11.12.2014
Ramsay MacKinnock and Judas Willis - Dump them!
The tone of this Jack Conrad front page from the December 1984 issue of The Leninist reflects the urgent situation the miners found themselves in at the end of the year. With the divisions in the union’s ranks hardening and the lack of effective solidarity from the wider workers’ movement, the strike was approaching a crossroads. While there was still everything to fight for, there were some ominous storm clouds gathering
The miners are fighting a heroic battle, not just for themselves, but for all workers. Their victory will be a major step forward for all workers in Britain; conversely defeat for them would be a strategic setback for our entire class.
Because of this those at the head of the workers’ movement should be expending every ounce of their energy in backing the miners. They should be travelling the length and breadth of the country to rally support, they should be on the miners’ picket lines, and they should defend the miners, whatever tactics they are forced to adopt.
But what have we seen?
- The Eurocommunists’ favourite Labourite, Neil Kinnock (or Ramsay MacKinnock, as many a miner now calls him1), has done his utmost to keep silent about the miners’ strike in the Commons. The leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition declared himself too “busy” to attend National Union of Mineworkers rallies; later he offered his services on the picket lines - as an “observer”. This leader of a party that miners and other trade unionists directly finance through the political levy would rather see the miners lose than see his carefully cultivated image as a future safe manager of British capitalism damaged in any way.
- What about Norman Willis? His “violence is not the way” Judas speech in Aberavon not only earned him praise from Kinnock and all sections of the bosses’ press, but Thatcher herself was so moved by it that she lionised him as a “distinguished” union leader. Willis’s “support” for the miners is utter cant - it’s true he’s no general: in fact he’s a deserter who deserves that hangman’s noose waved in front of him by militant miners.2
The miners and their militant supporters are learning bitter lessons about the value of the resolutions passed at the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party conference. Those who lead these organisations never had the slightest intention of delivering genuine solidarity; they were out to control, trap and betray the miners’ strike through some rotten compromise. With ‘friends’ like these, who needs enemies? The miners are right to call them scabs.
Given the misleaders Kinnock and Willis, the unleashing of the courts against NUM funds, the unprecedented media propaganda campaign, National Coal Board bribery and police terror, it is not surprising that many TUC ‘lefts’ are wilting. They have proved themselves great windbags full of militant rhetoric, but when it comes to solidarity they have contented themselves with tokenistic gestures and calls for charity - certainly meaningful industrial action has been noticeable by its absence.
Faced with this downright treachery and formal solidarity, the NUM leadership has two courses open to it. One demands a radical break from the venal Labour and trade union bureaucracy and an appeal over the heads of the misleaders directly to the rank and file, especially the militant minority. If the NUM leadership called for the dumping of the misleaders, fought for a general strike against the anti-union laws with or without the TUC, it would be possible to galvanise the workers as a class against the Tories and their class, against whom today the miners fight alone.
Instead of this, the NUM leadership seem determined to maintain their ties with the TUC and Labour Party tops - they have even in an act of desperation turned to the church. No-one should doubt the determination to see victory of many in the NUM leadership, Scargill in particular, but their reliance on bishops and proven traitors might yet see the seeds of victory turned into the fruits of defeat. They are right to place the sheer grit of the militant miners at the centre of their strategy - but without the mobilisation of the workers as a class, victory will be far harder, more costly, the miners more prone to divisions and exhaustion. In other words, the NUM leadership is fighting a war of attrition and trench warfare, when with allies a blitzkrieg could be employed.
It is because of this that NUM militants, and those militants in other industries who are committed to “total physical support” for the miners, would be ill advised to simply tail the NUM leadership. This is especially so when not a few in it have been openly floating the idea of a ballot on whether the NUM should accept the sell-out deal given to Nacods -terms which Thatcher demands be accepted and the other half of the Labourite ‘dream ticket’, Hattersley, is actively canvassing.3 What is more, certain NUM leadership ‘lefts’ have shown that they lack the backbone of the rank-and-file militants: their lack of courage could potentially tip the balance in favour of those seeking ‘favourable’ surrender terms. Only by taking control of the strike and broadening it can militants guarantee total victory.
So, while Arthur Scargill, Mick McGahey and Peter Heathfield are to be praised for their refusal to condemn miners’ violence, militants are still confronted with the burning necessity of organising that violence. We have argued since the beginning of the strike for workers defence corps. Formed now out of the bravest pickets, the unemployed, and those with military training, police intimidation could be rebutted, picket lines protected and peace brought to the mining communities. That already hit squads have been established, Molotov cocktails used, barricades erected and police stations wrecked only goes to show the correctness of this call and testifies to the fact that miners and their communities have spontaneously looked in this direction independently of the NUM leadership.
But, as well as meeting police violence with workers’ violence, militants must also take on board the task of spreading industrial action and providing real solidarity. The use of anti-trade union laws against car workers and their union cries out for linking their struggle to that of the miners. Indeed all workers can be drawn into struggle alongside the miners on the basis of fighting the hated anti-trade union laws. Emotional appeals for solidarity are all very well, but workers must have something to concretely gain if they are to throw themselves into the fray.
To make this perspective a reality the ideal vehicle would be transformed miners support committees, coordinated at a national level. In the last edition of The Leninist comrade Malcolm Pitt, president of Kent NUM, stated that the miners support committee should “take on more and more the character of councils of action”: they should “have a role far beyond merely collecting food or putting out leaflets on behalf of the miners”.4
It is this much needed transformation that the solidarity conference on December 2called by the Mineworkers Defence Committee should confront. It should lay the basis for a National Miners Support movement which could act as the organising point for the estimated 25% of the trade unionists who are prepared to take strike action in support of the miners. Mobilised, they could bring swift victory for the miners and bring the now arrogant Thatcher to her knees.
Notes
1. The reference is to Labour politician Ramsay MacDonald (October12 1866-November 9 1937). In 1931, in the midst of the economic crisis, MacDonald formed the ‘National government’. Only two of his Labour colleagues agreed to serve and so, in effect, the man joined the Tories, who were the majority in the new administration. MacDonald was expelled from the Labour Party and his name henceforth was synonymous with betrayal in the workers’ movement.
2. Norman Willis (January 21 1933-June 7 2014) was the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress from 1984 to 1993. Willis was a weak and ineffective conciliator, who spent much of the strike attempting to moderate the stance of Scargill and the miners and advising Kinnock, with whom he was on very close terms. The Aberavon incident is a reference to when Willis deputised for Kinnock at a rally, largely to save the Labour leader from the barracking he would have got from the miners. A hangman’s noose was slowly lowered from the rafters and dangled tantalisingly close to the traitor Willis’ head.
3. The National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (Nacods) represented colliery deputies and under-officials in the coal industry. A proposed strike by these supervisors late in 1984 - provoked by the NCB and voted for by 82.5% of the membership - threatened to close down all remaining working pits. Thatcher was desperate to see the strike averted and wrote: “We had to make it quite clear that if it was not cured immediately then the actual management of the Coal Board could indeed have brought down the government.” Roy Hattersley was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party alongside Kinnock in 1983.