11.04.1996

NUM strength and weakness

In a spectacular demonstration of class consciousness and some personal courage, 85% of pit branch delegates in the Yorkshire coalfields voted to invite Gerry Adams as a principal speaker at the Yorkshire Miners’ Gala and demonstration to be held in Barnsley on June 15.

The debate on the subject was brief and for some, who cannot get the Union Jack out of their faces, shocking. It is hardly surprising that the biggest outrage was expressed by a guy once associated with the Militant Tendency and still blinded by social imperialism, so much so that he announced he had more in common with John Major than Gerry Adams.

No sooner had the decision been made when a tiny minority of dissenting branches started to orchestrate a hostile press campaign. Naming names, who said what, who voted what way. Certainly if this was the McCarthy era, some of us would be inside now thanks to comrades who feel their own respectability, and perhaps chances of advancement in Blair’s ‘new’ Labour Party, is more important than standing by collective decisions.

The screams from the MPs in the region, running about being outraged and shocked and trying to organise a boycott of the gala, were entirely predictable.

As it turns out, Gerry is busy elsewhere on the day and can’t make it. It is entirely untrue that he told Arthur his reputation wouldn’t stand being on the same platform as him.

The exercise was however immensely helpful. It marks out the difference between revolutionary socialist internationalists and the social chauvinist, social democratic liberals in the movement. It should also send a strong message to the IRA not to write off the English working class as a whole, and maybe cause them to rethink strategies of bombing civilian populated areas.

It also, like the SLP initiative, further moved the process of debate and discussion on the real issues affecting the working class on this island forward. The NUM leadership should be congratulated for keeping its head when the historical backlash began, and so should the bulk of the Yorkshire Area NUM delegates, trying against all odds of social prejudice and bigotry to demonstrate leadership and principle.

Below follows a section of a press release prepared by Hatfield NUM in response to the press outrage:

“Hatfield Main NUM branch condemns the hypocritical hysteria manufactured by elements of the regional press in response to the decision by the Yorkshire Area NUM to invite Mr Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, as one of our principal speakers at this year’s Yorkshire Miners’ Gala.

“Everyone else it seems is free to listen to and talk to Adams, including John Major, Dick Spring and Ian Paisley. Mr Adams is free to address meetings of Labour MPs, American senators and everyone from senator Kennedy to Bill Clinton ...

“Well pardon us, we just happen to be the working class, the hapless Joe Soaps expected to put on a uniform and die in every war the ruling class dreams up and does so without question: well not this time.

“We want the violence to end, and will not accept that there is only one side to the argument. We claim the right to listen to other points of view on this war. We have every reason to suspect this government in particular of not being honest with ordinary people in this country, because they have been duplicitous so many times. Within the pit communities, we know them of old. We also know something of being criminalised and called the enemy within ...”

Dave Douglass