14.03.1996

Press forward!

From 'The Workers’ Weekly', paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, February 19 1926

In the stirring message below, the EC appeals to the miners’ delegates who assembled at the special conference this Friday:

YOUR delegate conference meets at a time when the whole of your members are living under the most appalling conditions within living memory. The coal owners at the Samuel Commission have shown themselves to be the most callous and brutal employers British capitalism has yet produced.

Their demand for longer hours, less wages, increased production and district agreements is their reply to you when you ask for a living wage to feed your wives and children.

The mining areas today are the ‘famine areas’ of Great Britain, and they ask you to take less wages.

They ask you for increased production when the more coal you produce the worse becomes your lot.

They ask you to work longer hours: at the present moment almost 300,000 miners are unemployed and the owners estimated that another 100,000 miners would be added to the ranks of the unemployed ...

The capitalist press is saying that there is soon to be a trade revival, and if you strike for a living wage you will retard this ... That is a lie.

Capitalism is decaying and in the attempt to preserve itself attempts to impose further burdens on the workers ...

Miners of Great Britain! The Communist Party is confident that you will again lead the way in the workers’ struggle.