13.08.2015

Sad degeneration

What does Arthur think about backing Yvette? Dave Douglass reports

It is now public knowledge that ‘the NUM’ is backing Yvette Cooper as leader of the Labour Party and this has produced some clamour among members of the labour and trade union movement who hold our once bold union in high regard. I am afraid the situation is a reflection of the chronic decline in the standard of political understanding in the National Union of Mineworkers in this final stage of its life.

The rank and file of the NUM always stood head and shoulders above members of other unions in their clarity and understanding - not only of the class war, as it broke here, but also with a fairly comprehensive understanding of what was going on around the world and where we stood in relation to it. To an extent it’s true to say the current NUM leadership is not blessed with its finger being on the political pulse of the class struggle in Britain, never mind the rest of the world. This has led recently to some appalling positions being adopted.

Since the inception of the South African NUM, the British NUM has had the closest links and for a time during and after the great strike we hosted many visits by South African shaft stewards and regional union leaders. They attended our conferences and vice versa. Our education schools sometimes looked in detail at their history and the political development of the movement. We had them stationed in our villages and took them to visit our pits and even attend branch meetings.

Since that time, the NUM in South Africa - at least the leadership and its own political direction - has lost the plot big style. Your coverage of this process has been first class. Sadly, this hasn’t filtered through to our current leadership’s understanding of the situation and sections of the NUM leadership here, after recent visits there, have adopted the slavish loyalism of the most reactionary and bureaucratic sections of the South African NUM. I have been shocked to hear the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), despite their heroism and militancy, described as “the scab organisation” and “the breakaway outfit” in the same terms as the Union of Democratic Mineworkers here.

The position on Ukraine is just as bad and perhaps worse: ignoring the actual struggle of the miners in Donetsk (90% of miners work in east Ukraine and are ethnically Russian). The NUM invited over the pro-Nato, pro-European Union, Kiev-based miners’ union leaders, who don’t in any way speak for the miners of Ukraine. We ended up with an absurd conference vote, with only one side of the story being presented, supporting “self-determination” for Ukraine when actually it’s the direct opposite. The position is becoming even more entrenched after a visit to Kiev by South Wales secretary Wayne Thomas, who has produced a recent report on the war in Ukraine, entirely as seen by the current rulers in Kiev. I will return to this in more detail in another edition.

So we come to the NUM nomination of Yvette. Firstly, just at that crucial time, Hatfield Main had its eye taken dramatically off the ball by the closure of the colliery and sacking of the miners with no notice at all. This was the result of an act of sheer political spite on behalf of the government: the doubling of tax on coal within two weeks of coming to office. British coal was already hanging on by its fingertips. Even then the pit would have survived, but ensuring it would hit with maximum impact, they imposed it not when the fuel is burned (it’s supposed to be a carbon tax) and the carbon is produced, but when it’s bought. This would mean Drax paying double tax up front on a fuel it might not use for six or eight months, so it simply chose not to buy it. Instead, they will use their current massive stocks, still produce the carbon, but actually pay 50% less tax on it. When the stock is run down, the market will return, but Hatfield will have died (or been killed) in the process.

I can’t believe this was anything other than careful manipulation aimed to do just what it did do. The turmoil around the politics of that decision, the fact the men will be paid only basic state redundancy and the abandonment of multi-million pounds of equipment (including a £4 million investment from the NUM), all ensured no-one at this pit was thinking of Corbyn’s career, but rather the loss of their own and the futures of our kids and grandkids.

This left Kellingley in the Yorkshire area to nominate. The general secretary of the NUM and secretary of the Yorkshire area is a Kellingley miner, as is the vice-chair. So why Yvette? The only surviving pit in Britain (until December of this year anyway, when that will close too) is Kellingley. Yvette is their MP and she has conducted their campaign against closure. She was odds on for the men at that pit to vote with local interest. When it came to the NEC meeting which decided the nomination, it was clear it was a done deal, with Nicky Wilson, the rightwing NUM president, Wayne Thomas from South Wales and others gushing support for her. The North East area was the only dissenting voice following Corbyn’s hero reception on the platform of the Durham Miners’ Gala, or the personal and political closeness he has to many regional former miners’ leaders.

Davy Hopper, general secretary of the area, couldn’t get a seconder for the Corbyn nomination he submitted, and insisted on the vote being recorded, as he didn’t want anyone to say this was a unanimous decision. It is doubtful that any of the miners at Hatfield even knew it was taking place. Although I personally am on the anarchist left, I wish Jeremy every success. His candidature has opened up a whole platform of debate and discussion and rattled the cages of the status quo and the political elites, which have successively tried to exclude the great unwashed from any meaningful participation in politics. I see the labour movement as a whole, not its parts, and clearly a development of this magnitude is going to send tremors throughout the whole spectrum. It can only be progressive, no matter what one thinks of the Parliamentary Labour Party or the Palace of Varieties.

Come to think of it, the last time Hatfield Main NUM nominated was in 1986 and we proposed Monika Lewinsky, which was accepted as the Yorkshire area’s nomination. Only Scotland nominated Neil Kinnock. It was a close-run thing with me proposing Monika, much to the delight of the conference, and the red-faced dour Scot, Nicky Wilson, with eyes blazing and steam coming out of his lugs, defending Kinnock. Arthur Scargill, in the chair, dryly remarked: “I couldn’t possible comment.”

David Douglass