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From Socialist Worker, No. 96, 9 November 1968, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
BRITAIN’S 380,000 miners will vote at pit-head ballot stations this week for a new general secretary of their union, the NUM.
It is an important election, for the Left-wing candidate Lawrence Daly, secretary of the Scottish miners, has declared his intention of leading a fight against the deliberate run-down of the coal industry.
Such a campaign is urgently needed. In the last 10 years, the number of pits has dropped from 793 to 340 and miners from 680,000 to 380,000.
And if government plans are not fought, then as few as 190,000 men will be working in the pits by 1975.
The figures tell only half the story. Although overall coal output has fallen from 200 million tons a year to 170 million in the last 10 years and is expected to drop to 120 million by 1975, the screws have been turned on the miners. A smaller labour force is now producing more coal.
Here is the vicious side of ‘productivity’ deals. While the dole queues lengthen and mining villages are turned into ghost’ towns, the remaining miners are sweating to produce more profit for the bureaucrats who run the NCR and for the former shareholders, who still get a rich bonanza in annual compensation payments.
Leaders of the National Union of Mineworkers have staggered from one pit closure to another like an alcoholic on a pub crawl. They have no plan, no campaign, no intention of conducting a fight to save the jobs of the men they supposedly represent.
The retiring secretary, Will Paynter, a member of the Communist Party, has been notable in recent years for his outspoken attacks on ‘absenteeism’. When miners are too sick, too tired or too apathetic to turn out for work on Monday, that meets with Mr. Paynter’s wrath.
There have been no similar attacks on the absentee shareholders who have been bleeding the industry dry for years or on the pompous NCB boss, Lord Robens, who spearheads the closure of mines – including new and highly profitable ones.
A fight involving the rank and file miners could halt the NCR and the government. Daly, who is campaigning on a Left platform of guerrilla strikes at the most profitable mines to halt the decline of the industry, deserves the support of the membership.
Support does not mean passive reliance on the leadership. The fruits of high office have bought off militants before and it is up to the rank and file to ensure that Daly, if elected, lives up to his election promises. But only an incurable sectarian would deny the galvanising effect that a militant miners’ leader could have.
In spite of their decline, the pits still provide 58 per cent of the country’s fuel, including power stations. The campaign envisaged by Daly could cripple key sectors of the economy and quickly force the government to concede a new deal for miners.
What is missing from this Left-reformist platform is the key question of workers’ control. For generations, miners have died and coughed blood to keep the capitalist system ticking over
It is the men in the pits who should be running the industry, not the NCB; it is the men in the pits who should decide the rate of output and the rate of pay; and it is the men in the pits who should decide when a seam is no longer viable.
A campaign for workers’ control of the pits, tied to the demand of work or full pay while retraining in areas where closures are inevitable, could raise not only the morale of the miners but their political consciousness too. Willingness to accept such demands would ensure Daly’s success; failure to do so would quickly send him down the slippery path of compromise and retreat.
The other candidate for the secretaryship is Mr Joe Gormley, leader of the Yorkshire miners and a right-wing supporter of government incomes policy.
Miners should treat him with the respect traditionally shown by pigeons towards tourists in Trafalgar Square.
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