The miners strike: 'Remembering Britain’s forgotten civil war'

[Vanguard1917]

Two decades and a half after the start of the 1984-95 miners strike, the article below explains the significance of the stike -- 'a civil war, a class war, a battle for power in British society' -- and its role in influencing politics in Britain since.

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Friday 27 March 2009
Remembering Britain’s forgotten civil war
The history of the 1984-85 miners' strike has been either rewritten or erased altogether. The miners, and history, deserve better.

Mick Hume

The miners’ strike of 1984-85 remains the most remarkable struggle in British politics during my almost 30-year involvement as a journalist and propagandist. What is even more remarkable is that it has no place in political debate today. Many people have effectively forgotten, and younger generations know little or nothing about that 12-month conflict. The very idea of more than a hundred thousand workers taking part in a strike for jobs that turned into a violent civil war, dividing not only mining communities but the country (my own father spat the word ‘Scargill’ like an expletive), seems so far removed from our current reality that it might as well have taken place not only in another century but on another planet.

Yet as we pass the twenty-fifth anniversary of the start of the strike, it still matters, and not just for nostalgic reasons. The defeat of the miners by Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government was a watershed that did much to shape politics as we know it now.

For example, there is much debate about how the current recession might differ from those that went before it. One obvious difference is in the response of those hit by the recession in the UK. There have been mass redundancies, closures, wage cuts and soaring unemployment, with plenty more to come. Yet there have been none of the major strikes and mass demonstrations that marked previous crises, beyond one small confused protest about the employment of foreign contract labour and the plans of a few ‘anti-capitalist’ clowns to run around the City of London on 1 April. Instead people are responding to the recession much more as isolated individuals.

These things are all, in part, a legacy of the 1984-85 miners’ strike, which marked the final defeat of the labour movement and the left in Britain. It was the culmination of a process which meant that, while working-class people still worked and were exploited and made redundant, the working class ceased to exist as a collective force in political life. Understanding that past is important in making sense of the present.

Yet the twenty-fifth anniversary of the start of the strike, on 5 March, passed with relatively little serious comment. As a young Marxist I spent time in Yorkshire during the dispute, both writing for the next step, newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), and trying to organise solidarity action with the strike. As an old Marxist I went back to the north Yorkshire coalfield last month, to discover that not only had all but one of the pits (Kellingley, the Big K) been long since closed and filled with concrete, but that they had been erased from the landscape, turned into country parks and industrial estates and shopping malls and wasteland, as if they had never existed.

It seems as if something similar has been done to the miners’ strike in political terms, writing it out of history with some bizarre consequences. It is slightly surreal, for instance, to hear civil liberties lawyers warn about Britain becoming a ‘police state’ today, 25 years after a paramilitary police army occupied mining communities, arrested 10,000 miners, fought pitched battles, blocked motorways and did much else besides. It was beyond surreal to hear the same warnings about a police state recently given by Stella Rimington, who was the head of MI5 during the state’s war on the miners.

When it is discussed now, the miners’ strike tends to be rewritten from the point of view of today’s preoccupations and prejudices. Thus it is often reduced to an early chapter in the climate change/energy crisis debate, with arguments about whether closing the mining industry was the right thing to do for the environment and whether we now need cleaned-up ‘green coal’ to meet Britain’s power needs.

The energy crisis and the role of coal are important issues to debate today, as readers of spiked and the new book Energise! by James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky, will know. But it is also important to understand that, at the time, the miners’ strike had nothing to do with any of that. It was not a dispute about energy policy or the environment, nor did it have much directly to do with the economy at all. It was primarily a political struggle between the state and the organised working class, staged by the Thatcher government in order finally to break the power of the traditional labour movement by defeating the strongest of the trade unions. It deserves to be remembered as a civil war, a class war, a battle for power in British society.

The few books that have been published to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary are welcome aids to situating the strike in its proper context. Marching to the Fault Line, written by two Guardian journalists, plots the story of the miners’ dispute with the government from its antecedents in the 1926 General Strike to the bitter end in March 1985 and the pit closures that followed. It marshals familiar facts alongside new information and interviews with the protagonists to detail the twists and turns of the 12-month strike, providing a useful chronological account for those who were there and those who were not. Shafted is a collection of essays, edited by Granville Williams, focusing on what the media did during the miners’ strike, and the subsequent story that it didn’t tell about the devastating impact of the pit-closure programme on the mining communities. It is published by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, which worked hard to expose media bias against the miners during the dispute itself.

In Marching to the Fault Line, Francis Beckett and David Hencke reveal that, ‘The great strike for jobs started by accident’. Ian McGregor, chairman of the National Coal Board (NCB), had planned to tell the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) of his plans to close pits and cut 20,000 jobs on 6 March 1984. He expected that NUM president Arthur Scargill would then call a ballot for a national strike – a vote which, based on recent results, McGregor was confident Scargill would lose. However, on 1 March 1984, the South Yorkshire Coal Board director jumped the gun and announced that Cortonwood pit would close in five weeks time. Yorkshire miners walked out in protest, and soon began the process of picketing-out that spread the strike to most areas of the coal industry. By the time McGregor made his planned announcement, the strike that he expected to forestall had already begun.

But while the NCB and the Tory government might have been taken by surprise, they were well prepared for the fight – unlike the miners’ union. Right from the start, observe Beckett and Hencke, ‘The military precision at local and national level to deal with the picketing made the NUM look positively amateurish’.

Having stockpiled coal and chosen its moment to pick the fight, the Tory government deployed every arm of the state machine against the striking miners – from the police and the civil and criminal courts, to the secret services and the social security system, which cut welfare payments to strikers. Some claim that the army were also involved in the picket line battles.

The most remarkable role was played by the police force, which batoned away forever the civilised ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ image of the British Bobby. Under Thatcher’s instructions, the Association of Chief Police Officers activated the National Reporting Centre to coordinate action against the strikers – effectively creating a centralised national police force, something that was not supposed to exist in Britain. They bent, broke and invented the law to suit the needs of the government in the dispute. The level of violence that resulted was unheard of in British industrial disputes. I recall one veteran of the left arguing at the time that, to have any chance of success against the paramilitary police army, the miners would need to have been training in battle formation on local football fields with baseball bats and helmets before the dispute began. But such things were entirely alien to the staid bureaucratic traditions of British trade unionism. When the police launched their assault on the strike, many miners fought back with tremendous spirit, ingenuity and courage. But they were no match for the well-prepared state machine.

There were three phases of the police war on the miners’ strike. In the first, they massed to close the border to Nottinghamshire and prevent miners from other areas, notably Yorkshire, picketing the working pits. In the second phase, the authorities staged the Battle of Orgreave, a fortnight of clashes outside a coking works between an army of baton-wielding, shield-beating riot cops and the irregular forces of thousands of pickets dressed in shorts and t-shirts.

In the third phase, after the defeat at Orgreave, the demoralised strikers retreated to picket their own pits to try to stop other miners returning to work – where, notes Marching to the Fault Line, ‘the police followed them, very much like a victorious army’. It was during this late stage of the strike that some of the bloodiest violence ensued, as police sealed off pit villages and ran riot through local pubs and streets and homes in a way that few people witnessed and many would not have believed possible. Yet still the miners resisted, as in the Siege of Fitzwilliam, when it seemed an entire community rose up and drove the riot police out of their north Yorkshire pit village. I sat in court during the trial of some of the Fitzwilliam lads, as witnesses gave evidence that the police had handcuffed young miners to lampposts in front of their lines, to discourage stone throwing. They were sent to jail anyway.

Throughout this campaign, much of the national media acted as the propaganda wing of the police and the government. Shafted highlights the infamous episode at Orgreave, when the BBC News edited the film of the clashes to make it appear that the miners had charged first and the police had responded – the reverse of the truth. The BBC insists that it was an honest mistake. Shafted also republishes the John Harris photos, of a charging riot cop on horseback batoning a female photographer, that became for many on the left a defining image of the dispute. Only one national newspaper published it at the time. (Some of us, however, also felt that the emphasis many on the left placed on that picture captured a problem with their image of the strike, depicting the miners and their supporters as helpless victims more than combatants.)

As Shafted emphasises, the media played a crucial role in the dispute and the battle for hearts and minds across Britain. It is also important to avoid the temptation to impose our own media-obsessed political culture on the past. News coverage does not determine the outcome of a real political struggle in the real world. The striking miners fought on despite the overwhelming hostility of the media, because they had a cause and solidarity of their own. The flipside of this, as noted in Shafted by Paul Routledge (The Times’ industrial correspondent during the strike, whom Beckett and Hencke report secretly donated £5,000 to the NUM), is that, ‘The theory that good public relations can win struggles was put to the test in the ambulance workers’ dispute of 1989-90, and found wanting’, as the health unions ‘won the PR campaign but lost the war’ because the Tory government was stronger.

In the miners’ strike, the real balance of forces on the ground was tipped overwhelmingly in the government’s favour by the split in the NUM, as most Nottinghamshire miners continued to work and produce coal through the dispute. The divisions made the war on the miners almost a foregone conclusion. To turn the old chant around: the miners disunited were always likely to be defeated.

Scargill and the NUM executive refused to hold a national ballot. Because Thatcher and her allies used this as a weapon to accuse the NUM of flouting democracy, mention of a ballot became anathema to many striking miners. Yet as we in RCP argued with them at the time – much to the horror of Scargill’s loyal cheerleaders on the left – only a rank-and-file campaign to win a national ballot held the potential to unite the miners and win. Scargill, however, always seemed to trust his rulebook more than his rank-and-file members, and would not countenance taking that chance. So the divisions deepened and became more bitter – and remain so to this day. There were indeed hardcore scabs in Notts. There were also many ordinary miners unpersuaded by the NUM leaders’ arguments, who became scapegoats for a wider failure of leadership.

The failure of thousands of miners to back the strike also made it almost impossible to organise effective solidarity action amongst other groups of workers – although there were many remarkable examples of support. Shafted republishes two memorable front pages from the Sun, both dated 15 May 1984. The first, as prepared for publication, shows Scargill photographed at the moment his arm was raised in a ‘Nazi-style’ salute to cheering miners, with the headline ‘MINE FUHRER’. The second, as finally published, carries no picture or headline but this statement: ‘Members of all the Sun production chapels refused to handle the Arthur Scargill picture and major headline on our lead story. The Sun has decided, reluctantly, to print the paper without either.’

The class conflict and national trauma of the miners’ strike present such a contrast to the bland, ideology-free politics of today that it might seem incomprehensible. One way some try to make sense of it is by projecting backwards the current obsession with personality politics, to claim that in the end the way the dispute went resulted from a personal squabble between Thatcher and Scargill, both of whom are now widely discredited figures. This does a serious disservice to all concerned, most importantly to the miners.

Beckett and Hencke tend towards such a view, concluding that the prime minister and the NUM leader were both like blundering First World War generals who did great damage to their own sides. The typical Guardian-style implication of this comparison is that it would have been better if the unpleasantness could have been avoided and everything sorted out via civilised negotiation and compromise between more reasonable figures.

But the history of real conflicts cannot simply be ironed smooth 25 years later. The conflict was political, not personal. It was a war, but the trouble was that only one side’s leaders seemed fully to grasp that fact. As Tory cabinet minister Peter Walker spelt out in The Times in July 1984, so far as the government was concerned ‘we are facing a challenge to our whole way of life… This is not a mining dispute. It is a challenge to British democracy and hence to the British people.’ Shortly afterwards, Thatcher compared the miners to the Argentine forces in the Falklands War, branding them as ‘the enemy within’.

On the other side, meanwhile, the leaders of the trade union movement and the Labour Party, along with liberal voices such as the Guardian, equivocated, and insisted it must be treated as a normal industrial dispute, and condemned the violence of the pickets at least as loudly as that of the police. It was no contest. Beckett and Hencke recall with horror the occasion when Norman Willis, the useless lump of a TUC general secretary, condemned picket-line violence at a Welsh miners’ rally, only for a symbolic noose to appear above his head, lowered from the roof. But that was what it meant to miners engaged in a life-and-death struggle for their jobs and communities, and how badly they felt let down by their supposed allies.

Whatever any of us thinks of Thatcher now, at the time she delivered a victory for her government and British capitalism, whilst many around her wavered. Defeating the labour movement and shifting the balance of forces in society was arguably Thatcher’s one real achievement in office, paving the way for all that has followed in politics and economics. The fact that neither the Tories, New Labour or their capitalist allies proved capable of replacing the old industries such as mining with anything more than a paper-thin prosperity bought on the never-never does not alter the facts about who won 25 years ago.
As for Scargill, he had many faults – but intransigence and a refusal to give in were not among them. He was the only national labour leader to recognise the political and class character of the conflict, at least rhetorically. Yet away from the rousing rhetoric of his rally speeches, he remained too closely wedded to the NUM tradition of tying miners’ interests to that of the coal industry to make a coherent case, too much of a rulebook-waving bureaucrat to unite and mobilise the rank and file effectively, too trained in the tramline Stalinist attitudes of ‘forward ever, backward never’ to confront the real problems that mounted up during the dispute.

But contrary to what is often claimed, to quote one chapter heading in Shafted, ‘It wasn’t all about Arthur’. It wasn’t Scargill who started the dispute, but Yorkshire miners who walked out in response to the threat of pit closures. It was not Scargill’s intransigence that prolonged the dispute, but the resilience of striking miners – and of the support groups run by miners’ wives – and their refusal to give in to the Tory government.

No doubt there are many lessons to be learned from the defeat of the miners’ strike – not least about the spirit and the strength of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances, and the importance of political leadership. But the fact that they – we – lost does not mean it was wrong to fight when the alternative was to surrender. (And it was not lost on the ex-NUM militants that the strike-breaking in Nottinghamshire and the formation of the scab Union of Democratic Mineworkers failed to save the Notts coalfield from devastation either, once they had served their purpose.)

As one former Yorkshire miner told me last month, speaking for many that I have met since the strike: ‘I don’t think we could have gone back with any dignity at any time. So it was all out, it was out to the end, win or not. To do a year on strike was not easy, I don’t want to look back with rose-tinted glasses. But given the chance I’d have done exactly the same, I’ve no regrets at all. I just wished that we’d lamped a few more Bobbies.’

Mick Hume is spiked’s editor-at-large.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/reviewofbooks_article/6404/

[Hit The North]

It's a bit late in the day for your faction to suddenly start supporting the 1984 Miners Strike.

[Vanguard1917]

It's a bit late in the day for your faction to suddenly start supporting the 1984 Miners Strike.

Very cute, but what are you actually trying to say?

[Lynx]

So what are we to learn from these events?
That unions and their workers can be crushed by the state?

[redSHARP]

nice history lesson. its important to remember these moments for study and interpretation.

[Devrim]

Very cute, but what are you actually trying to say?

I think what he is saying is that when Mick Hume says that "The history of the 1984-85 miners' strike has been either rewritten or erased altogether"he is also referring to the RCP's role in it.

I think the politics of the people around 'Spiked' shine out very clearly in this essay:


These things are all, in part, a legacy of the 1984-85 miners’ strike, which marked the final defeat of the labour movement and the left in Britain. It was the culmination of a process which meant that, while working-class people still worked and were exploited and made redundant, the working class ceased to exist as a collective force in political life. Understanding that past is important in making sense of the present.Basically what they are saying here is that the working class no longer exists as a political force.

Actually, in the years immediatly after the miners' strike there were some massive very bitterly fought class conflicts in the UK, print industry, Post, Telecom, dockers, ferrymen to name just a few that I can remember offhand.

Yes, the miners strike was a massive defeat, but to say that it meant the end of the working class as a collective political force is a rewriting of history, and an abandonment of any type of socialist politics today.

Devrim

[Vanguard1917]

I think what he is saying is that when Mick Hume says that "The history of the 1984-85 miners' strike has been either rewritten or erased altogether"he is also referring to the RCP's role in it.

Actually, the article is very open about the RCP's position during the strike:

'Scargill and the NUM executive refused to hold a national ballot. Because Thatcher and her allies used this as a weapon to accuse the NUM of flouting democracy, mention of a ballot became anathema to many striking miners. Yet as we in RCP argued with them at the time – much to the horror of Scargill’s loyal cheerleaders on the left – only a rank-and-file campaign to win a national ballot held the potential to unite the miners and win. Scargill, however, always seemed to trust his rulebook more than his rank-and-file members, and would not countenance taking that chance. So the divisions deepened and became more bitter – and remain so to this day. There were indeed hardcore scabs in Notts. There were also many ordinary miners unpersuaded by the NUM leaders’ arguments, who became scapegoats for a wider failure of leadership.'


Yes, the miners strike was a massive defeat, but to say that it meant the end of the working class as a collective political force is a rewriting of history, and an abandonment of any type of socialist politics today.


The working class in Britain today has no real existence as a collective political force. If you have any evidence to the contrary, please provide it.

[Devrim]

Actually, the article is very open about the RCP's position during the strike:

'Scargill and the NUM executive refused to hold a national ballot. Because Thatcher and her allies used this as a weapon to accuse the NUM of flouting democracy, mention of a ballot became anathema to many striking miners. Yet as we in RCP argued with them at the time – much to the horror of Scargill’s loyal cheerleaders on the left – only a rank-and-file campaign to win a national ballot held the potential to unite the miners and win. Scargill, however, always seemed to trust his rulebook more than his rank-and-file members, and would not countenance taking that chance. So the divisions deepened and became more bitter – and remain so to this day. There were indeed hardcore scabs in Notts. There were also many ordinary miners unpersuaded by the NUM leaders’ arguments, who became scapegoats for a wider failure of leadership.'

The RCP's argument was nonsense. The idea that a campaign for a national ballot was anyway to build the strike was absurd, and was detrimental to the struggle.

What the miners' strike needed was not a national ballot, but the spreading of the strike without ballots to other industries. This was something that was a real possibility in 1984. All of those who argued that the solution could be found through organising strike ballots for action all appealing to the 'TUC to get off its knees and organise a general strike', behaved in a way, which acted against the interests of the working class.

However, there are lots of left groups who take absurd political positions including ones that are detrimental to workers' struggles. What makes the RCP's rewriting of history so offensive is the fact that when the miners (rightly) refused to listen to their stupid ideas, they dropped the miners like it was just another of their front groups, and ran back to their campaigns complaining about the working class.


The working class in Britain today has no real existence as a collective political force. If you have any evidence to the contrary, please provide it.

It isn't a case of supplying evidence. I believe that the working class exists as a political force because I am a socialist, and you don't because they you are not.

However, the examples are there already. Mick Hume talked about 'the final defeat'. I named five major strikes that happened over the next few years.

Devrim

[Vanguard1917]

What the miners' strike needed was not a national ballot, but the spreading of the strike without ballots to other industries.


The strike could not even be spread to the mining industry as a whole -- which was a precondition for winning the strike -- but could spread to other industries?



The idea that a campaign for a national ballot was anyway to build the strike was absurd, and was detrimental to the struggle


But you haven't shown why. The reason that the left and the NUM leadership opposed the ballot was because it felt that it would lose it. Such was the lack of faith that the union leadership had in its own members.

The reason that the RCP argued that we should take on the ballot was because it felt that there was a very real chance of winning it -- through increased rank-and-file activity and agitation. Winning the ballot would have enormously stregnthened the strike.


It isn't a case of supplying evidence. I believe that the working class exists as a political force because I am a socialist, and you don't because they you are not.


As in, you follow a dogma and thus don't need to provide any evidence?



However, the examples are there already. Mick Hume talked about 'the final defeat'. I named five major strikes that happened over the next few years.


We're not talking about what happened in the 'next few years' after the strike; we're talking about the state of politics now.

The defeat of the miners' strike was the key turning point in that it signified the collosal blow to the workers' movement in Britain. Yes, strikes continued to happen. But by the '90s, the working class had effectively ceased to exist as a political force in society, with the defeat of its organisations and the widespread discreditting of its politics.

[Bilan]

The strike could not be spread to the mining industry as a whole -- which was a precondition for winning the strike -- but could spread to other industries?


This operates under the principle that only the national ballot could have spread and strengthened the strike - that you had to prove to Thatcher (and the rest of the bourgeoisie) that this was 'democratic'.
This is, however, absurd. Why is it that your party felt the need to implement the ideas of the bourgeoisie? The National Ballot was totally pointless, bourgeois nonsense.

The democratic nature of the strike - or rather, to make clear, the proletarian and the democratic nature of the strike - is demonstrated from the spread of the strike. Not from a petty, stupid national ballot.

[Vanguard1917]

This operates under the principle that only the national ballot could have spread and strengthened the strike - that you had to prove to Thatcher (and the rest of the bourgeoisie) that this was 'democratic'.

A key rightwing argument against the strike was that it was 'undemocratic' and representative of a minority. That was a key propaganda weapon which the government used to discredit the strike. That was the reality of the situation.

What the RCP argued was that the national ballot could be taken on and won.

[Devrim]

The strike could not even be spread to the mining industry as a whole -- which was a precondition for winning the strike -- but could spread to other industries?

Yes, strikes can spread on a regional basis rather than a corporate one. The idea that this couldn't be done and that all of the miners had to be brought out first is the same sectoral, trade unionist nonsense that was promoted by the leadership of the NUM. The RCP just advocated a different, and in my opinion ridiculous, tactic to do it.


We're not talking about what happened in the 'next few years' after the strike; we're talking about the state of politics now.

Actually we are talking about the line 'These things are all, in part, a legacy of the 1984-85 miners’ strike, which marked the final defeat of the labour movement and the left in Britain'. I argued that it was not the final defeat and then gave examples of other strikes. If you want to discuss today, we can, but first let's deal with this point.

Devrim

[Devrim]

A key rightwing argument against the strike was that it was 'undemocratic' and representative of a minority. That was a key propaganda weapon which the government used to discredit the strike. That was the reality of the situation.

No, it wasn't. Maybe it was so amongst the 'middle class' where the RCP had its base, but this was never an issue within the mass of the working class.

Devrim

[Vanguard1917]

Yes, strikes can spread on a regional basis rather than a corporate one. The idea that this couldn't be done and that all of the miners had to be brought out first is the same sectoral, trade unionist nonsense that was promoted by the leadership of the NUM. The RCP just advocated a different, and in my opinion ridiculous, tactic to do it

I'm not arguing that strikes could not spread to other industries, but that miners across the nation as a whole needed to support the strike if it was to have a realistic chance of winning in the face of the Tory government's campaign to destroy the NUM.



Actually we are talking about the line 'These things are all, in part, a legacy of the 1984-85 miners’ strike, which marked the final defeat of the labour movement and the left in Britain'. I argued that it was not the final defeat and then gave examples of other strikes. If you want to discuss today, we can, but first let's deal with this point.



I argued that the working class in Britain today has no real existence as a collective political force (and that the miners' strike was a key turning point in bringing that about).

You disagreed, giving the reason that 'I am a socialist'.



No, it wasn't.


What do you mean 'it wasn't'? You're denying that that was a key propaganda tool of the state against the miners?

[Devrim]

I'm not arguing that strikes could not spread to other industries, but that miners across the nation as a whole needed to support the strike if it was to have a realistic chance of winning it in the face of the Tory government's campaign to destroy the NUM.

So if the strike had spread to dockers, power workers, and railways, do you think that people would have been so concerned about one geographical area of miners. It was never a strike that could have been won in the mining industry alone. I don't believe it could have been won without spreading to other sectors even if the pits in Notts and Derbyshire had come out.

The NUM effectively sabotaged early attempts at picketing out those areas buy arguing that it wasn't the way to do it and they should have a ballot. They couldn't break out of the trade union mentality, and take the steps that were needed. The RCP's arguing for a ballot offered nothing new at all, and certainly no way to win the strike.


I argued that the working class in Britain today has no real existence as a collective political force (and that the miners' strike was a key turning point in bringing that about).

That might have been what you wanted to argue but my point was about the 'final defeat'. Now, if you want to accept that one, I will move on to day. If you don't want to accept it, stop dodging the question.

You disagreed, giving the reason that 'I am a socialist'.


What do you mean 'it wasn't'? You're denying that that was a key propaganda tool of the state against the miners?

Yes, I don't think that it was key. I think it was useful to them, but not central. Nor do I think that the RCP's 'stratergy' was anyway to counter it.

Devrim

[Vanguard1917]

So if the strike had spread to dockers, power workers, and railways, do you think that people would have been so concerned about one geographical area of miners.


Perhaps not, but that does not mean that disunity within the mining industry benefitted the stike. In reality, it was a key disadvantage.



That might have been what you wanted to argue but my point was about the 'final defeat'. Now, if you want to accept that one, I will move on to day. If you don't want to accept it, stop dodging the question.


It was the 'final defeat' in the sense that, i would argue, it was more consequential than anything else since. It was a turning point.



Yes, I don't think that it was key. I think it was useful to them, but not central.


It was not a central propaganda tool of the state to discredit the strike? Why not?

[brigadista]

The legislation passed during this time effectively curtailed union activity for the future closing down collective bargaining, the closed shop and secondary picketing. The Thatcherites knew what they were doing as they rushed this legislation through leaving the left running behind to catch up.

The effect was to put employment contracts firmly into privacy of contract – ie: that your contract of employment became a private contract between you individually and your employer and not to be negotiated with your employer in a collective manner – now In the UK there are recognition agreements meaning that union recognition has to be approved by the employer and local recognition agreements are now negotiated by union officials with managers not the rank and file.

The legal abolitions I describe now have resulted in stopping workers who want to organise collectively or support other workers struggles [by secondary picketing or striking in support] this was also half formed during the Wapping strike which led to more anti union legislation and case law

These are huge disadvantages in the workplace and have completely emasculated union organisation. For example, what is the point of union membership without a closed shop?
I may get hit here with providing arguments that deal with reformism but for the average worker employment legislation is a big issue regarding how workers view organisation the union and trying their ability to enforce their employment rights.
It is very frustrating in the workplace dealing with union officials who usually want to compromise and rarely consult with people on the job.
Unions these days are no better than quasi social welfare organisations who sell insurance these days and trying to organise is difficult as a result of these legislative changes.

Please feel free to pull my post apart because i would welcome any ideas ..

[Devrim]

Perhaps not, but that does not mean that disunity within the mining industry benefitted the stike. In reality, it was a key disadvantage.

But I didn't at all argue that it was a benefit. I argued that the focus on the Notts/Derbyshire coalfield offered no perspective towards winning the strike, and that for all their pseudo radicalism the RCP call for a ballot had no essential difference to the strategy proposed by the NUM. Both of the accepted sectoral logic, and offered no way to extend the strike.


It was the 'final defeat' in the sense that, i would argue, it was more consequential than anything else since. It was a turning point.

So are you now arguing that it was a final defeat in that it wasn't a final defeat at all?

Yes, it is possible to see the miners' strike as a turning point and it leading to the working class going onto the defensive. That is very different from what Hume is arguing though.


It was not a central propaganda tool of the state to discredit the strike? Why not?

I don't think that it had much ressonance within the working class. Yes, it was an important factor in demonising the strikers and gaining support within the 'middle class', but I don't believe it was a key issue with workers. Remember that the events in the Notts/Derbyshire coalfield had been settled before the propoganda about ballots started.

Devrim

[Vanguard1917]

But I didn't at all argue that it was a benefit. I argued that the focus on the Notts/Derbyshire coalfield offered no perspective towards winning the strike, and that for all their pseudo radicalism the RCP call for a ballot had no essential difference to the strategy proposed by the NUM. Both of the accepted sectoral logic, and offered no way to extend the strike.

Winning the so-called 'scab counties' to the strike would have have greatly stregnthened the strike.

That's not 'sectoral logic'; it's based on the reality that disunity within the mining industry was a key obstacle to winning.



So are you now arguing that it was a final defeat in that it wasn't a final defeat at all?



As i said, it was a final defeat in that it was the defeat that was of greatest consequence.

[Devrim]

Winning the so-called 'scab counties' to the strike would have have greatly stregnthened the strike.

That's not 'sectoral logic'; it's based on the reality that disunity within the mining industry was a key obstacle to winning.

Yes, it would have strengthened the strike. In my opinion they could have been won by flying picketing in the early days. This, however, was stopped by the NUM.

However, the key obstacle to winning was the fact that the struggle couldn't break out of sectoralism, and trade unionism.


As i said, it was a final defeat in that it was the defeat that was of greatest consequence.

I thought 'final' meant last. There isn't much point discussing things with you if you give words new meanings.

Devrim

[Vanguard1917]

Yes, it would have strengthened the strike.


Good.

What the RCP believed was that taking on the challenge of the national ballot would have presented the left with an opportunity to unite mine workers through national rank and file campaigning.



I thought 'final' meant last. There isn't much point discussing things with you if you give words new meanings.


Final does mean last. And the defeat of the miners in 1985 was the last great, highly consequential defeat of the workers' movement in Britain.

[brigadista]

from
http://www.minersadvice.co.uk/ourview_of_course_it_was_political.htm


Of course it was political

The miners’ Great Strike marked a crossroads. Its defeat had profound political consequences. Dave Douglass, branch secretary of Hatfield Main National Union of Mineworkers, spoke to the March 14 Communist Forum
The difference between where we are now and where we were then is huge. Now there are some 11 branches of the National Union of Mineworkers; then there were around 180. Now the NUM has 3,000 members; in 1984 at least 170,000 went on strike. For every miner’s job, some 10 others were dependent on it - for example, coal accounted for 75% of all rail freight.
Taking into consideration wives and families, you are talking about a very considerable number of people - not spread across the country, but concentrated in key industrial areas built around real, fixed communities where men had worked down the pit for generations. Long traditions of local, national and international solidarity among miners had been built up.
If the miners had won in 1984, it would have been the second time in a 10-year period when an industrial union successfully turned out a government. The consequences in terms of bourgeois democracy would have been terrifying: no more waiting for another five years before you put your cross on a meaningless bit of paper; you could exercise industrial power and say, ‘We’re not having that’; you could function as a whole, intervening mass to put a stamp on society.
It was that ability of the miners to intervene at various times in history as a class force with a consciously political dimension which marked us out. We were certainly just as political as the left parties. You may argue that, had there been a strong and united workers’ party behind the miners at the time of the strike, then things might have turned out differently. My view on the reification of organisation is that class consciousness exists regardless of organisation. Organisation is a reflection of class consciousness, not the other way round. We had a Communist Party in 1926 which put forward disastrous slogans like ‘All power to the TUC general council’ - now there’s a slogan for you! What did the general council do? Sold us down the bloody river, and the communists gave them all the power to do it.
Margaret Thatcher took on the miners not for economic reasons such as cost-cutting or a glut of coal on the market, but because of what the miners stood for and were able to bring about politically. Revenge against the miners for their victory in 1974 may have been a part of it, but the fact is that the miners remained more than merely a bunch of workers struggling against the threat of unemployment. In terms of their consciousness they were the most politicised workforce in Britain, a force capable of making a difference.
The strike was always about much more than saving jobs. There is a song with the words, “Why do want to save these jobs?” Back-breaking, disgusting work on your hands and knees that saps your strength and destroys your health. Today something like 15,000 former miners are dying each year from chronic bronchitis - not to mention pneumoconiosis and the like. Why fight to preserve that kind of job? There was certainly nothing ennobling about it.
Despite all that, this was a job in which, unlike in a factory on the production line, the working miner had a terrific amount of control, where nobody could tell you what to do. To a great extent the job was self-regulating - collective work, where people decide things together, literally watch each other’s backs and look after each other - real comradeship. In this respect, you can actually be less alienated from your work than in many other jobs.
The miners themselves decided who worked where, so that every three months all the numbers went into the hat and jobs were allocated in that way. Management had no chance to put the agitators in the worst places and give the soft jobs to the bosses’ men. Likewise, if the boss wanted overtime done on a Saturday, he had to ask permission of the union, and if the list was not in by Thursday dinner time, he did not get it.
But the bottom line was our ability to develop a collective vision for the future and to challenge things on that basis. In their political ignorance and prejudice, the pundits depicted the miners as being greedy for more money - they still do, totally failing to understand that the strike was not like that. It was not about money, nor was it just about just pit closures. It was about our ability as a social force to change things. Of course, it was political.
As a nationalised industry and a major part of the state-controlled sector, everything that happened in the coal industry was political, and usually with a big ‘P’. Issues around wage restraint, hours of labour, trade union laws were all aspects of the need to control a massive work force - in Ted Heath’s day some 360,000 miners. Right from the start, the paternalistic vision of a nationalised, welfare-orientated industry meant the miners were always going to constitute a political challenge to whichever party was in government. Large chunks of the Labour Party’s labour and trade union policy were determined by what went on in nationalised industries such as the pits. In those days, the National Coal Board was the biggest employer in Europe.
So it is crystal clear that, if Thatcher wanted to see off the working class in terms of the organised trade union movement, the miners at some point would have to be confronted. Dodging around and shadow-boxing would not do. The confrontation was long and deep in preparation - not just the 1979 Ridley committee, with its contingency plans for fighting the miners, but more long-term plans which actually envisaged what was at that time the unimaginable possibility of Britain without any coal mines at all. For Thatcher the latter was a step too far, but the idea of running down the coal industry to a point where it no longer existed came back under Major.
Did the confrontation have to happen when it did? Even if the closures had been enforced gradually, there would inevitably have been a fight at some stage. Areas had been very reluctant to take industrial action. Some actions, such as the overtime ban, were the result of national conference decisions, but previous ballots had been lost and areas had been very short-sighted. Thatcher knew that taking on the Yorkshire coalfield would definitely prompt a fight and she may have been gambling on the union losing a national ballot. The late Frank Cave was asked in my presence during a visit by US students why a strike ballot was not held in that period and he replied, “Because we would have lost it”. I don’t happen to agree with Frank about that, but in one sense the ballot was irrelevant anyway, because, once Thatch-er took on the Yorkshire coalfield, then Yorkshire was going to strike.
One of the prevailing myths is that Arthur Scargill called the strike. He did not. The strike started in Yorkshire. Arthur, who by that time was national president, was not present at the meeting that took the decision and in any case had no way whatsoever of calling a strike in Yorkshire. What Arthur did have the power to do was to get the national executive to declare the Yorkshire strike official. On that basis we were able to call on other areas to make a stand in support of Yorkshire. There were some spectacular decisions made around that time: ballots in Wales and Lancashire went against a strike but, once it had begun to build up momentum, the miners in those areas supported it, and a total of some 170,000 joined in.
Many of us felt at that particular time that this was a stop-gap measure before a national ballot. Once people were on strike and involved in the fight, they were fully aware of the situation. Against the background of mass meetings involving whole communities, lengthy debate and argument, the women mobilising behind the action, growing solidarity and awareness of our own strength - a ‘hot’ ballot would have produced the conclusion that the miners as a collective force had to strike. Things had always been decided in such a way - though, to be fair, there were successful national ballots in 1972 and 1974.
The crucial difference that pushed people away from the idea of a national ballot was that national pay bargaining had been wrecked on the rocks of the incentive scheme. The Callaghan government had dreamed up a means of derailing the miners from ever threatening any government. National pay bargaining had hitherto kept the divergent elements of the coalfields together and united them into one force - wherever a miner worked, his pay was negotiated nationally: eliminating local disparities like how thick the seams were, how good the machinery and so forth. The incentive scheme brought all of this back again, dividing area from area, causing people to think parochially and selfishly. Crucially, the introduction of the incentive scheme destroyed the national solidarity which lay behind the ballots of 72 and 74.
There was, in the early months of the strike, a national conference on whether we would have a ballot. The executive changed the rule to reduce the necessary majority from 55% to 51% in anticipation. We then went back to the mass meetings of the men, who had already been on strike for weeks and asked them, “Do you want to have a ballot?” They nearly took me outside and hung me off the bloody rafters. They shouted, “Don’t you come back here trying to sell us out. What are you asking for a ballot for? We’re already on strike.” It looked to them as if members of the executive were trying to find a way out; that we were going to say, ‘We wanted to fight, but these bastards wouldn’t bloody vote for it.’ So the men thought we were trying to sell them out with a ballot and that it was dishonourable for people to ask for one when they could clearly see what the issue was about.
However, by the early summer of 1984, even the most rightwing press was saying we would have won a ballot hands down, had there been one. In retrospect we might have done so by something like a margin two to one. But the ballot is an irrelevancy really. It would not have changed the fortunes of the strike one way or the other. It would have taken away the propaganda from the other side, but it would not have taken away the scabs. I have made the point many times - if you cannot see what side you’re on, from the wrong side of 20,000 riot shields, going to work in a bus covered with wire mesh, all the ballots in the world are not going to convince you.
On the question of the extent of rank and file involvement in the strike, I dealt with this in my riposte against the Socialist Workers Party’s nonsense (Weekly Worker March 11). The SWP obviously did not have a clue about what was actually going on. One consequence of the strike was that there were at least two sets of structures: the formal structure of the union and the informal links that men built on the hoof as the action progressed. For example, the branch committee was elected according to established rules. But, once the action started, we elected strike committees - different men with different responsibilities and authority. The same thing happened at area level with the strike panels, plus alliances of panels, which were not part of any formal structure.
Then there things we didn’t know about like the hit squads - rank and file lads getting together, planning, organising and carrying out specific actions. All of these things represented mass involvement by the workers themselves. When it came to pickets, these were not controlled top-down by Arthur. He could not deploy any pickets, because he did not have any. Until, that is, the call to Orgreave, but that is another story.
The response to the strike in different areas was variable, based on different political, historical and cultural perspectives. People have come up with all kinds of mysterious answers as to why the Notts miners voted against strike action. The Workers Revolutionary Party, for example, told us that it was Arthur’s fault for having condemned Solidarnosc; apparently there were a lot of Polish miners in Notts who took the opportunity to get back at him for this. Absolute rubbish. There were just as many Polish miners in Doncaster who were on strike and getting battered to hell as there were Polish miners in Nottingham who were scabbing.
At the end of the day it comes down to class-consciousness. It is true that in the early days, though they would not join the strike, Notts miners did not cross picket lines and contented themselves with going home. It was not until the ‘back to work’ strike-breaking campaign started, as a political force set up by the other side, that these men crossed the class line and joined the other side themselves. At that point, instead of trying to persuade them, we had to obstruct them. Instead of worker talking to worker, we faced each other as class enemies. If you have crossed the picket line and joined the other side, it does not matter that you are from the working class: you have ideologically become an enemy of the working class. That is when picket line tactics changed from a gentle push and shove to throwing bricks.
Do not tell me that the miners who crossed the picket lines or the men who drove the scab trucks - protected by armoured layers of cops with truncheons, dogs and horses - did not know what was going on and did not know that they were taking the bread out of the mouths of strikers’ kids, because they bloody well did. It is particularly unfortunate and nasty when we have to confront enemies in our own class.
I am sorry to say that the Nottingham miners by and large were not the same as other miners. In 1926 they were the people who led the return to work; they were the people who formed the scab Spencer union, which then went around spreading itself through other industries, calling itself a non-political union because it despised communists and socialists and anarcho-syndicalists. In the new era of nationalised coal production, we let the Nottingham men back into the NUM, even giving Spencer a seat on the national executive - to our shame. But they always remained a sleeping force, with their own caucus meetings. As late as 1983, Notts miners were still being paid the increment for scabbing in the 1926 strike.
Finally, was the strike always foredoomed? I do not think it was for one minute. They picked when we went on strike when they threw down the gauntlet to Cortonwood by announcing its closure - it was strategically the best time for them. They had also changed the rules, giving the cops their head to do what they wanted and manipulating all kinds of regulations - DHSS, welfare, etc - which would really make poverty bite among the workers. For 12 months men who had already finished in the industry and had nothing to do with the strike never received a penny in unemployment benefit, etc. This was done in order to punish the coal communities as a whole and increase poverty.
Despite all this there were three occasions when it seemed to Thatcher and National Coal Board chairman Ian McGregor that they were in danger of losing. Twice when Nacods, the safety/supervisors union, voted by over 80% to take industrial action. Nacods were crucial in the defeat of the miners, but do not blame the deputies and the other men, because they voted, lobbied and demonstrated to strike. Their leaders for whatever reason stopped the strike taking place.
Then the dockers’ action was the catalyst of a solidarity action that had the country by the bollocks. If the dockers at Immingham had not allowed non-union dock labour to load coal onto scab lorries (because the railwaymen were not allowing it through), McGregor says Thatcher was ready to give in within two days. So dockers’ solidarity action would have sealed it and the action would have been a de facto general strike, with everything closing down. Remember that Arthur’s call to other sections of the class was not that they should go on strike, but to take solidarity action: don’t cross picket lines; don’t transport or burn scab fuel. With help like that, we could have done the rest.
It was Immingham, with the possibility of a rail and dock strike and the isolation of the steelworks, which was the vital flashpoint, not the Orgreave mass picket, which was a total distraction. Once Arthur, full of the vision of another Saltley Gates, imagined Sheffield steelworkers and foundry workers downing tools and marching in support of the miners, Orgreave became in his mind the key tactic and the key battleground. Right idea, wrong place. The docks were the place to do it, rather than fighting in a field every day, where we could only take a beating.
We had victory in the palm of our hands on a number of occasions. However, when these chances failed to materialise, we did not have a lot of places to go. It was clear that the TUC was not going to deliver what we had asked - don’t use scab fuel. We did not ask them to do anything else.
But the fight had to be had. At the end of the day what was remarkable was that afterwards we were still there. In 1989 there were still 100,000 miners in Britain, supplying 90% of the fuel, so if the plan had been to wipe out the coal industry, it did not work. We still organised 100% in the NUM areas, although the scab outfit controlled most of Nottingham. So they had not broken the union. In that initial period, the strike from their point of view had failed. In 1987 there was a national ballot which produced an 80% vote for strike action; we had a mass of unofficial area strikes sweeping the coalfields.
In 1993 Whitehall decided on the ‘final solution’ - changing the way in which the power industry worked, ending its obligation to obtain the cheapest fuel (coal). This robbed coal of its market. By that time people had little or no belly for industrial action. We did run a very successful public campaign, but at the end of the day the government showed it was impervious to public opinion.
We are now down to about 3,000 miners in around 14 pits. My own pit, which accesses one half of all Britain’s coal reserves, is currently filling up with gas and water, waiting for someone to raise £30 million to buy it. I cannot see anybody doing that. I have written to Mr Blair asking him if the government would at least fund the development, but I expect no reply. UK Coal has no plans for any of its pits beyond another three years and already intends to close Selby within the next two years. A string of other pits are under threat. By 2006 there will no coal mined in Britain. Around 30% of the energy market will still be provided by coal, but it will be imported, not dug by us.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Devrim:


The RCP's argument was nonsense. The idea that a campaign for a national ballot was anyway to build the strike was absurd, and was detrimental to the struggle.

On the whole I agree with you. I was invloved in this strike, and much of what you say is 100% accurate. It is also worth noting that the decision to strike was taken at a national delegate conference, and thus was fully democratic according to union rules.

Also, had Scargill gone about organising his pickets like he did in Yorkshire in 1972, where he by-passed the union bureaucrats in other unions, and spoke directly to the rank and file (this is what in the end closed Saltley), they'd have won this strike.

http://www.socialist-labour-party.org.uk/Arthur%20Scargill%20Recent%20Speeches%20and%20Meet ings.htm

But he forgot all about this 12 years later!

Had the NUM adopted the tactics from 1972, they'd have won this strike without the Nottinghamshire pits.

Moreover, had the NUM won a national ballot, there is no reason to suppose Nottingham would have respected it, any more than they respected the delegate vote to strike.

The RCP 'tactic' was to ape the Tory call for a ballot when none was necessary.

What this would have done is halt the momentum of the strike, allowing miners to be bombarded with propaganda (from TV, press and politicians, including the Labour 'leadership') that they could not win.

It is no wonder then that when the RCP showed their scabby faces in strike areas they were kicked out.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Here is one account of the closure of Saltley in 1972:


On the 10th of February 1972 approx 3,000 striking miners who were seeking a better wage deal were joined at the gates of the Saltley coke depot by an estimated 150,000 Birmingham car workers and other trade unionists who had marched under trade union banners down from Washwood Heath and from the city centre.

Despite the presence of over 800 police they forced the closure of the gates of the Saltley coke depot to prevent lorries from all over the country from collecting coke from what was then the only large supply of fuel coke left in the country.

Anyone who witnessed those scenes,as I did, will never forget them

http://forums.sundaymercury.net/viewtopic.php?p=5522

This witness does not tell us that Scargill had gone directly to these workers and spoke to them at mass meetings in the weeks and days running up to this.

The Police chief at the scene rang the Home Secretary and told him he could not keep the gates open unless the government deployed troops.

Fearing a general strike, the Tory government backed-down. The strike was won.

The 1984 strike was Thatcher's revenge.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Here's Tony Cliff on the 1972 strike:


Tony Cliff
Patterns of mass strike
(Part 3)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Background to the 1972 miners’ strike
The level of activity and solidarity of both miners and non-miners during this strike cannot be properly understood without a look at the background of the preceding years.

The run-up to the 1972 strike was exactly the opposite of the 1926 strike – a long period of rising workers’ militancy on a large scale. This was based on the two decades after the war when shop stewards’ organisation went from strength to strength. For a whole generation workers did not experience serious defeat comparable with the bitter and exhausting defeats of the twenties. Workers’ living standards improved continuously. The struggle for improved pay and conditions was led by shop stewards’ committees and similar rank- and-file organisations. The workers developed a new tradition of ‘do-it-yourself’ reformism, that expressed their growing self-reliance and self-assertiveness. Throughout the period unofficial strikes dominated the field of industrial relations. As many as 95% of all strikes were unofficial. [82] The strikes were by and large of short duration and ended in workers’ victories.

The 1950s were years of increasing wealth and full employment. British capitalism, however, was trapped in a deepening, if not so obvious, contradiction: its prosperity went hand in hand with the long-term decline of the British economy vis-à-vis the world economy. Intermittent crises demonstrated this. Movements towards economic expansion involved deterioration in the balance of payments which in turn led to a loss of confidence in sterling, and to foreign exchange crises. ‘Stop-go’ was the rule.

This situation led one British government after another to try and impose an incomes policy. In 1962, for the first time, the Macmillan government introduced a pay pause which was largely voluntary. In 1965 the Labour government operated a stronger and more detailed form of control over pay, through the National Board of Prices and Incomes to which a total of 170 prices arid incomes references were made. To start with the incomes policy was voluntary, but in 1966 statutory elements were imposed. In the sterling crisis of July 1966 a complete statutory freeze on pay was imposed. This was followed by a series of measures giving ministers the power to delay the implementation of individual pay agreements for varying periods while these were investigated by the NBPI. In the event of an adverse report by the Board further delaying powers could be employed.

A continuous rise in prices moved workers to greater and greater resistance to the government’s incomes policy. By 1969 the government was forced to abandon most of the statutory apparatus, and rely instead on voluntary agreements alone.

When elected in 1970, Ted Heath entirely repealed the incomes policy and dissolved the NBPI. He intended to rely on an increased level of unemployment, greater resistance to public sector pay claims and the proposed Industrial Relations Act. When it became clear the strategy was not working, the Tory government in 1972 returned to an incomes policy with even stronger statutory control than the Labour government one.

The workers reacted. To the extent that incomes policy was effective, it dammed up claims from several groups, particularly in the public sector, that had fallen behind those in the private sector. The period was also one of sharply rising prices, first as a consequence of the devaluation of sterling in November 1967, and then from the increases in world commodity prices which were to dominate the early 1970s.

In 1969 a prolonged and ultimately successful major strike of local authority workers took place. Other workers went on strike the same year: lorry drivers, Ford workers, dockers, miners, teachers. This really was a wages explosion, and it was called so. In 1970 other big strikes and industrial actions took place: by local government manual workers, Vauxhall workers, miners, electricity workers and teachers. In 1971 Ford workers, electricity workers and post office workers came out on strike; in 1972 miners, dockers and building Workers.

From 1966 onwards governments, both Labour and Tory, moved towards a policy of imposing a new legal framework of industrial relations. Wilson was forced to retreat in 1969, when In Place of Strife was killed by union resistance. When returned to power the Conservatives introduced an Industrial Relations Act that became law in 1971. Agitation for strikes against the Industrial Relations Act led to a one-day unofficial strike in December 1970 involving 600,000 workers, primarily from the motor and printing industries.

In February 1971 a march against the Bill attracted 130,000 workers; in March some 2 million workers came out on strike against it. As political strikes are not officially counted as strikes, one has to rely on estimates for their size. One such estimate is that the strikes, official and unofficial, against the Industrial Relations Act in 1970-71 involved twice as many workers as the entire year’s industrial disputes. [83]

A new method of industrial action took hold on a large scale – factory occupations. It started in August 1971 with 8,500 workers of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders undertaking a work-in. It was followed by over 200 occupations of factories, workshops, shipyards, and offices during the following 18 months.

Colin Crouch summed up very well how government intervention – incomes policy, industrial relations legislation, the push towards productivity deals, etc – forced workers to generalise their own struggles: ‘In part it has been the very reforms designed to reinstitutionalise local action – incomes policy, reforms to bargaining structures and payment systems, productivity bargaining, and industrial relations reform – which have broken the local isolation of militant action and given it wider repercussions both economically and politically. The growth of shop-floor militancy initially produced a government response which forced industrial relations to become intensely politicised.’ [84]

This was the background to a period in which the NUM pursued a generally conciliatory policy towards the Labour governments of 1945-51 and 1964-70 and passive compliance towards the Tory governments of 1951-64. Throughout the thirteen years of Tory rule pits were systematically closed. The NUM leaders, as well as the members, believed that an end would be put to these closures when Labour took office. But in 1964-70 the Labour government massively reduced the labour force in the pits. During thirteen years of Tory government, 1951-64, the number of miners declined by 175,600; while during the six years of the Labour government it declined by 211,900 to a mere 305,100 workers.

The NUM leaders no more opposed Labour’s wages control than they did pit closures. Again and again miners were trapped by the Labour government’s incomes policy. In 1948 miners’ wages were 29 per cent above the average pay of workers in manufacturing industries. By 1960 it was 7.4 per cent, and by 1970 miners were earning 3.1 per cent less than the average worker in manufacturing. Added to this, in 1966 came the impact of the National Power Loading Agreement. The NPLA ended piece work and secured the equalisation of wages throughout the coal industry, so that for example, the miners in South Wales would be paid the same rate for the job as the miners in Nottinghamshire or Yorkshire. The NPLA was gradually implemented between 1966 and 1971: ‘The effect of NPLA was to equalise pay, but in doing so, low pay was “nationalised” and the unforeseen effect of NPLA was to “nationalise” dissatisfaction over wages throughout the NUM’. [85]

The angriest miners were in Yorkshire. Up to the 1960s pit closures were confined mainly to peripheral coal fields which learnt to live for a decade with this phenomenon. Yorkshire – the largest Area coal field – felt the full impact in the mid-1960s, and it had a tremendous psychological effect on the miners. In 1967 alone 9 pits were closed in Yorkshire. Furthermore in 1967-68 the miners there were in the unique position of having their wages held back twice:

once by incomes policy, then by the implementation of the NPLA. There were large unofficial strikes in Yorkshire in 1955 and 1961.

The 1955 strike was concerned with inadequate price lists and the tardiness of their revision. It began at Markham Main (Armthorpe) and spread quickly so that after a few days there were 44,660 miners on strike.

The 1961 strike, though starting in North Yorkshire, was centred in the Doncaster area where the Brodsworth branch called on the Doncaster Panel to call a strike over piece rates, which the Panel duly did. The strike largely failed to spread despite the efforts of flying pickets, although Doncaster itself stayed out for some three months. [86]

Of even greater impact was the explosion of miners’ frustration in 1969. The issue round which the strike broke out was the working hours of surface workers. On the morning of Monday 13 October, every pit but one in Yorkshire was idle. The remaining pit came out by the Tuesday: ‘The strike spread from Yorkshire, its main base, to Scotland, South Wales, Derbyshire, Kent, Nottingham and the Midlands until it involved 130,000 miners from 140 pits. It lasted from 13th to 27th October, 1969. It spread despite poor communications between the Areas.’ [87]

Another unofficial strike, this time round wages, broke out in 1970. Again the Doncaster Panel was at the centre of it. The strike spread from Yorkshire to South Wales and Scotland – altogether 103,000 miners went on strike. [88] Andrew Taylor writes: ‘The importance of these strikes was that they were organised by the branch leadership via the Panel system.’ [89]

The rising rank-and-file pressure shaped a new leadership in the Yorkshire NUM. Between 1947 and 1973 the area was controlled by the right. As late as April 1968 a Yorkshire area conference of the NUM voted against industrial action over pit closures by a show of hands. The decision of the conference was put to a branch vote which approved it by 1,671 votes to 210. [90] Still, for many years there were groups of militant miners burrowing away. It is interesting to note that in the Yorkshire Area Vice-Presidential elections in 1961, Jock Kane, the Communist, received 23,797 votes, not far behind the right-wing winner, Jack Leigh, who got 29,797 votes. [91]

In 1967 the Barnsley Miners Forum was founded. It met monthly and acted as a ginger group of branch lay officials. It played an important role in standing up to the right-wing leadership of the Yorkshire NUM, and initiated the 1969 and 1970 unofficial mass strikes.

In 1972, however, the miners won not only by their own efforts but by the help they received from other workers. These groups, above all, were the power workers and the Birmingham engineers. What was the experience of power workers prior to 1972 that made them so willing to aid the miners’ strike industrially?

In September 1967 the Prices and Incomes Board, in reply to a request for a 5 per cent wage rise put forward by the unions in the electricity supply industry, offered 3.7 per cent, with heavy new productivity strings attached. The workers responded by threatening a strike. In a few stations it even came to actual strike action, and they won a wage rise of 10 per cent. [92]

Again, power workers participated in the wages explosion of 1969, and, through unofficial activity, again got a 10 per cent wage rise. [93] In 1970 they came back for another bite at the cherry. At various unofficial meetings up and down the country in the summer of 1970, the demand came from the rank and file for a payrise of £10 a week, without string. In November the unions put forward a claim for £5.80. The employers responded with an offer of £1.75, raised later to £2. The unions therefore began a work-to-rule and ban on overtime. Frank Chapple explained that one reason for refusing arbitration was that ‘it would undoubtedly have led to strikes and loss of all control of our members in industry.’

The rest can be read here:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1985/patterns/part3.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1985/patterns/index.htm

[Devrim]

What the RCP believed was that taking on the challenge of the national ballot would have presented the left with an opportunity to unite mine workers through national rank and file campaigning.

I don't think this is what the RCP believed at all. I think that they thought that advancing this ridiculous strategy would distance their members and supporters from other leftists and workers and help them become more isolated politically and as a result more cohesive.

The actual politics that they advanced weren't the important thing. The fact that they were different was.


Final does mean last. And the defeat of the miners in 1985 was the last great, highly consequential defeat of the workers' movement in Britain.

...And the working class was so defeated that it never managed so assert itself politically again, or so the fable goes. Never mind that the next few years saw many important strikes including at least one bigger than the miners' strike in terms of number of strikers, which wasn't defeated. That doesn't fit in with the fable of the end of the working class being promoted by the remnants of the RCP here.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Also, had Scargill gone about organising his pickets like he did in Yorkshire in 1972, where he by-passed the union bureaucrats in other unions, and spoke directly to the rank and file (this is what in the end closed Saltley), they'd have won this strike.

I think that the reason that Scargill couldn't by-pass the bureaucracy in 1984 may well be connected to the fact that he was a part of it himself.

Devrim

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

You are largely right, but you need to also consider the shabby role the CP members of the NUM executive played as well.

And Scargill was a local Yorkshire NUM bureaucrat in 1972; so it cannot have been be the full story.


And the working class was so defeated that it never managed so assert itself politically again, or so the fable goes. Never mind that the next few years saw many important strikes including at least one bigger than the miners' strike in terms of number of strikers, which wasn't defeated. That doesn't fit in with the fable of the end of the working class being promoted by the remnants of the RCP here.

Indeed, the National Union of Teachers beat Thatcher in 1986!

[Vanguard1917]

I don't think this is what the RCP believed at all. I think that they thought that advancing this ridiculous strategy would distance their members and supporters from other leftists and workers and help them become more isolated politically and as a result more cohesive.

The actual politics that they advanced weren't the important thing. The fact that they were different was.

Thanks for the conspiracy theory. Clearly, sensible discussion is not your strong point when it comes to these issues.



Moreover, had the NUM won a national ballot, there is no reason to suppose Nottingham would have respected it, any more than they respected the delegate vote to strike.



Yes, because the Nottinghamshire miners were born scabs who could not possibly be won over to the strike.



What this would have done is halt the momentum of the strike, allowing miners to be bombarded with propaganda (from TV, press and politicians, including the Labour 'leadership') that they could not win.



Actually, winning the national ballot was a very realistic possibility -- if it was accompanied by increased leftwing and trade union activity and agitation in parts of the country where the strike was weakest.

[Devrim]

Thanks for the conspiracy theory. Clearly, sensible discussion is not your strong point when it comes to these issues.

I don't think it is a conspiracy theory at all. In fact, I was actually told the same thing once, not in so many words, by a leading member of the RCP. He did mention the role of 'extreme' positions in forming cohesion and differentiating themselves from the rest of the left.

I don't think it is a conspiracy theory at all to see many of the positions that the RCP took up in that light.

However, it does give you a nice excuse the dodge the question about the defeat of the working class.

Devrim

[Vanguard1917]

He did mention the role of 'extreme' positions in forming cohesion and differentiating themselves from the rest of the left.

It's not an 'extreme' position, but a radical position -- especially when viewed in comparion to the narrow and reformist strategy of the NUM leadership and the bulk of the left which tailed it.



However, it does give you a nice excuse the dodge the question about the defeat of the working class.



And i've been waiting for about 5 posts now for you to present me with the evidence that the working class movement in Britain today is alive and kicking -- or at least existent in some shape or form...

[Devrim]

You are largely right, but you need to also consider the shabby role the CP members of the NUM executive played as well.

The role of the CP was exactly what you would expect certainly. I don't see it as a 'militant' Scargill battling against the 'sell out' Stalinists though. The dynamic is very different from that.


And Scargill was a local Yorkshire NUM bureaucrat in 1972; so it cannot have been be the full story.

Yes, he was. I didn't live in England at the time, nor am I old enough to remember it properly. I don't know that much about that strike so it is a bit more difficult to comment on for me than the 84-85 strike.

If I remember correctly, you are old enough as I once remember you talking about having been a postman in the 1971 strike.

The first question to be asked is what sort of position he had within the union. Wiki gives this:


Scargill became the leader of the Yorkshire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkshire) division of the NUM in 1973 and continued in the post until 1981.However, this is after the 72 strike, and almost certainly based on the success of it. What position did he occupy at the time of the strike?

Devrim

[Devrim]

And i've been waiting for about 5 posts now for you to present me with the evidence that the working class movement in Britain today is alive and kicking -- or at least existent in some shape or form...

As we started, we were dealing with the time after the strike first, and the claim that it was the 'final defeat'. Evidence has been presented, and you have refused to address it. When we have discussed this we can move onto today.

Devrim

[Vanguard1917]

As we started, we were dealing with the time after the strike first, and the claim that it was the 'final defeat'. Evidence has been presented, and you have refused to address it. When we have discussed this we can move onto today.

And i've explained the reason behind calling it a 'final defeat' -- it was the last most serious and consequential defeat faced by the working class in Britain.

[RedArmyUK]

No one ever seems to remember the P&O Ferries strike of 1988-89 :(

[Devrim]

And i've explained the reason behind calling it a 'final defeat' -- it was the last most serious and consequential defeat faced by the working class in Britain.

What does 'last most serious' mean in English? It doesn't make any sense. You can say 'last serious', or 'most serious', but last most serious is absolutely meaningless.

There were strikes after the miners' strike which weren't defeated, and involved more workers as shown on this thread, which contradicts your whole argument.

Devrim

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

VG1917:


Actually, winning the national ballot was a very realistic possibility -- if it was accompanied by increased leftwing and trade union activity and agitation in parts of the country where the strike was weakest.

On what evidence to you base this?


Yes, because the Nottinghamshire miners were born scabs who could not possibly be won over to the strike.

They already were scabs, and had already ignored the result of the vote at the Delegate Conference.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Devrim:


However, this is after the 72 strike, and almost certainly based on the success of it. What position did he occupy at the time of the strike?

To tell you the truth, I do not know; I just know he was a leading member of the Yorskhire Executive.

[Devrim]

No one ever seems to remember the P&O Ferries strike of 1988-89 :(

A big strike. I mentioned it already as were the printers, dockers, Telecom, and Post Office strikes.

Devrim

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

In fact, flying pickets from Yorskire had all but shut the Notts coalfield in the firts week:


Flying pickets from Cortonwood near Rotherham walked out when its closure was announced and brought the rest of the Yorkshire coalfield to a standstill. Pits in Scotland and Wales also had to be picketed out by Yorkshire miners as the strike spread nationally.

At Manton Colliery - a pit geographically in Nottinghamshire but within the Yorkshire coalfield - a heated meeting of more than 1,000 miners on the Saturday before the year-long strike was to commence voted against stopping work. But when flying pickets from Rotherham's Silverwood pit arrived on the Monday morning, not one miner crossed the line. The minority won over the majority.

That mood of solidarity against the bosses also prevailed in the early days of picketing in Nottinghamshire itself - although only after Doncaster miners successfully turned over NUM officials to send pickets. Nearly every pit in the Notts coalfield was shut by Yorkshire flying pickets in the first week. But when the pickets were called off for two weeks to allow Notts miners their own ballot, the writing was on the wall. Once the ballot was lost, the battleground shifted to workers outside of the pits - electricity and steel workers. By now many of the miners who thought they could win alone realised workers had to unite against Thatcher and the state. Once Orgreave became the focus, steel became the key. Even then rank and file miners had to petition Arthur Scargill to counter Yorkshire NUM officials, who still sent pickets to Nottinghamshire, asking them to call at Orgreave on their way home!

But no serious attempt was made to appeal to rank and file steel workers to support the miners. Mass pickets could have created a focus to win action.

At the height of the police violence at Orgreave, injured pickets could have been taken around steel and engineering works in Sheffield and Rotherham to call for solidarity. The real difference to 1972 in 1984 was not just the lack of a clear strategy pursued by all NUM area officials, but also of a politicised rank and file network to deliver the solidarity on the ground. Many miners were not involved in activity and felt isolated at home, or only later got involved as the strike shifted to a more defensive stage centred on the pit villages. But there were glimpses of marvellous rank and file solidarity - as with the blacking of the Sun and Express by print workers - that showed the potential for wider action.

Phil Turner
Rotherham

Andy Phipps
ex-Manton Colliery NUM

http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=8890

So, the idea that Notts could be won over by a vote is a joke.

The Notts area Exec call for a vote was disingenuous too, since the Notts coalfield (rank and file) had supported a national wild cat strike in 1981 without a vote!

[RedArmyUK]

A big strike. I mentioned it already as were the printers, dockers, Telecom, and Post Office strikes.

Devrim

Sorry I didn,t see,,

It got just as nasty as the miners strike, spent many school days chucking 1/2 bricks at P&O buses :rolleyes:

[Vanguard1917]

What does 'last most serious' mean in English? It doesn't make any sense. You can say 'last serious', or 'most serious', but last most serious is absolutely meaningless.

Actually, when used as an adverb, the word 'most' can mean 'very' -- e.g. 'the weather was most wonderful today', or 'the defeat of the miners' strike was most costly'.

What i meant to get across was that there was not a more serious and consequential defeat for the working class after the miners strike, in terms of its effects on the existence of the working class as a political force in society. The defeat of the miners' strike was the key turning point.

[Devrim]

Nearly every pit in the Notts coalfield was shut by Yorkshire flying pickets in the first week. But when the pickets were called off for two weeks to allow Notts miners their own ballot, the writing was on the wall.

Interestingly enough, this shows that the strategy of calling for a ballot directly led to the breaking of the strike in Notts, as the the NUM's prevention of flying pickets. Of course, this was very clear at the time.

The RCP, however, continued to advocate a ballot.

Devrim

[Devrim]

Actually, when used as an adverb, the word 'most' can mean 'very' -- e.g. 'the weather was most wonderful today', or 'the defeat of the miners' strike was most costly'.

Superb attempts to prove that you are not talking meaningless drivel. You can't run a word order adjective+adverb+adjective+noun.


What i meant to get across was that there was not a more serious and consequential defeat for the working class after the miners strike, in terms of its effects on the existence of the working class as a political force in society. The defeat of the miners' strike was the key turning point.

Except that 'the existence of the working class as a political force in society' is a matter of opinion. It can not be proved by data.

You like so many other pseudo-socialists seem to be convinced that the working class no longer exists as a political force. That is purely a matter of opinion and analysis.

What can be shown by data is that the working class entered into massive struggles in the aftermath of the miners strike, including strike that were bigger in terms of strikers involved, as long in length*, some of which were victorious, some of which were not.

Your conclusion that the working class suffered a 'final defeat' in the Miners' strike is demolished by that evidence.

Devrim

*Not necessarily a good thing in my opinion, but never the less true.

[Devrim]

What i meant to get across was that there was not a more serious and consequential defeat for the working class after the miners strike, in terms of its effects on the existence of the working class as a political force in society. The defeat of the miners' strike was the key turning point.

Also if you believe that the working class is no longer a political force within society, would you describe yourself as a Marxist/Revolutionary socialist?

If you do, is it because you think that the working class can assert itself, or because you think that there is another revolutionary force in society?

Devrim

[Vanguard1917]

Superb attempts to prove that you are not talking meaningless drivel. You can't run a word order adjective+adverb+adjective+noun.

:confused:

'The miners' strike was the last very serious defeat of the working class' might not be a very poetic sentence, but it makes perfect sense.



Except that 'the existence of the working class as a political force in society' is a matter of opinion. It can not be proved by data.

You like so many other pseudo-socialists seem to be convinced that the working class no longer exists as a political force. That is purely a matter of opinion and analysis.


Well, if you believe that the working class in Britain exists as a collective political force (as it did in the past), you need to provide your reasons for why you believe that.

As yet, you have provided none. 'Because I am a socialist' is only good enough for those who view socialism as a religious dogma as opposed to a political theory which proceeds from facts.


If you do, is it because you think that the working class can assert itself, or because you think that there is another revolutionary force in society?

We can't know for sure what's going to happen in the future and how things are going to take shape. What we do know is that the working class movement was defeated by the 1990s, its politics (dominated by social democracy and Stalinism) were widely discreditted, its organisations (its parties, its unions) either collapsed or were transformed for the worse, and that it has not yet recovered from these defeats. As Marxists, we have to try to look at the current situation in an honest fashion if we're to try to make sense of it and have any chance of predicting and influencing future developments.

[Bilan]

A key rightwing argument against the strike was that it was 'undemocratic' and representative of a minority. That was a key propaganda weapon which the government used to discredit the strike. That was the reality of the situation.

So? They say that all the time. The bourgeoisie also argue that the Russian Revolution was a Coup d'etat, i.e. the actions of a minority group, taking over the government, and not a revolution; not part of the general uprisings in Russia, epitomised in the year of 1917. So what?
Our goal is to spread, and generalise the struggle of the proletarian, which requires agitating amongst the proletariat. Not putting into practice the desires of the bourgeoisie; not using the bourgeoisies criticisms to dictate our movement.



What the RCP argued was that the national ballot could be taken on and won.

and the point of that would be what? Why do you need a ballot to involve proletarians in a strike?

[Devrim]

:confused:

'The miners' strike was the last very serious defeat of the working class' might not be a very poetic sentence, but it makes perfect sense.

Except that is not what you said, and it is even further from what the article said.


Well, if you believe that the working class in Britain exists as a collective political force (as it did in the past), you need to provide your reasons for why you believe that.

As yet, you have provided none. 'Because I am a socialist' is only good enough for those who view socialism as a religious dogma as opposed to a political theory which proceeds from facts.

As I said, I am perfectly willing to discuss the present situation, but I want to clear up the historical aspect first. You and the article you are supporting suggest that the working class ceased to exist as a political force with the end of the miners' strike. I am stating and have demonstrated that this is not the case, and have provided facts to back up my point. You on the other hand have refused to address the question.


We can't know for sure what's going to happen in the future and how things are going to take shape. What we do know is that the working class movement was defeated by the 1990s, its politics (dominated by social democracy and Stalinism) were widely discreditted, its organisations (its parties, its unions) either collapsed or were transformed for the worse, and that it has not yet recovered from these defeats. As Marxists, we have to try to look at the current situation in an honest fashion if we're to try to make sense of it and have any chance of predicting and influencing future developments.

You could start by honestly answering the questions I asked;


Also if you believe that the working class is no longer a political force within society, would you describe yourself as a Marxist/Revolutionary socialist?

If you do, is it because you think that the working class can assert itself, or because you think that there is another revolutionary force in society?

The first one is a yes/no question and the second an either/or.

Devrim

[Vanguard1917]

Except that is not what you said


Yes, it is.



As I said, I am perfectly willing to discuss the present situation, but I want to clear up the historical aspect first. You and the article you are supporting suggest that the working class ceased to exist as a political force with the end of the miners' strike.


The article says that the defeat of the miners' strike 'marked the final defeat of the labour movement and the left in Britain'. It is not saying that strikes did not continue to take place or that leftwing politics stopped existing. What it's saying (i think) is that the defeat of the miner's strike was the last major turning point, as far as strikes are concerned, in the defeat of the working class in Britain.


You could start by honestly answering the questions I asked;


You can start by addressing the issues that you yourself wanted raised.


The first one is a yes/no question and the second an either/or.


Yes, i still consider myself a Marxist. No, i can't know for sure what future developments will take place, as i very clearly said in my last post.

[Bilan]

The article says that the defeat of the miners' strike 'marked the final defeat of the labour movement and the left in Britain'. It is not saying that strikes did not continue to take place or that leftwing politics stopped existing. What it's saying (i think) is that the defeat of the miner's strike was the last major turning point, as far as strikes are concerned, in the defeat of the working class in Britain.


Doesn't the 'last major turning point' necessitate that the following big strikes (mentioned by Devrim et al) would not have occurred, or would have been smaller or weaker?
Usually, when we use the term 'turning point', it is not followed by other big events of the same nature - such as, the turning point for the destruction of the labour movement usually doesn't follow with a series of massive strikes.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Devrim:


You could start by honestly answering the questions I asked;

Ha, some hope! Pfizer1917 is here with a political agenda, to persuade us that the working class is finished (we heard that from Andre Gorz in the 1960s!), and that all we can do is surrendeer ourselves to the 'civilising mission' of unfetterd capitalist expansion.

This explains why he pushes the interests of Big Capital here, and why they sponsor the site from where he gets most of his ideas.

It also explains why he defends a Tory argument about the NUM vote.

[Vanguard1917]

Doesn't the 'last major turning point' necessitate that the following big strikes (mentioned by Devrim et al) would not have occurred, or would have been smaller or weaker?
Usually, when we use the term 'turning point', it is not followed by other big events of the same nature - such as, the turning point for the destruction of the labour movement usually doesn't follow with a series of massive strikes.

Well, if you look at the figures you'll see that that's not the case at all -- see graph on page 25 of this file (http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111.pdf) or the table here (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/xsdataset.asp?More=Y&vlnk=134&All=Y&B2.x=18&B2.y=14) (the figures from which i made the graph below). What we see is that the number of days lost due to strike action radically dropped after the 1984-5 miners' strike and never again came near to rising to the the levels of previous periods of labour militancy -- e.g. 1984-85, 1979, 1974, 1972, and 1926.

In terms of quantitative difference at least, we see that the 1984-85 period of class conflict was certainly the last of its kind in Britain. That's empirical fact.

But the 1984-85 strike was also a turning point in a deeper sense, in a political sense. Not only did it destroy one of the most militant trade unions in Britain's history, it was a major blow against working class politics in general.



---------------------

http://i663.photobucket.com/albums/uu360/donaldsr/strikes2.jpg

(notice the sharp drop after the miners' strike)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^Post hoc, ergo propter hoc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

[Vanguard1917]

Another graph -- this time with data just for the 1970-1998 period, in order to more clearly show the way in which the class conflict of the 1984-85 period was the last of its kind in Britain.

http://i663.photobucket.com/albums/uu360/donaldsr/strike3.jpg

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Once more: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

and this time, the data is only from a thirty year period!

[Vanguard1917]

Once more: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

and this time, the data is only from a thirty year period!

I have no idea what you've been saying in your last two posts.

The data was presented in response to the claim that the 1984-85 miners' strike was later followed by even bigger strikes. The evidence shows the way in which the miners' strike was the last of its sort.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

VG1917:


I have no idea what you've been saying in your last two posts.

I added a link so know-nothings like you could wise up -- forgetting that while you require us to follow your links, you do not follow ours.

Stay ignorant; see if I care.

[Devrim]

The data was presented in response to the claim that the 1984-85 miners' strike was later followed by even bigger strikes. The evidence shows the way in which the miners' strike was the last of its sort.

But that isn't what the claim said at all. It doesn't surprise me from you as in my opinion you are the most consistently dishonest poster on these boards.

The miner's strike was bigger than the following strikes. However what I claimed was:


What can be shown by data is that the working class entered into massive struggles in the aftermath of the miners strike, including strike that were bigger in terms of strikers involved, as long in length*, some of which were victorious, some of which were not.

Let's look at the things I actually said:


bigger in terms of strikers involved

The 1988 postal strike had about 180,000 strikers, whereas the miners strike had about 145,000 strikers.


as long in length*

The News International dispute at Wapping lasted for just over one year. The miners' strike lasted for just less than a year.


some of which were victorious

Telecom in 1987 and the teachers strike in 1986 would be two examples.

Certainly the idea that the miners' strike was a 'final defeat' doesn't seem to rest on much evidence at all.

That it was a major defeat isn't in any doubt. That the nineties were terrible years for the working class isn't in any doubt. The graphs produced confirm this.

One interesting point, however, would be why you choose to cut them off when you did because as I am sure you are aware recent years show a tendency to a return to struggle.

The idea of a 'final defeat' only makes any sense if you believe that the class struggle is over that the working class has ceased to exist, and you are pushing some right-wing libertarian ideas in the name of 'freedom' or even Marxism.

Devrim

[Vanguard1917]

But that isn't what the claim said at all. It doesn't surprise me from you as in my opinion you are the most consistently dishonest poster on these boards.

I was replying to this post, actually:



Doesn't the 'last major turning point' necessitate that the following big strikes (mentioned by Devrim et al) would not have occurred, or would have been smaller or weaker?
Usually, when we use the term 'turning point', it is not followed by other big events of the same nature - such as, the turning point for the destruction of the labour movement usually doesn't follow with a series of massive strikes.


What the graphs show is that the kinds of strikes where tens of millions of working days would be lost a year were decisively ended with the defeat of the miners' strike of 1984-85, where disruption caused by strikes reached all-times lows. (And we're not talking about the size or duration of this or that strike, but the labour movement as a whole.)

You wanted to know in what way the miners' strike marked the 'final defeat' of the working class in Britain. That's one central way how.

[Devrim]

What the graphs show is that the kinds of strikes where tens of millions of working days would be lost a year were decisively ended with the defeat of the miners' strike of 1984-85, where disruption caused by strikes reached all-times lows. (And we're not talking about the size or duration of this or that strike, but the labour movement as a whole.)

There have been three years since 1926 where there have been tens of millions of strike days; 1972 (miners' strike) 1979 (winter of discontent) and 1984 (miners' strike). It was a rare event not a common one. The fact that there haven't been any since doesn't mean that the working class doesn't exist as a political force.

If you meant 'over ten million' there have been five more years all in the period 1970-80. The 1970s were a time of intense working class struggle internationally. The fact that the level of struggle has not returned to anywhere near those levels is no surprise.

However, the signs are there at an international level, and how on Earth anybody who considers themselves a Marxist can attempt to pronounce the political death of a class on a national level is completely beyond me, but also reflected within the UK that there is a return to struggle:


Changes in strike patterns

In comparison with 2005, a significant increase was reported in strike activity on each official measure of labour disputes. In 2006, some 754,500 working days were lost through disputes, compared with 157,400 in 2005. At the same time, 713,300 workers participated in these disputes, compared with 92,600 in 2005. In addition, 158 work stoppages were recorded, compared with 116 in 2005. The number of working days lost per 1,000 employees amounted to 28 days in 2006, compared with six days in 2005.
This recent annual increase in strike activity needs to be set in the context of the substantial decline in the number of working days lost through stoppages – and the number of strikes – over the last 30 years in the UK. The number of working days lost in 2006 was much lower than the average per year in both the 1970s, at 12.9 million, and the 1980s, at 7.2 million, but higher than the average for the 1990s, which stood at 660,000. The number of strikes in 2006 was the highest since 2001, but compares with an average of over a thousand in the 1980s and 273 in the 1990s.


Yes, the increase is small, never the less it is a symbol of something, and certainly not that the working class has ceased to exist as a political force.

Devrim

[Vanguard1917]

There have been three years since 1926 where there have been tens of millions of strike days; 1972 (miners' strike) 1979 (winter of discontent) and 1984 (miners' strike). It was a rare event not a common one.

Yes, but it was even less common for days lost to drop below the 1 million mark, which for the most part characterised the 1990s and 2000s. That was largely unheard of before -- it happened twice between 1901 to 1990.

The average total days lost per year in the 1990s was 660,000. In the 1980s, it was 7.2 million and in the 1970s it was 12.9 million (source (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/elmr0607.pdf)). Yes, the '70s was a decade of high class conflict. But even when compared to the 1960s and the 1950s (when about an average of 3.5 million days were lost per year for both decades), the contrast with 1990s and the 2000s is very obvious. In 2005, a mere 157,400 days were lost -- probably the lowest on record.

Also, trade union membership has almost halved from its peak of 13.2 million in 1979 to less than 7.5 million in 2007. There has, of course, also been a qualitative change, with trade unions more and more resembling mere pension and insurance providers rather than organisations for workers' militancy.



Yes, the increase is small, never the less it is a symbol of something, and certainly not that the working class has ceased to exist as a political force.



Yes, 2006 saw a rise on the previous year -- although, at 754,500, it was still lower than the 905,000 of 2004 -- and, incidentally, 2007 also saw a rise.

It's true that strikes will likely increase in number as the recession deepens. But what real evidence is there of a revival of trade unionism?

[Devrim]

Yes, 2006 saw a rise on the previous year -- although, at 754,500 it was still lower than the 905,000 of 2004 -- and, incidentally, 2007 also saw a rise.

Compare the decade of the 1990s with this one. It shows a clear increase.


It's true that strikes will likely increase in number as the recession deepens. But what real evidence is there of a revival of trade unionism?

Where did I argue anything whatsoever about a revival of trade unionism? You keep refusing to answer questions, missing the point, distorting what people say, and making things up.

What I did argue is that there is a general trend not only in the UK, but internationally, of a return to combativeness amongst the working class. The statistics back this up.

I did not claim that class combativeness had increased to the levels of the 1970s, and I clearly stated that there was a massive decrease in the 1990s.

What I reject is this idea that 'The working class in Britain today has no real existence as a collective political force'. To say that the working class is currently weak, does not mean that there has been a 'final defeat', nor has there even be a defeat of the scale of the one following the revolutionary wave after WWI.

Of course, non of this will stop intellectuals pontificating about the end of the working class. This case with those around the remnants of the RCP is only slightly more disturbing as it actually represents the efforts of a right-wing libertarian clique to dress themselves in radical clothes rather than a straightforward middle class disillusionment in the idea of a revolutionary working class.

Devrim

[Vanguard1917]

Compare the decade of the 1990s with this one. It shows a clear increase.

Does it? A slight increase in strikes means a revival of working class politics or that the working class is a political force of any real, major significance?



Where did I argue anything whatsoever about a revival of trade unionism? You keep refusing to answer questions, missing the point, distorting what people say, and making things up.



I argued that the state of the working class as a political force is fundamentally different today than it was in the past. I went further to propose that the working class in Britain has no real collective political existence today, at least when compared with previous periods.

You have not engaged with the arguments and the evidence.



To say that the working class is currently weak, does not mean that there has been a 'final defeat', nor has there even be a defeat of the scale of the one following the revolutionary wave after WWI.



After the revolutionary wave after WWI, the working class continued to exist as a political force. In fact, its presence in political life in many ways increased. It had its own parties and militant trade union movements, which had the power to change governments and bring society to a standstill. Internationally, there was Bolshevik government in Russia and large leftwing struggles taking place elsewhere. The working class was a force to be reckoned with and its existence as a political entity was of great consequence to social and political life.

In what way is the working class in Britain today any of those things?



This case with those around the remnants of the RCP is only slightly more disturbing as it actually represents the efforts of a right-wing libertarian clique to dress themselves in radical clothes rather than a straightforward middle class disillusionment in the idea of a revolutionary working class.



Again, this displays your immensely puerile attempts to duck debate. If you believe that there is a 'revolutionary working class' today in Britain -- that's not an 'idea' but something that exists in the real world as opposed to in your imagination -- you have to show it through evidence and analysis.

In that, you have failed most miserably.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

VG1917:



you have to show it through evidence and analysis.

As I said, you require evidence from us, but when we demand it from you, you appeal to 'common sense'.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

VG1917, you can stick that 'Thanks'; we both know I was criticising you, not Devrim.

[Devrim]

If you believe that there is a 'revolutionary working class' today in Britain' -- that's not an 'idea' but something that exists in the real world as opposed to your imagination -- you have to show it through evidence and analysis.

But then I never claimed that there was a revolutionary working class today in Britain, did I?

The idea of a revolutionary working class is central to Marxist politics. It is about the potential for the working class to become a class for itself, and how in every strike there exists the germ of the mass strike.

The road that you have gone down has nothing to do with Marxism whatsoever. It is about using 'radical' sounding language to advocate ideas supported by big business, as the list of Spiked supporters clearly shows.


After the First World War, the working class continued to exist as a political force. In fact, its presence in political life in many ways increased. It had its own parties and militant trade union movements, which had the power to change governments and bring society to a standstill. Internationally, there was Bolshevik government in Russia and large leftwing struggles taking place elsewhere. The working class was a force to be reckoned with and its existence as a political entity was of great consequence to social and political life.

In what way is the working class in Britain today any of those things?

After the First World war the working class was of course a massive political force, but then that is not the time I was referring to. What I was talking about was the 'defeat of the scale of the one following the revolutionary wave after WWI'. The defeat suffered by the working class internationally in that period was catastrophic, and the working class didn't recover from the counter revolution until the end of the 1960s. The fact that many organisations that formerly belonged to the working class were integrated into the bourgeois political apparatus during this period, did not make the working class strong though one can understand how it would appear like that to declasse intellectuals such as Ferudi who have absolutely no understanding of what class politics meant anyway.


Again, this displays your immensely puerile attempts to duck debate. If you believe that there is a 'revolutionary working class' today in Britain' -- that's not an 'idea' but something that exists in the real world as opposed to in your imagination -- you have to show it through evidence and analysis.

In that, you have failed most miserably.

A little rich from somebody who has ducked question after question all the way through this thread. I will leave it to others to decide whether your point was proven or not.

I don't think there is much point in continuing this debate, and although unlike others, including yourself, I don't believe in using administrative means to stop debate, I remain convinced that you hold a deeply anti-socialist, anti-working class, pro-big bussiness ideology. I think that my point has been proven here, and I personally don't want to waste any more time on your question dodging.

Devrim

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Keep thanking me, if that makes you happy. It only adds to my rep points. It does not alter the fact that you made claims about the working class which you could not back up with evidence.

[Hit The North]

V1917 you are just wriggling your way through this debate. Devrim has not claimed that the working class currently represent a revolutionary force in Britain today.

Meanwhile the only sensible interpretaton of the phrase "final defeat of the working class" is that you and/or the author of the article you link to believe that the working class is now finished and the class struggle has been overcome by British capital.

All your attempts to avoid this interpretation are, at best, disingenuous, at worst, nonsensical.

[Vanguard1917]

The idea of a revolutionary working class is central to Marxist politics. It is about the potential for the working class to become a class for itself, and how in every strike there exists the germ of the mass strike.

'Potential' and actual existence are two different things. I believe that the working class has the potential to be a revolutionary force, as history has shown.

But that's not what we have been arguing over in this thread. You have doubted my assertion about the reality of the state of the working class in today's Britain. However, you haven't engaged with the evidence and the arguments that i've provided.

Instead, all we've had are extremely childish attempts to duck debate. E.g. here:

'The road that you have gone down has nothing to do with Marxism whatsoever. It is about using 'radical' sounding language to advocate ideas supported by big business, as the list of Spiked supporters clearly shows.'

'I remain convinced that you hold a deeply anti-socialist, anti-working class, pro-big bussiness ideology.'

'one can understand how it would appear like that to declasse intellectuals such as Ferudi who have absolutely no understanding of what class politics meant anyway.'


That's not debate; that's a mudslinging strategy reminiscent of a school playground.



After the First World war the working class was of course a massive political force, but then that is not the time I was referring to. What I was talking about was the 'defeat of the scale of the one following the revolutionary wave after WWI'. The defeat suffered by the working class internationally in that period was catastrophic, and the working class didn't recover from the counter revolution until the end of the 1960s. The fact that many organisations that formerly belonged to the working class were integrated into the bourgeois political apparatus during this period


It did not recover 'until the end of the 1960s'?

If you actually look at the period between the early 1920s and the 1960, you'll see that there are several examples of the working class asserting itself as a political force in society, particularly in the interwar period. We're talking about massive general strikes and, internationally, extremely violent civil wars over how society should be organised.

What kind of comparison is that to the situation of today, when the working class has ceased to play any real collective political role in society?

[Vanguard1917]

V1917 you are just wriggling your way through this debate. Devrim has not claimed that the working class currently represent a revolutionary force in Britain today.

He made the accusation that there is a 'middle class disillusionment in the idea of a revolutionary working class'. I merely pointed out that no 'revolutionary working class' exists in Britain today, in the real world, even though it may indeed exist in his imagination.



Meanwhile the only sensible interpretaton of the phrase "final defeat of the working class" is that you and/or the author of the article you link to believe that the working class is now finished and the class struggle has been overcome by British capital.



The argument that i have made is 'that the working class in Britain has no real collective political existence today, at least when compared with previous periods.'

Devrim replied that that isn't true. I said, fine but please provide the evidence to back up your doubts. To which he replied, i don't think it's true 'Because I am a socialist'.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

More thanks please, VG.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

More from you too, BH!

[brigadista]

im losing the will the live here and completely lost track of what you are debating

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

VG1917:


The argument that i have made is 'that the working class in Britain has no real collective political existence today, at least when compared with previous periods.'

Devrim replied that that isn't true. I said, fine but please provide the evidence to back up your doubts. To which he replied, i don't think it's true 'Because I am a socialist'.

But, even if this were Devrim's reply (which it isn't), it would be no different from your "Common sense tells me what workers everywhere want".

[brigadista]

i earlier posted the practical changes brought about by thatcherite legislation during teh moners striek adn post , it mitigates against workers organising today and I asked for comments - none forthcoming just a debate about the above...

[Y Chwyldro Comiwnyddol Cymraeg]

random point but...
On the miners strike I read recently the money that was donated to the striking miners from GLBT groups. They also visited the areas and formed strng bonds with the miners whilst breaking down the prejudices that may have existed.

[brigadista]

random point but...
On the miners strike I read recently the money that was donated to the striking miners from GLBT groups. They also visited the areas and formed strng bonds with the miners whilst breaking down the prejudices that may have existed.

you maybe interested in this link
http://libcom.org/history/1984-85-lesbian-gay-miners-support-group

[Trystan]

More from you too, BH!

lol dongs




Nothing more to add.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

I'm sorry Trystan, but I do not understand what you are saying.

[Trystan]

I don't understand what you;'re saying half the time and I never complain..

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

But, I am not complaining, just asking.

And if anyone does not understand me, they ask, and I explain.

Fair enough?

[Trystan]

No need to get pissy about it (if you are getting pissy about it; it's hard to tell).

I was merely expressing my amusment at how threads reach such low levels of inane shite. (I'll get my coat).

[Bilan]

Though this thread has passed on a bit, a good article in WR appeared on it this month.



Scargill’s memoirs of the 1984-85 strike: Hiding the NUM’s role in sabotaging the struggle

On the 25th anniversary of the miners' strike in Britain there have been plenty of reminiscences in the media: televised reunions between police and strikers, pictures, news items, all wrapped up in a general message of what a shame it all was, how the miners were led by ‘extremists' or, on the other hand, how the Thatcher government, ‘took on the unions' and defeated them.
In addition to this obscuring of the real lessons of the miners' strike, topping them even, comes Arthur Scargill. "Now, for the first time, the then president of the NUM writes his account of the most divisive and bitter industrial dispute in living memory" (The Guardian 7/3/9).

Before we turn our attention to Scargill's account of events, the first thing we want to do is to situate the miners' strike in Britain in the international context of the class struggle. The mass strike in Poland of 1980 had suffered a major set back, not least through an alliance of Russia, Britain and the United States and the Solidarnosc trade union - but within a year or two workers were once again fighting back against the austerity measures being imposed by the ruling class across the planet. The strikes in Britain were part of a wave affecting Italy, Germany, Belgium, the US, France, Holland and others. The strike by the miners, because of the stakes, numbers and the militancy involved, became a focal point for the world's working class. The ground had been laid and the stakes were high. In fact, in 1981, 50,000 miners came out on wildcat strike against a plan to shut 50 pits and get rid of 30,000 jobs. It was in this wave that Scargill's Yorkshire NUM did its utmost to keep its miners working and there was no talk from him about ‘class war' and ‘struggle', earning for him instead the labels of "scab" and "traitor" from the pickets and, on occasions, the need for a police escort. Prior to the 1981 movement, the miners were involved in struggles from 1972-74 which were very positive, again part of an international wave, and indeed their struggles go back through the century in a constant fight against attacks where both Labour and Tory governments have cut miners' wages and tens of thousands of jobs with the acquiescence of the NUM.

Another point to emphasise about the 1984 strike is the development of the self-organisation of the workers which, in the first weeks of the strike, took both the unions and the police by surprise, and this despite the repression prepared by the police on the one hand, and the division of miners into different areas and regions as set up by the NUM on the other. From the first day of the strike it was the workers who took the initiative to call other miners out. The NUM were running to keep up and it called for an all-out strike over pit closures - in Yorkshire only. The flying pickets were particularly successful in calling other miners out, not through intimidation or force but by discussion and argument. By the end of the first week the NUM was trying to cut down on the mass picketing, bringing it in line with NUM general policy. And while the government quietly announced improved redundancy payments, the NUM announced that there would be no strike pay. By the second week the militant minority had brought out over half the miners and Harworth pit in Nottinghamshire was closed down by 300 Yorkshire pickets despite the massive police presence and against NUM instructions. In South Wales, where the majority of pits had already voted against joining the strike, the miners came out in response to the actions of flying pickets from Yorkshire. The initial vote not to strike was something of a parochial revenge against Yorkshire for not joining the South Wales strike and movement a couple of years earlier (something that Scargill was abused for by the miners, but more importantly, was due to the divisive regional set up of the NUM). This therefore showed the ability of the workers to discuss contentious issues, clarify them and take action. In the first weeks of the strike, miners were moving around in numbers very effectively, organised and in some cases armed for self-protection against the police; and they were bringing out other miners with no hint of violent confrontation. The left wing NUM official, Henry Richardson, appealed for the pickets to withdraw. Police and their coaches were pelted with bricks and stones; a High Court injunction against the NUM was ignored by the miners; the Yorkshire NUM leader, Jack Taylor, moaned that the union had never condoned violence, and Scargill said: "I want to take the heat out of the situation". Despite many deep illusions persisting with workers about the unions, the initial movements of the miners in those first weeks, despite the NUM's attempts to cripple them and the state to intimidate them, showed that the lessons of the period internationally, the self-organisation and extension of the struggle, had to a verifiable extent been assimilated and put into effective action by the miners. Not only were other pits and NUM areas targeted by the pickets and brought out, but the flying pickets called out a larger number of miners by focussing their attention on areas where there wasn't such a massive police presence such as there was in Nottingham. And not only were the attempts at active solidarity aimed at other miners, but pickets early on in the strike went to power station workers, rail workers and seamen, with many of these initiatives tending to go beyond or against their union's instructions. In the face of this the bourgeoisie was not passive. A massive, organised police force occupied areas of South Yorkshire and Nottingham, implementing a programme of cordoning off whole areas, intimidation and provocations, while the media developed a campaign about miner fighting miner and the need for democracy. But it was the efforts of the NUM and Scargill that fatally undermined the strike. At the same time as the state was organising its forces, Scargill and the NUM set up a campaign around the demand to "stop foreign coal" and other corporatist and nationalist slogans similar to that of the recent BNP, Labour Party and trade union campaign around "British jobs for British workers".

Scargill's Guardian article is typical of the memoirs of smug bourgeois politicians: slippery and very selective, anxious to prove that he was right all along if only everyone had listened to him. Having learned of the National Coal Board's plans to shut 95 pits and cut a hundred thousand jobs, he says: "It became clear that the union would have to take action, but of a type that would win maximum support and have a unifying effect". The actions of Scargill and his NUM were tailored to have the opposite effect to "maximum support and unification". To build on his previous scabbing over strikes, Scargill, now NUM president, brought in an overtime ban in November 1983 of which he is very proud, saying that it had "an extraordinary impact". Its impact was to give plenty of notice to the Coal Board, allowing it time to manoeuvre, to build up, maintain and move coal stocks; it also allowed time for the government to prepare its forces of repression. Over this 5-month period miners' wages were effectively cut by 20% a week, reducing their capacity to build up sustenance for the strike (particularly with no strike pay). Along with his fixation on the slogan "Block Foreign Coal" - workers' solidarity replaced by nationalism - Scargill's overtime ban hobbled the miners from the beginning, the very point where a wildcat strike can be most effective. Like all trade union rule books, the NUM's reinforced the possibilities of machinations, confusion and bureaucracy, areas in which Scargill was an expert. Such a rule book favoured the manoeuvres and manipulations of the ‘leadership', as with Rule 41 permitting "areas to take official strike action if authorised by our national executive committee" as Scargill puts it. The question wasn't a national ballot for a strike or not, but the extension and self-organisation of the struggle versus the union's bureaucratic rule book and its division into antagonistic areas and fiefdoms of union bosses and cliques.

Within the framework of its defence of Britain's coal industry and the nationalism that goes with it, the NUM directed miners into set piece wars of attrition that flowed directly from its overtime ban, especially the concentration on coal stocks and Nottinghamshire at the expense of widening the struggle. Orgreave coking plant in South Yorkshire was set up by Scargill for mass picketing and in fact it became a focal point, a fixation of forces where the miners felt the force of the law. It was a trap that diverted the miners away from spreading the struggle. The ex-president criticises other areas of the NUM for not supporting him over Orgreave (by not sending more pickets) and for dispensations given to steel works. But this area-based union with its rule book was a nest of vipers, each looking after their own interests and manoeuvring against the others. Scargill compares Orgreave to "Saltley coke depot in Birmingham in 1972 - a turning point after which that strike was soon settled". What he doesn't say is that the main reason it was "settled" in '72 was because the miners' picket was joined by one hundred thousand engineers from Birmingham (and other workers), threatening to take the movement away from the NUM's control completely and onto a new level of struggle that the state was quick to see. Another dead-end, another pointless and energy-sapping point of fixation, was the set up with the Nottinghamshire NUM and the emphasis on picketing out those pits still working. The fixation on this heavily policed area (that the miners had avoided when spreading their struggle under their own initiative) was to the detriment of the self-organisation and extension of the struggle to other workers - the only chance it had of succeeding. Scargill raises the question of not calling a national ballot saying that: "The real reason that NUM areas such as Nottinghamshire, South Derbyshire and Leicester wanted a national strike ballot was that they wanted the strike called off... Three years earlier in 1981, there had been no ballot when miners' unofficial strike action - involving Notts miners - had caused Thatcher to retreat from mass closures..." What he doesn't say is how ridiculous he would have looked going for a ballot when the majority of militant miners had already voted with their feet and their actions. And he doesn't say that it didn't prevent him calling for a ballot for his Yorkshire NUM in 1981/2 when miners elsewhere were wildcatting against a wage cut; something many miners remembered.

Scargill in his post-25 year justification not only criticises other NUM areas but the steel unions, the electrical union, the Labour Party, the TUC, the T&GWU, the rail unions and the Nacods safety deputies' union. All of them were certainly looking after their own interests and some of them were doing their own secret deals with the Thatcher government. Just like the NUM they all had their own agendas and "rule books" to follow and just like the NUM all these unions were fully integrated into the state apparatus. He says, "at the very point of victory we were betrayed". But the lesson of the 1984 miners' strike for the working class today is that all unions, with their rule books, their bureaucracy, sectional and corporatist set ups, and relations with the Labour Party, are part of the state and work against the self-organisation and extension of struggles under the control of workers themselves.

[Pogue]

I think the miners strike taught us alot about the nature of the bourgeois state, especially in regards to how it deals with opposition to it, such as how the police were applied and turned against workers.