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While right-wingers like Chapple, Hammond and Sirs carry the main blame for not mobilising in defence of the miners, the TUC 'left' leaders, although sincere in their support for the miners, have also failed to organise widespread solidarity action. Photo: Bill Thorndycroft MIR Jan 1985: Editorial The cost of the dispute in financial terms has taken a terrible toll on the economy. This factor must carry considerable weight among important sections of the Tory party.
The most serious representatives of the ruling class, however, realise that the most serious threat to their system cuts or the falling is neither power pound. It is the lasting effects upon the relations between the classes and the of the working class consciousness which will result from this strikeirrespective of the outcome. The agonised pleadings of Lord Stockton - not the least capable of the leaders of the Tory party-reflected this fear of the strategists of capital. the blinkered and hysterical Unlike Thatcher, they can see a yawning abyss of class antagonism opening up at their feet. They are trying to warn the government that, even if they "win" the strike, in the long-run they will have lost. The bitterness and class hatred will remain for decades, as it did after the defeat of 1926. The effects of a defeat, given the catastrophic economic decline of British capitalism, would not usher in a period of labour peace, but would only be the prelude to new and more violent storms. And out of this, ever wider layers of the working class will begin to draw revolutionary conclusions.
Betrayal of right-wing Yet the bleatings of Lord Stockton have no more effect on Thatcher and her clique than did the warnings of Cassandra about the fall of Troy. The blindness of the Tory leadership is not due to madness, as Neil Kinnock and the TUC imagine, but is a reflection of the impasse of British capitalism. From their class standpoint "there is no alternative" to driving down the living standards of the workers, the unemployed, the poor, the sick, the old and the young. By so doing, they are stoking up new social explosions in the future, If the miners, despite their truly magnificent struggle, were to be defeated, the main responsibility will lie at the door of the right-wing leaders of This strike has been deliberately provoked by the government in order to inflict a heavy defeat on the NUM in preparation for an all-out onslaught on the unions and the working class. The philosophy of this government is summed up in the phrase of Lord Londonderry after "Red Friday" in 1925: 'Whatever it may cost in blood and treasure, we shall find that the trade unions will be smashed from top to Yet, in the hour of danger, the rightleadership has played WE astms disgraceful role. Chapple, Sirs, Lyons and Hammond have openly stabbed the miners in the back. Chapple and Murray have already received their well-merited reward from the ruling class. Sirs will not be long behind in the queue for a Lordship "for services rendered".
tant to require further comment. But what of the left on the TUC? The railway and transport workers are led by men who are sympathetic to the miners'
however sincere they may be, the left leaders, too, have failed to deliver the goods.
The facts are perfectly clear. The prepared government were organised for months and years in advance. They have had a clear strategy from the outset and have worked out their tactics with military precision from day to day.
Where has been the alternative leadership on the other side? The rightwing never had any intention of waging a fight against Thatcher. If it had not been for the pressure of the miners and the rank and file they would have surrendered to Thatcher months ago. But what about the left on the TUC? They undoubtedly would have liked to support the miners. But they lacked the most elementary strategy, tactics or method to do so. With all the resources at their command, they have proved impotent to wage a campaign to counter the poison of the Tory mass media, to rouse the membership and to organise efficient solidarity and blacking which would have brought the government to its knees in a very short The argument which is advanced that "we can't carry our members with us" really sums up the inadequacy of even the most honest left reformists. The mood at the bottom is one of support for the miners. That is revealed by the reception of the miners at every trade union conference and by the collections of food and money. But there has been no serious campaign to explain the issues to every union member and to organise effective solidarity action. Instead, union headquarters have issued instructions, frequently leaving the carrying-out of these instructions in the hands of local and district rightwing officials whose support for the miners is often far from clear. Leaders' false pessimism In the boom period of the fifties and sixties, this method of doing everything sufficient.
members could be relied upon to respond. But this is no longer the case. There is a new generation, with a more critical attitude to the leadership, who are not prepared to take everything on The example of Liverpool shows that a properly organised campaign of explanations can convince even layers of the population which do not even participate at the level of the union. That is how to galvanise mass support for struggle against the Tories. Only a conscious Marxist leadership is equipped with the necessary ideas and methods to carry this out. That is the real reason why the Liverpool labour movement was able to inflict the only real defeat Thatcher has suffered up to the present time.
From the beginning of the dispute, the supporters of Militant and MIR have consistently put forward the slogan of a one-day general strike as a
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warning to preparation later date.
Neil Kinnock, whose support for the strike can only be described as lukewarm, has launched an attack on this idea, which he contemptuously describes as the "big bang"
The right-wing-and unfortunately the left leaders also-are obsessed with the idea that, if a call for action were issued, the workers would not respond. Yet a recent survey published in The Guardian revealed that even now, without any campaign by the leadership and despite all the hostile propaganda of the media, 35% of trade unionists would be prepared to take action.
The possibility for action exists. What is lacking is a leadership capable of giving an organised expression to the pen-up anger of the rank and file. The right-wing - with whom Neil Kinnock has apparently reached complete agreement-have really accepted capitalist society and act accordingly.
On the other hand, Tribune has moved to the right, displaying a sorry spectacle. With a few honourable exceptions like Dennis Skinner and Tony Benn, the main features of the "left" have been spinelessness and amorphousness throughout.
As to the "Communist' Party, whose chief theoretician, Hobsbawm has earned the praises of the right with his "theoretical' justification of the abandonment of class politics, that organisation has now entered into a phase of final disintegration reflected in the unedifying spectacle of the "Star Wars" which has absorbed much of its energies throughout the miners' strike.
On the union front, of course, the leaders of the NUM, especially Arthur Scargill, have towered head and shoulders above the rest. But even they did not have a really worked-out strategy for the strike.
Yet the decisive factor in the situation has been the iron determination of the miners. Against this rock, all the fury of the enemy has been broken. Three times, the ruling class, using its tame hacks in the media, tried to break the strike by organising a "return to work" campaign. But each time, the attempt has failed.
The strike has been a nightmare for the ruling class. They had hoped for an easy victory. Ten months later, the dispute has already cost them at least £ 5,000 million. A whole generation of workers have become transformed in struggle. The Tories have been forced to lean heavily on the state apparatus, exposing the role of the police in the eyes of the workers. They have been compelled to ditch the mask of liberalism and reveal the ugly face of capitalism beneath.
the government and for an all-out strike at
All this will have a profound effect on the working class. Beginning with the advanced layers, the class as a whole will begin to draw revolutionary conclusions from the whole situation.
The hopes of Thatcher and co for a period of tranquility if only the miners are defeated will soon be dashed. In the epoch of capitalist decay, strikes are no longer mere interruptions of "normal" class relations which are then resumed as before. The example of the Tilbury dockers shows the new face of capitalism. When a strike is defeated, the bosses put the boot in.
In this hard and cruel school, an entire generation of workers are relearning the lessons their grandfathers had to learn in the past. The need for picket lines, the need for unions, the need for the Labour Party and socialism —all these things will be learned afresh in the terrible class battles which impend.
Photo: Martin Shakeshaft
The Tories have been forced to lean on the state apparatus, exposing the role of the police to the labour movement.
Even in the worst event-that of a defeat for the miners- the Tories, as the former Harold MacMillan tried to explain - would have lost. They have lost because their system is completely undermined. On the basis of capitalism there is no way out.
The extent of the terrible coliapse of British industry was revealed in an incredible advertisement which appeared in The Times last November. This stated the following:
'After the war Britain was the 3rd largest steel producer. Now we are 10th... In 1900 Britain made 60% of the world's shipping. Today we make 3%... Britain once exported motor bikes to over 100 countries. Now we import almost every machine we buy... Before the war almost every car on our roads was British. Now well over half are foreign... Britain pioneered the world machine tool industry. Our share is now 3.1%... Bri-
tain discovered the wireless. We now import 96% of our portable radios... Britain made the first practical computer. Now we have only 5% of the Information Technology market... We once made all the textile machinery in the world. We now make 8%...
In the past, Britain was pre-eminent in every field of science, technique and industry. Now, the irreversible decline of British capitalism poses terrible problems for all classes in society. A shrinking surplus spells the inevitability of titanic struggles between the classes, of which the miners' strike is only the first.
"Civil
Without guns
The economic policies of the new breed of parvenu Tory leadersrepresenting the parasitic wing of capital, the financiers, property speculators and "get-rich-quick" merchants will only hasten the decline. These well-heeled drones seriously imagine that Britain can survive without industry, on the basis of banking and services! They have invested £40,000 million abroad in the last five years alone. This represents, not only the tendency of the capitalists to try for greater profits, but also has a social purpose. Like the French ruling class before the war, they would like to turn Britain into a parasitic "rentier" economy, in order to reduce the numbers and power of the working class. Such a policy spells absolute disaster for Britain. It would mean, not three but five or six or more millions unemployed, and a finished recipe for social convulsions. Not accidentally, Brian Walden wrote in the Evening Standard that the events of the miners' strike resembled a "civil war without guns" . That is a sombre warning of the shape of things to come.
1984 has marked the decisive change in the situation. With the miners' strike, the British working class has crossed the Rubicon. It has shown what stuff it is made of and what great things it is capable of.
in the next period, which will see great battles, with partial victories and defeats, with partial victories and defeats, periods of ebb and flow, the need for conscious Marxist policies will become clear. The workers will prepare for the task of the socialist transformation of society by carrying out a rootand-branch transformation of the Labour Party and trade unions. The idea will gradually take root-based upon harsh experience - that on the basis of this corrupt and degenerate system, no way forward is possible. Once that idea grips the minds of the millions of working class men, women and youth, no force on earth will be able to stop them.