargill not welcomed by trade-union bureaucracy
Other union leaderships in West Germany had also been reluctant to give support but had had to accept that rank and file solidarity committees have been established. In fact, at a local level such committees have received official backing and IG Metall in particular have been forced to allow factory tours by British miners.
Such a welcome was not accorded to Arthur Scargill, however, when the NUM representative in West Germany tried to organise a national meeting with him as a speaker. The meeting had to be called off because German trade-union and labour leaders threatened a boycott.
Another place where Scargill was unwelcome was in Sweden where again rank and file trade unionists at the Volvo car plant invited him over to speak and
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the meeting was sabotaged by trade-union leaders in collusion with management.
The perspective of the GIM in West Germany throughout has been to try to centralise the campaign at a national level, something which has involved constant conflicts with the trade-union bureaucracy despite rank and file support.
Supporters of the Dutch section of the Fourth International, the SAP, explained that they had two main aims in the campaign of solidarity; firstly to centralise all existing committees round the country and establish a national solidarity paper and, secondly, to try to campaign for a coal boycott.
Dutch trade-union officials have stated that they are willing to boycott but in practice have done nothing about it. In fact, two weeks ago the national headquarters of the FNV (the general trade-union confederation) was occupied by more than 100 angry trade unionists demanding a boycott. In West Germany trade-union leaders met with the TUC (British trade-union confederation) and signed a public statement pledging a boycott but have since declared that it was only to give support to the NUM and could not be done in practice. Still some dock workers have been picketing the Rhein port of Duisburg in particular to try to stop the coal.
Swedish supporters outlined their plans for organising a specific women's tour which had been so successfully achieved in West Germany and the Dutch representative remarked upon the fact that it was the women's union in the Netherlands which had first taken up solidarity with the miners and forced the tradeunion bureaucracy into action. The speakers noted that the strike had also attracted young people and in particular the squatters' movement in Amsterdam.
There is no doubt that despite the hostility of many trade-union leaders, sections of the European workers' movement indentify very strongly with the British miners and understand what is in store for them if the miners lose. Everyone agreed that international solidarity was paramount.
There were suggestions from the Spanish and Danish representatives in partieular that tours and solidarity actions be organised to coincide with the anniversary of the strike on March 12. In Denmark a day of action is being proposed and this could become a day of international action. In Britain activities will be organised on March 6 to commemorate a year of the strike which will also coincide with demonstrations of miners' wives for International Women's Day.
Another proposal was that an international appeal be launched to fight the hardship which the miners and their families are enduring and will continue to endure long after the strike is over.
The miners' strike has united sections of the European workers' movement behind it and the Fourth International pledged itself to continue the international solidarity campaign. 6
YUGOSLAVIA