Revisiting the miners’ strike
This month sees the twentieth anniversary of the start of
the great miners’ strike of 1984-85. In an abridged version of an article first
carried in the summer 1995 edition of Militant International Review, the
forerunner of Socialism Today, KEN SMITH looks back at a struggle which still
impacts on political, social and economic developments today.
THE GREAT MINERS’ strike of 1984-85 was the most significant
post-war industrial dispute, leaving an indelible mark on virtually every
subsequent industrial and political development.
The Tories later admitted that it cost nearly £6bn to win
the dispute, which they saw as a political attempt to break the power of the
National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). In the ten years following the end of the
strike, the continued war against the miners cost a further £26bn in redundancy
and benefit payments, keeping pits mothballed and lost revenue from coal.
Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet were desperate for victory
and prepared to go to any lengths. For the first time in a post-war national
strike the police were openly used as a political weapon. Agents provocateurs
and spies were deployed and the state benefits system used to try and starve the
miners back. Former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson subsequently admitted that
preparations for the strike were, "just like rearming to face the threat of
Hitler in the 1930s". Evidence emerged – after the event – about the role of
MI5, MI6, the CIA and ultra-right wingers like David Hart and Tim Bell, who
advised Thatcher during the dispute.
Yet despite the extraordinary lengths the Tories went to, by
October 1984, six months into the strike, the future of Thatcher’s government
hung in the balance. The proposed strike by the pit supervisors’ union, NACODS,
threatened to close down all working pits in the Midlands – when there were less
than six weeks’ coal stocks.
Former chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board
(CEGB), Sir Walter Marshall, spelt out what this meant: "Our predictions showed
on paper that Scargill would win certainly before Christmas. Margaret Thatcher
got very worried about that… I felt she was wobbly and she was actually inclined
to bring the troops in to move coal. All my guys [CEGB workers] would have gone
on strike immediately". lan MacGregor, the Thatcher-appointed boss of the
National Coal Board (NCB), was summoned to Downing Street. He recalls Thatcher’s
comments in his memoirs: "I’m very worried about it. You have to realise that
the fate of this government is in your hands Mr MacGregor. You have got to solve
this problem".
But, scandalously, the NACODS leaders did not implement
their 80%-plus mandate for strike action and accepted a revised pit-closure
review procedure, which predictably was never implemented. As a result, despite
their heroism, the miners were left isolated and returned to work – defeated.
The miners’ defeat, along with the economic upswing of the
late 1980s, set in motion a complex and difficult period in Britain which
resulted in a massive shift to the right at the top of the labour movement.
Labour and trade union leaders meekly accepted anti-union legislation and
generally abandoned any pretence of struggle against industrial run-down and
privatisation.
The victors of the miners’ dispute and their apologists in
the labour movement attempted to portray the strike as a doomed, futile attempt
to preserve a dying industry led by a tactically inept Arthur Scargill. Others
on the left said that the strike showed that the Tory government and state
forces were too strong to be taken on and defeated. But the evidence reveals a
different, more complex picture.
Tories prepare for battle
THE MINING INDUSTRY sharply contracted after world war two.
From 800-plus pits and 750,000 miners in 1947, the industry had declined to 190
pits and 240,000 miners by 1983. In the 1960s this decline was partly due to the
emergence of gas and nuclear power and also the acceptance of pit closures by
miners’ leaders. In the boom years many miners were keen to get out of the pits
into the ready supply of new jobs then available.
In the early 1970s this began to change. The then Tory prime
minister, Ted Heath, took on the miners, but their 1974 victory brought down his
government. The Tories, smarting from defeat, carefully planned their revenge
with the Ridley Report, prepared by leading Thatcherite Nicholas Ridley, which
came to light in The Economist in 1978. The report proposed a shift from
dependence on coal, outlined how coal should be stockpiled for a long strike,
and how enhanced police powers and anti-union laws should be introduced to
shackle the unions – especially the NUM.
Following the defeat of the steelworkers’ strike in 1980,
attempts were made to close a number of pits, including Lewis Merthyr pit in
South Wales. The South Wales miners immediately walked out and sent flying
pickets to other coalfields. Within a day, a national coal strike was
threatened, which the Tories would have certainly lost. Thatcher urged caution
on her cabinet and the Tories backed down, but over the next three years they
built up coal stocks at the pit heads and power stations.
In November 1983, after a secret closure hit-list of 49 pits
was leaked, the miners implemented an overtime ban to reduce coal stocks, to
make future industrial action more effective. But battle lines were being drawn
in a way which indicated that the Tories would move sooner rather than later.
After their re-election in 1983, the Tories believed the
balance of forces was moving in their favour. Two NUM ballots for action against
pit closures had been defeated and the TUC failed to mount effective resistance
to the anti-union laws during the Stockport Messenger dispute at the end of
1983.
This battle between Eddie Shah and the National Graphical
Association (NGA) printers’ union occurred at Shah’s Warrington printworks when
he introduced new technology. Big business backed Shah’s attempts to break union
power and funded his use of the new anti-union laws to take the NGA to court for
organising ‘secondary action’. The TUC had previously taken a congress decision
to organise general strike action if any union was threatened with sequestration
under the Tory laws. But when this first test came the TUC crumbled. This,
probably more than anything else, gave the Tories the green light to attack the
miners. As it turned out, the single most decisive factor in the miners’ defeat
was their complete abandonment by the Labour and TUC leaders, who refused to
organise effective solidarity with the NUM.
Another factor, however, was developments within the NUM.
Although Arthur Scargill had been elected as NUM president in 1981, two
subsequent ballots for industrial action against pit closures had been defeated.
It is an irony of history that until March 1993 there had never been a
successful NUM ballot for industrial action against pit closures. All successful
ballots had been on pay. One reason for this lay in the NUM’s structure, which
gave enormous power to area union officials. On issues like pay there was a
national agreement, but pit closures affected some areas more than others. In
the 1982 strike ballot over threatened Welsh pits, the Yorkshire area, which
came out first in 1984, voted against. This caused some confusion and bitterness
among South Wales miners at the start of the 1984-85 strike.
lan Isaac, a member of Militant (forerunner of the Socialist
Party), who was lodge (branch) secretary of St John’s NUM and a member of the
South Wales NUM executive from 1983-87, has summed up (in an unpublished
article) the unpreparedness of some of the left NUM leaders for struggle. lan
notes that when the closure of Cortonwood colliery was announced, which sparked
the 1984-85 strike, there "was a hesitancy on the part of South Wales miners to
be seen yet again as the ones to come out first. They also remembered the
lukewarm reception they had the previous year when attempting to convince
Yorkshire and other traditionally militant areas to join them on strike against
pit closures".
These ballot defeats and lack of action in the previous year
caused some left NUM leaders to lack confidence in organising strike action. The
South Wales NUM leadership was traditionally one of the most militant. But lan
Isaac remembers that at the start of the strike he attended a meeting of the
South Wales area executive where he and another left-winger argued, in the light
of all pits and surface lodges now respecting picket lines after a shaky start,
that "we should hold further mass meetings to vote on supporting those on strike
and consolidate the mandate expressed by miners not crossing picket lines. This
was argued against by a number of executive members including the president,
Emlyn Williams, general secretary George Rees and vice-president Terry Thomas.
They argued that it was too risky and what would happen if they voted against
again? This was the expression of the kind of confidence that some leaders had
in their members and this type of thinking would surface again over the
arguments about a national ballot".
Notwithstanding the courage and determination that was shown
by the NUM national leaders, Arthur Scargill and general secretary, Peter
Heathfield, the beginning of the strike saw them caught off guard. Peter
Heathfield had said only a few months before that he didn’t think young miners
would strike over pit closures. Many NUM leaders had the perspective of the
overtime ban continuing until the winter of 1984 and then taking strike action.
Although both ballots for industrial action against pit
closures had been defeated, there had been an increasing vote for action in all
areas on the second ballot. Taking all these factors into consideration, the
Tories, through their henchman MacGregor, probably thought that the time was
right for a pre-emptive strike in March 1984.
There is some dispute among right-wing commentators about
whether the Tories wanted the strike or not. Lawson has said that the cabinet
did not think that the miners would strike then, given that it was approaching
the end of winter and all the contingency plans the Tories had made. However,
whether or not the Tories thought the miners would strike in response to their
provocative list of pit closures, they obviously felt they were ready to face
them down. Thatcher, unlike some of her ministers, had a clear political
perspective about the strike and its implications for the ruling class. For her
this was an industrial version of the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas war which had to
be pursued to the bitter end – no matter what the cost.
The ballot issue
THATCHER MADE A political calculation that if the miners
could be beaten it would clear the way for further attacks on the working class.
Given what was thrown at them, could the miners have won? Right-wing critics,
and some on the left, argue that the NUM’s key mistake was not calling a ballot,
which allowed the majority of miners in Nottingham and Leicester to continue
working. The NUM had a long tradition of democracy and balloting but it was not
always the case that ballots were held for industrial action. Particularly on
the issue of pit closures, with some areas more affected than others, there was
a genuine feeling among many miners that ‘secure’ areas like Nottingham should
not be allowed to vote down strike action in other areas like Wales, Scotland
and Yorkshire.
Militant maintained a united front with the miners during
this period, since the lack of a ballot was being used by the right-wing to
undermine the strike. But after the strike we pointed out that, because of the
way the issue was used in the movement to cut across the miners’ struggle, a
ballot should have been called, especially after the rule change which allowed a
50% majority for strike action (instead of the previous 55%). A ballot then, six
weeks into the strike, would have seen a clear national mandate for strike
action.
This would have cut across all the arguments of the right
wing and the then Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock. It could have cut off the
Tory lifeline of coal supplies from the Midlands which was to prove crucial at a
later stage of the strike. Despite this, the lack of a ballot did not defeat the
miners. The main reason they lost was the role of the Labour and trade union
leaders in not organising effective solidarity action – where the lack of a
ballot was used as a ‘get-out’ clause.
A mistake was made by the NUM leadership in 1984 in not
calling for a one-day general strike when the funds of the South Wales NUM, and
later the national NUM, were sequestrated by the courts. This mistake was
unfortunately repeated in October 1992 when the call for a 24-hour general
strike to support the miners fight against the Major government’s pit closure
programme was left too late.
As the strike progressed other issues were raised about the
effectiveness of mass picketing and the question of solidarity action being
organised from below with other groups of workers. The miners’ strike in 1972
saw the first use of flying pickets and mass pickets. The mass picket at Saltley
Gate coke depot in Birmingham, led by Arthur Scargill, was decisive in winning
the strike. At that time, the British ruling class was unprepared for such
tactics. But by the 1984-85 strike, the bourgeoisie had prepared thoroughly on
how to render the mass picketing tactics of the 1970s ineffective through the
use of the police.
This was always a risky strategy. The Guardian in January
1995 reported that police officers felt "betrayed by the Thatcher government and
badly led by some senior officers during the 1984-85 miners’ strike, according
to an official history of the Police Federation". The report goes on to say that
"the Federation leaders and probably the great majority of chief officers would
have been shocked had they discovered that there had been secret political
collusion between MacGregor, Thatcher and others". It points out that the police
National Reporting Centre, which co-ordinated police action during the strike,
was set up on the instructions of central government and not at senior officers’
request as was claimed at the time.
On organising solidarity action, the incapacity of the union
leaders showed the need to build genuine Broad Lefts capable of transforming the
unions. Even in the NUM, many of the left leaders, with a few exceptions, were
found wanting. Had there been an open rank-and-file based Broad Left in the NUM
before the strike started, especially involving people in Nottingham, then many
aspects of the strike would have been markedly different and in the miners’
favour.
Building Broad Lefts in the unions, especially the power
workers, would have made solidarity action from below – bypassing the
obstruction of the national union leaders – much easier to build. This would
have had a crucial effect, as was shown in the few cases where it was achieved,
in cutting off coal supplies to power stations and steelworks.
Right to fight
HAD THE MINERS won, then the whole course of history would
have changed. Thatcher and her government would have resigned and most likely a
Labour government would have come to power. The pit-closure plan would have been
dropped and, under pressure from a confident working class, even a Kinnock
Labour government would have had to carry through some measures in favour of the
working class, perhaps being compelled to abolish the Tory anti-union laws. One
of the principal reasons for Kinnock’s attacks on the miners was his fear of a
rising tide of militancy in the event of a miners’ victory – he didn’t want to
see militancy pay.
That is not to say, however, that pessimistic conclusions
should be drawn from the events of the strike. The miners’ defeat was
undoubtedly a setback for the whole labour movement but the fact that they
fought so valiantly and the subsequent historical vindication of their stand
shows they were right to struggle in the way they did.
The miners’ strike politicised a generation of young
socialists and produced a massive shift to the left in social attitudes, even if
this was not immediately reflected in industrial or political struggle. Had the
miners not struggled as they did under Arthur Scargill then the Tory pit-closure
programme would have proceeded much more speedily and many other anti-working
class measures would have been introduced earlier than they were.
But most importantly, the miners’ strike brought out the
willingness of working-class people to struggle to change society. New
generations will return to the lessons of the strike to ensure they are better
equipped to win their own industrial battles and succeed in the socialist
struggle to change society.
|