25.11.2010

A Militant take on the Great Strike of 1984-85

David Douglass reviews Ian Isaacs's 'When we were miners' Ken Smith Press, 2010, pp180, £7.99

Future researchers seeking to understand the 1984-85 miners’ Great Strike, and its aftermath from the perspective of the actual participants - rather than the social and class iconoclasts, bourgeois academics, kept journalists and postmodernist, ‘end of ideology’, class and theory philistines - would do worse than consult the hundreds of first-hand accounts of the women, the children and ‘ordinary’ members of the coal communities who set their hands to writing their own chronicle of events and their own histories. In this book they will confront at every page the nonsense that somehow almost a million people, including the women and children, were hapless dupes of some superleader or victims of an ego feud between Arthur Scargill and Margaret Thatcher.

Ian Isaac’s rather poorly titled autobiographical account adds another slim, but vital volume to the collection. Ian was one of the most prominent comrades of the Militant Tendency and its Broad Left Organising Committee (BLOC) in the South Wales coalfield. The strength of the book, though, is in its day-to-day impressions rather than any lofty political analysis or newly revealed insights. This at first reading is perhaps a little disappointing, and I for one would have expected more from a political activist. Ian nonetheless describes how important his politics were in the years after the defeat of previous prime minister Ted Heath and the struggle against Thatcher.

Ian left the Cowley car works to head home to Wales following the miner’s victories of 1972 and 74 and found work in the industry which had been his father’s and grandfather’s before him. Soon afterwards he again follows his dad and wins a place in Ruskin College from the pits. Then he moves into the car works at Cowley on graduation and became a militant steward and a longstanding member of the Communist Party. Ian, however, goes back to the pits, as is the more common custom with Ruskin miners, and he is almost immediately elected lodge secretary - an almost unheard of honour for a man of his youth.

He rapidly progressed to the area executive committee of the South Wales National Union of Mineworkers, as well as being part of Militant’s fight within the Labour Party Young Socialists and Labour itself. As a very public and popular ‘Trot’ he and the new thrust of militancy carried forward by a new generation of miners soon confronts the old CPGB/Labour left/‘Broad Left’, with its more cautious approach to tactics and strategy. In this, his trajectory is very similar to my own, although I would have found many areas of disagreement with Ian then - as I do now with his reflection on these events.

Differences

Some of these are simply differences of fact. Ian, for example, compares extracting the coal from the awkward seams of South Wales to the “factory-like conditions that prevailed in much of the Midlands and Yorkshire coalfields”. I would have to say that after 30 years on the stone gates (tunnels) of Doncaster coal faces, I doubt there was ever any factory like those. In my The wheel’s still in spin there are numerous examples of quite horrendous and fatal working conditions at Hatfield Main and Rossington collieries. Both sunk into a nest of geological faults.

Ian gives a brief run-through of miners’ history, during which he mentions The Miners’ Next Step, the 1912 platform for radical syndicalism in the coalfields. I cannot agree with his conclusion: “The miners’ problems were to be resolved through militant action through the miners’ unions and the local institutions themselves. They fostered the belief that they didn’t need support from the rest of the trade union and labour movement.

“These syndicalist sentiments expressed a view that society could be changed through the concerted action of the miners and their trade union. There was also a belief that socialism could be achieved in this way as well, and not through a political and industrial struggle throughout society itself” (p7).

Of course, the syndicalists believed no such thing. The Miners’ Next Step was a specific strategic pamphlet aimed at drafting the Miners’ Federation nationwide into a fighting industrial union, democratically accountable to the rank and file. But this was very much part of an overall political class struggle for workers’ power based on industrial unions and workers’ committees. The syndicalists rejected notions of vanguard political parties and believed in direct workers’ soviets, but this was hardly sectional and especially not ‘non-political’.

I must confess to disappointment that Ian, who should be in a position to enlighten some of the darker corners of South Wales’s involvement in the developing struggle, does not do so. One of the crucial and, to be honest, baffling pages in the history of the anti-closure struggle of the 80s was the debacle at Lewis Merthyr. Having been knocked back by a wildcat action which swept the coalfields in 1981 in protest against the first wave of closures, Thatcher found herself unprepared and withdrew with a bloody nose. In the period between this and the fight proper three years later there was much sparring and testing of each other’s strengths.

One of these tests came with the threatened closure of Lewis Merthyr. Lewis responded with pickets, which stopped the Welsh coalfields and the strike spread throughout the country. My own pit, Hatfield, was lobbied by a delegation of local women, a number from former Welsh families. We voted unanimously to strike with Lewis and for the Yorkshire coalfield to be formally called out. There was sporadic, hit-and-miss picketing actions across the coalfield, but the emergency meeting of the area NUM council agreed that the whole coalfield would stand with Lewis from the coming Monday. With the prospect of Yorkshire pickets themselves joining the action and halting the country, the fight was back on.

At this crucial point, someone urges the South Wales EC to go the national executive - not for endorsement of the area actions under rule 41 of the NUM rule book, but to call for a national ballot. The pickets are withdrawn, the pits return to work, the ballot is held and we lose by a margin. It was one feature of this whole story I was never able to pin down in my own work, though I persisted with the South Wales officials I had contact with. Who pulled the rug? Who advised such a disastrous strategy when coal stocks were still low, when we had caught them asleep at their posts?

I would have thought Ian could have told us, but instead he simply reports that the pickets came home from Yorkshire and other places - presumably after failing to win support. One must ask if he actually knows what really happened here. It was one of the turning points of the whole period; it cannot be unrelated to the subsequent rejection of a national ballot by the NUM conference in April 1984. Ian expresses his belief in the national ballot and his disappointment at the decision, but does not mention the reasons for it.

“In 1983 South Wales miners’ pickets had had a difficult time in the Yorkshire coalfield at the time of the TyMawr/Lewis Merthyr dispute. Although Welsh miners were provided by the Yorkshire NUM with the facility to address pithead canteen meetings, the Yorkshire miners at that time had refused to come out on strike with their Welsh brothers” (p42). As explained above, this is not at all as I recall the situation. True, some pits had refused to come out of their own accord, but picketing was far from systematic and only a few pits had been chosen - and those were the more moderate North Yorkshire collieries rather than the militant Doncaster ones. The area, however, in response to Doncaster resolutions, voted to come out lock, stock and barrel. Somebody, somewhere has been given the wrong story.

Physical force

The Militant Tendency, contrary to its name, has always in my experience been a most conservative body when it comes to actions of physical force. Its position toward the Irish insurgency was notorious in that it condemned armed struggle.

During the 84-85 strike, if Ian’s attitude to vigorous opposition to scabs and cops is anything to go by, Militant adopted much the same attitude. He describes initiatives like paint-bombing scab lorry windows as “pranks” - which were “out of order and not to be repeated”. Erecting road blocks and hurling missiles at scabs is likewise condemned: “I told them who I was and asked the men to take the material away and not be so stupid. This kind of prank could have killed someone” (p53-54). Similarly he seems to disapprove of “the cranes being occupied at Margam Steelworks Harbour ... in what I thought was another prank at the time” (p89). He tells us he did not condone pickets at his own pit turning over the manager’s car after members of the supervisors’ union, Nacods, crossed the picket line and fighting broke out with police (p91). Another “prank”, no doubt. Likewise he condemns attempts to stop safety workers and equipment getting into pits: “I agreed with the decision and abided by the advice ... to ensure that safety teams were provided to keep the mines clear of harmful gases, well ventilated and safe for when the strike was over” (p71).

But the truth was they were pissing up our backs - asking for us to be responsible and provide safety workers and equipment, but then recruiting blacklegs and strikebreakers. Once management started to do this, and the police were given their heads to mow us down, all reasonableness was off the table. Let them do the safety work with their scabs and get their equipment through if they could. We wouldn’t help.

The difference in attitudes between Ian and myself - both executive members of our respective areas - could not have been greater, though it is clear the responses of the rank and file were much the same - they were up for anything. Doncaster branches issued, along with packs of sandwiches, black widow catapults to pickets (part of Class War’s ‘aid to the coalfields’ consignment).

Needless to say, Ian condemns the Welsh lads who dropped a concrete block onto a scab-herding taxi in Trelewis from a bridge - but it was tragic only insofar as it killed the scab herder and not David Williams, the scab. Of course, it was not intended to kill anyone. It was dropped to stop the taxi and the scab as a spur-of-the-moment action, and there but for the grace of god went any one of us, who threw everything we could find at scabs and lorries and cops. There but for the grace of god also go all the mercenary drivers and selfish bastard scabs and cops who survived the quite justified torrent of class rage. The death toll at this point was two pickets and three kids digging for coal against one scab’s driver.

Although Ian talks about the growing conflict with the steelworkers and the flashpoints at steelworks like Margam, and later talks about Llanwern, Ravenscraig and Orgreave, he does not address the reasons why this flashpoint came about. How the agreement granting exemptions, which had kept them at work but not producing steel, had been kicked into touch. Incidentally he talks about “Ravenscraig steel works in Lancashire” (p73). It is hard to believe a person in Ian’s position did not know Ravenscraig was in Scotland, so we must conclude this is some sort of printing error.

The truth is, it was Arthur who had torn up the agreement and took the steelworkers over the line. Ian on the contrary seems to believe we had Orgreave summed up when the police launched a provocation there and Arthur reluctantly was drawn into an operation he did not agree with. “He [Dennis Skinner] told me about Orgreave, that momentous event on June 18 1984, and he said the NUM virtually had an agreement from the T&G on site that this was to be the last shipments of coking coal to Ravenscraig [actually to Scunthorpe - DD]. I will never know who the controlling mind behind that event was. I don’t think it was Arthur Scargill, who was compelled to be there later in the day because his office was only a couple of miles down the road in Sheffield” (p89).

I go into great detail about the whole Orgreave shenanigans in my book Ghost dancers (Christiebooks) and am able to show the whole plan from start to finish was Arthur’s - his greatest misjudgement in the entire 12 months.

The biggest turning point in the whole dispute was the decision by the Nacods leadership to sell out their own 80% ‘yes’ strike ballot and sign up to a unilateral deal, which, as time would tell, did not save one job or one pit. Why and how this betrayal came round is one of the huge gaps in the contemporary histories of the dispute. My work leaves the question unresolved, after having explored the evidence such as it is. Ian gives us just four paragraphs on the subject, and in this he tells us it was the NUM which refused to sign the Nacods proposal on closures - the generally accepted version says it was the other way round. Ian also tells us that the Nacods mandate for strike action simply expired. This is a new version without any sources or evidence and seems, frankly, doubtful. The ballot result and the crucial negotiations were within days of each other, and the sell-out was achieved within a week or so of the ballot result, so the mandate had not expired: it had simply not been acted upon.

Return to work

In the closing days of the strike Ian tells us he supported and spoke for the decision of the South Wales executive to propose to their area council that they return to work without a settlement. That he put that proposition to the area council against opposition from branches who wanted to fight on. He explains that 50% of the English coalfields were now back at work. Actually, though the North Yorkshire coalfield was threatening to go back unilaterally, only 6% were back at work in Yorkshire (less than South Wales) and were resolved to stick it out.

The most interesting and revealing part of the book comes in its discussion of the post-strike situation. For the first time the developing internal political struggles in the coalfields that followed are revealed. So too the ongoing rank-and-file democratic struggle against the burgeoning bureaucracies at area and national levels of the union and in internecine wars between the two. It is clear in the period after the strike and soon after the dust settled that the members were still up for a fight around key questions of principle and strategy, while area leaders and the NEC would turn hell and high water to ensure we did not make that a reality.

The levels which area leaders would go to set up and victimise rank-and-file leaders in the post-strike era was as bad as anything the NCB conspired to do to the militants. I am at one with Ian in knowing what it feels like to be both blacklisted by the NCB and stabbed in the back by union leaders. In Ian’s case they refused to allow him to transfer to another pit and instead sent him to a gas pumping station that was soon to be closed. With nothing to do, he tried to play silly buggers with them - going through the motions of being at work, but then locking up and going home. Unfortunately he was set up and under surveillance and sacked. He ended up with a year’s salary after a half-hearted defence by a union leadership which hated him almost as badly as management did. In my case, after privatisation I was blacked from Hatfield colliery, but the men took me on as branch secretary and the Mining Community Advice Centre employed me as welfare rights and tribunal representative. The area NUM under Arthur refused to accept this was employment and denied me expenses and loss of earnings for 10 years.

Ian like me had all this stuff crashing around his head and wanted to set down his story. I am glad he did. Every piece builds up a rich mosaic, an overall panoramic picture of an incredible generation of struggle.

Activists of the left and labour movement will be interested to read this book - not least because it is the story of a Militant activist and supporter of BLOC. Together with the earlier work, The miners’ strike, a civil war without guns, by Ken Smith (also a Militant supporter), it details the role of the Militant Tendency and its perceptions of this key page of working class history.