15.06.1995

Answer ‘illegal’ ruling with action

‘HOW DID we drop a bollock like that?’ the miners are asking. Basically we took advice from the Electoral Reform Society on the conduct of the ballot and were told the strike against RJB could start from midnight on the last day. The judge has ruled that this is one second too late and had to be already happening by then. Times were when we would have held mass pit head meetings, heard the arguments for action, and then voted by show of hands for a strike.

The ballot was always an ‘either-or’ in this industry, as demonstrated by 1984. What mattered was the metal of the membership, not the fashion of recording it. In the very recent past an employer’s injunction would not have stopped a strike we had resolved to take part in. We’d have gone ahead anyway, but that was when we were younger and had the wind in our hair. Today we have to be very much more cautious not to swing the more timid members away from action.

Still, it is a dangerous decision to wait two weeks to a national conference to decide on what action to take now. Suppose we decide to re-ballot: it will be at least a month before the whole thing gets set up again. Time for endless propaganda and scare stories to be spread by the employer and the trail to go cold. The re-ballot should have been organised at once. A wildcat should be let loose all over the country on the day we had planned for action, to show the bosses’ court just what we think of them.

There is much to do though: the danger of non-unionised miners walking through the lines is only too real. We should be talking to such men face to face, day by day, and winning them back to the union and back to strike action.

Dave Douglass

vice chair of South Yorkshire NUM panel