FEATURES

Britain: ‘An island of coal’
Miners strike to save future

By GORDON MASSIE, SR.

The first major concern is to ensure that readers’
minds are disabused of any misconceptions they may
have concerning what the strike is about.

It is not about the narrow economic considerations of

wages and conditions but is about the future con-.

servation and exploitation of Britain’s most valuable
indigenous asset, coal.

It has been said that Britain is ‘‘an island of coal
surrounded by a sea full of fish’’; it is, therefore, patently
obvious that it is very much in the national interest that
this indigenous asset should be conserved (i.e. once a pit
is closed it can never be recovered) and exploited so that
the bulk of Britain’s energy requirements are coal based
rather than on future dependence on imported fuels (e. g.
oil, uranium).

In this respect it is the miners who are the patriotic
protectors of the national interest with their insistence
that no pit should be closed except on the grounds of
exhaustion (no more mineable coal) and for expansion of
the industry as opposed to the government and Coal
Board plans for contraction and pit closures based on the
capitalist ‘“‘balance-sheet’’ concept that a valuable na-
tional asset should be abandoned on the grounds that it is
“uneconomic” to exploit.

In fact, the term ‘‘uneconomic”’ is an arbitrary judge-
ment based on the extent to which government is willing
to subsidize and support the expansion of the industry in
the national interest.

The subsidy in Britain is only a tiny fraction of that o
other coal-exporting nations. :

Miners Defend Agreement

It is imperative to emphasize that, in this dispute, the
miners are striking in defence of a tri-partite agreement
made between the government, The National Coal
Board, and the National Union of Miners (NUM) follow-
ing on the 1974 miners’ strike guaranteeing the ex-.
pansion of the industry and which the government and
Coal Board are now trying to break and abandon.

The strike was actually sparked off by the Coal
Board’s abrupt announcement of intention to close five
pits within five weeks in contemptuous defiance of
agreed consultation procedures and to close 20 pits with
the loss of 20,000 jobs within 1984 to be followed by
further contraction spread over a few years to bring the
total of pits closed to 70 and the loss of jobs to 70,000.

The comparison between the agreed earlier ‘‘Plan for

Backgrounder

Coal’’ already referred to and the current Tory/NCB
attempts to butcher the industry are as follows:

“Plan for Coal’’
equals

HOPE

Tory/NCB
butchery equals

- DESPAIR

e Extended life for All existing e 20 pits to close, 20,000
pits, with increased output. redundant.

e New mines with 40 million e 70 pits closed,. 70,000
tonnes capacity. sacked.

e increase deep-mined e Budgeted output (1984/5)
capacity to 120 million reduced by 8.2 million
tonnes, rising to 185 million tonnes to 97.4 million
tonnes p.a. tonnes.

e No closures except through e Scottish, Welsh,
exhaustion. Northumberland, Durham,

e EEC-level subsidies, interest Kent and part of Midlands
relief, new markets. Coalfields ELIMINATED.

e New uses: Coal-to-oiland - e Loss of markets, UK and

gas to replace North Sea Oil overseas, Crippling debt
(Liquifaction, gasification burden.
etc. ). e Nuclear power program

e Higher wages, consolidated (Sizewell, Torness) to
bonuses, shorter hours, substitute for coal.
longer holidays, rate e Lower wages, longer shifts,
protection, earlier loss of wages,
retirement, increased jobs. redundancies.

e Consultation and e Dictatorship.
conciliation. e Privatisation, non-unionism,

e Britain's fuel of the future. higher death rates, etc.

e Revival of basic industries e Closure of Ravenscraig in
(steel, railways, 1986, continued general
vite yt shipbuilding deindustrialisation.
etc.).

Violence and
the Dole

It is necessary to emphasize the long-drawn out hard-
ship endured by the miners in defence of the industry.

The strike itself is now over six months long but even
Prior to this, in an effort to avert all-out strike, an over-
time ban operated for 19 weeks which in practice, meant
that the pits only operated from Tuesday to Friday as

Peace and Jobs

MOSCOW — Evangelist Billy
Graham’s 12-day visit to the
USSR, Sept. 9-20, included con-
tacts with Soviet church leaders,
some 23 sermons to congrega-
tions and travel from the Soviet
capital to Leningrad, Tallinn (cap-
ital of Soviet Estonia) and
Novosibirsk in Siberia. The U.S.

churchman, who previously vis-

ited the Soviet Union two years
ago, was invited by the Russian

- Orthodox Church and Soviet

Baptists, and afforded an oppor-

_ tunity to meet government lead-

ers as well as church leaders and
large numbers of people wherever
he went.

Graham noted before leaving

_ Moscow on Sept. 10 that he was

here at a ‘‘historical moment”’ in

_ relations between the USA and

the USSR. “‘I am praying and
hoping,’’ he said, ‘‘that we are
going to have more peaceful re-
lations, detente, negotiations on
arms and elimination of weapons
of mass destruction. And I am
hoping that my visit here is going
to make a contribution to that be-
Cause people in our country need
to know that the gospel that they
hear all the time is preached in the
Soviet Union. So they have some-
thing in common with each
other.”’

_ He said that churches and indi- .

vidual believers ‘‘have a special
role to play in working for a grea-
ter level of trust and peace in the
world.’’ He wanted his Visit, he
said, ‘‘in some small way (to)
make a contribution to better
understanding and peace in our
world.”’

Graham emphasized that he
supported total and complete dis-
armament, but that he was not a
pacifist. He was not for unilateral
disarmament as it had to be done
on both sides.

His previous Soviet Visit, he
explained, had made an im-
pression on the masses of people
in the USA. ‘They were sur-
prised that I was here and sur-
prised that I was preaching the
gospel in Soviet churches and that
I came to a peace conference. So
this made them ask questions, it
made them talk, it made them
discuss.

“Some people were critical,
some applauded and were happy
that Icame,”’ he added. “‘I think it
did make an impact ... we re-
ceived many hundreds of
letters.”’

Graham, seen here as ‘‘an
advocate of the peace drive’’ has
preached in 64 countries, ex-

Graham seeks peace exchange

plained what alarms him most in
the world.

“T think,”’ he said, “‘that Soviet
Academician Dr. Arbatov, in his
remarks on Today show in the
USA three or four days ago, said
it the way I would say it. He said
it’s one of the most dangerous
periods in the history of the
world. And I would think that is
true. And the thing that brings
about the danger is the misunder-
standing. The rhetoric which has
been sometimes very strong on
both sides needs to be toned
down. I also think the fact that our
leaders have not met in the last
few years and also the new
weapons, for example, the talk of
outer space war — all that is dis-
turbing me.”’

Conscious that the next war
could destroy civilization, people
in both the USSR and the USA
want peace, he said, but because
of the loss of 20 million Soviet
lives in World War II, Soviet
people have a stronger motivation
for peace.

_He praised Soviet churches and
religious leaders who having
struggled along with all Soviet
people during that war, were pre-
sently among the staunch ad-
vocates of peace.

Solidarity gifts and lettters contributed by Canadian trade
unions and labor bodies to the Striking British miners are
handed over to a National Union of Miners representative
in Nottingham, England by Marjorie Jacobs. The miners
were deeply moved by the instant response, which
proved a morale-booster. Among more recent solidarity
contributions is $35 voted by the annual review meeting
of the University of Toronto Club of the Communist Party
of Canada.

maintenance normally done over the non-production
weekend was not undertaken until Mondays.
Tremendous Support

This hardship has been to some extent alleviated by
practical and financial support from within the official
trade union movement at large and, in addition, by the
tremendous sympathy and support of the people at large.
Miners’ support Committees have been set up in most
towns and cities throughout Britain and regular weekly
street collections of food and/or money are taken outside
the major supermarkets.

Substantial financial contributions have also come

' from the international trade union movements in both

eastern and western Europe and further afield.

An outstanding example of this is that the Australian
Trade Union Committee has already sent over £250,000
(about $410,000) with more to come and within this the
Australian miners are levying themselves $5 a week.

At home, both the Protestant and Catholic Churches
have officially declared their sympathy and are en-
couraging their congregations to contribute money and
food to the broadly based Support Committees already
referred to.

The final seal of approval of the whole official trade
union movement recently took place at the Annual Con-
gress of the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) where
an absolutely unambiguous resolution was adopted, with
the full support of the General Council, requiring all
affiliated unions to give’ support to the miners.

Even with all this massive material support real hard-
ship is being endured, the ‘“‘soup kitchen’’ has re-
appeared in mining communities for the first time since
the 1926 Strike.

Police Violence

In addition to the hardship, miners are being subjected
to vicious police brutality on the picket lines, 6,000 have
been arrested and two killed and a considerable number
have been seriously injured.

. The violence of the state apparatus has not been con-
fined to the picket lines, police have made forcible illegal
entry into miners’ homes in the pit villages, and set up
road blocks to restrict the miners’ movements on the
public highways.

The so-called forces of “‘law and order’’ are resorting
to all sorts of illegalities in a desperate attempt to beat the
miners into subjection and this with the full approval of
the government.

In conclusion, the serious intention of this article is to
urge the whole official trade union movement in Canada
at all levels from the Canadian Labor Congress down-
wards, the national and provincial executives of the
various unions, right down to the shop stewards within
the factories to raise massive financial contributions and
dispatch them post haste to the British miners. (Note:
Since this article was written the CLC has contributed
$17,000.)

Consideration may also be given to collections with-
in the communities.

It should also be noted that large shipments of Cana-
dian coal and iron ore are still being shipped to Britain.

Gordon Massie Sr., a retired, life-long steelworker, lives at
Cumbaslang, near Glasgow, Scotland. As an active trade
unionist he has been a frequent delegate to conventions Of the
Scottish and the British Trade Union Congresses. He is cur-
rently working actively for community support of the striking
coal miners.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 3, 1984 e 9

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