Trust thy neighbour
By Robert Black
1971Robert BlackMiners Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
INDIANA'S law - and - order lobby have come up with a simple but all - the - more sinister plan, worthy of their White House mentors. MINERS DIE RESPONSIBILITY for the deaths of 38 Kentucky miners in last week's pit explosion is to be laid at the doors of the government and mineowners.
For both have long blocked implementation of the Mines Safety Act.
Eyé witnesses said when the Finlay Coal company's mine exploded, a cloud of smoke and dust 'as big as a mine hole roared out of the mine like a tornado' covering nearby trees with debris.
The explosion was caused by a blasting opération leading to Rescue workers deliver bodies from the Finley mine, Kentucky bourhoods.
they had lived for years.
a civilian spy network. type of inspection.
violations of the same law.
Safety Act put into practice. sition. federal aid towards a scheme for civilians to be paid for monitoring conversations and rumours about possible subversive or criminal incidents in their neighThe 'rumour-control monitors' would, of course, work secretly and operate best in areas where Director of Indiana's Criminal Justice Planning Agency Mr William Greeman was asked if the system would turn out to be Greeman admitted: "That's what it could amount to. We might not be able to trust our neighbours after a while. But as long as we're not doing anything combustion of loose coal dust.
A spot check in November revealed five infringements of the Federal safety laws at the mine, just on a 'walk-in, look-around' The mine was also closed for three days in June because of Miners in many states struck last year in an attempt to get the rudimentary standards of the They faced concerted oppoThe government had proposed to slash the mines' safety budget.
The Bureau of Mines already has only a fraction of the necessary inspection staff and has long worry!' Later realizing this reassurance would have precisely the opposite effect to that intended, Greeman retracted his admission claiming he had been 'talking off the top of my head'.
In the Indiana city Fort Wayne the scheme is already under way with 12 youths being hired by police at £l Is an hour 'to attend gatherings'.
The state police chief indicated the nature of the monitors' work.
Although they would not be involved in "political harassment' (provocations), he said, they were to eavesdrop on 'subversive' conversations.
been suspected of allowing mineowners to proceed with few restraints.
The extremely corrupt miners' union leadership under president "Tony' Boyle negotiated a contract outlawing strikes over safety questions !
Union • leaders have a direct interest in boosting productioninevitably at the expense of safety.
For each ton of coal mined employers pay 40 cents into the union's pension fund which is used as an open till by officials.
Union chiefs, politicians and pit owners-all will be brought to the bar by the working class for their crimes against the miners. in the rest of Spain and of meeting the hostility of international So when workers and peasants had set up workers' councils and had initiated a period of dual power, the CNT leadership consciously turned this movement away from the dictatorship of the proletariat to an opportunist collaboration with the bourgeoisie.
As Garcia Oliver put it in August 1936: 'Either we collaborate or we impose our dictatorship?
Thus, they prepared their entry into the Popular Front and their alliance with the Stalinists. This opportunism again expressed itself when the CNT refused to defend the POUM • against the We can draw one lesson from Lorenzo's book: if the CNT had constructed a party, it could only have reflected its own reformism and opportunism and opposition to Bolshevism.
In the struggles of the Spanish working class to build their independent organizations once again, a section of the Fourth International must be built for the success of the Spanish Revolution.
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