A revolutionary future for miners

lesson of the recent miners' strike over surface hours is that, without a revolutionary leadership, no amount of militancy can bring complete victory in a struggle which involves the government and the state.

Any political tendency which claims that all that is required is more militancy, better organization, a little more democracy and a few economic demands is tying the miners to the old leadership, no matter how 'left' it tries to sound.

This is the effect of a pamphlet *A Future for British Miners?' issued over active in the strike. of five miners Hickletor colliery, a leader of the Yorkshire strike committee which reinute to work without the 20 unanimously recommended minutes.)

However, it is necessary to ›e frank. he Partisan tian Press in Nod. g This ham, contains references to the Institute for Workers' Control (IWC). is A prominent figure in TWC associated with revisionist anti-Trotskyist groups.

We can safely assume that this pamphlet at least reflects the political influence of Mr Coates and his associates.

NO REFERENCE It is not surprising, therefore, that the pamphlet makes no reference to the role of the Labour government, says nothing about the Communist Party and makes no criticism whatsoever of the strike leadership.

The main proposal in the pamphlet is the old worn-out rubbish of a national fuel policy.

• The Labour and overnment was elected, Lawrence Daly was elected, it says, 'on the demand of the miners for a Fuel Policy' This is nonsense.

The miners voted Labour out of class feeling.

Labour was seen as the party of full employment.

And Daly was elected because he threatened to lead strike action against pit closures.

Since it was elected, the Labour government has closed over 600 pits.

It is therefore nothing but reactionary suggest that the miners to future lies in appeals to the same Labour government to come up with a new policy.

The government's policy is wages will first of all have to be held down ... and then reduced.

Our answer is that the balance of payments of British capitalism is not our concern.

We do not demand the use of coal rather than other fuels in order to help the British capitalists out of their mess.

NATIONALIZE

We demand the nationalization of the oil companies and the big steel and aluminium monopolies and a socialist fuel policy under workers' control.

The word 'nationalization' is nowhere mentioned in this pamphlet nor is there any reference to the massive interest payments which cripple the mines every year.

Yet there is no future for miners as long as the mining industry is dominated by the profit requirements of the big monopolists.

In the past, the 'left' tendency of Mr Coates has had a great deal about nationalization and workers' To fight for these things today, however, the Labour struggle against government, against the TUC and wing whịch tries to discipline the working ment, and against the trade union leaders.

(This last becomes particularly embarrassing when the gentlemen concerned are so willing to take part in 'Workers' Control' Conferences!)

Yet without this, 'workers' control' is transformed from revolutionary demand for ower into an administrative, bureaucratic manoeuvre "FRAMEWORK' This is how it is presented in the pamphlet:

"There is no alternative for it but together through the union we shall have to demand that we run the pits and elect the technical experts and other management to work for us.

"This cannot be done just on a pit basis, at colliery level.

'It will need co-ordination through area and national level of the union.

"The Coal Board cannot give up its responsibility to parliament general operation of the industry, but the union should have power of veto on the appointment of higher management; and although we should control local management we should still have to work inside the framework of national policy' (My emphasis J.G.)

Real workers' control requires the smashing of capitalist state power and its replacement by a new state based on the power of the working class.

These reformists transform this revolutionary slogan into a minor adjustment for the more efficient working of industry within 'the framework of national policy' — decided by the existing parliament!

In the same way, they avoid a struggle in the union.

Everybody knows the NUM leadership has failed to lead fight over closures and wages.

1 1r( Full aubecription (Posted dally) £10 a year £2 10s. for three months I would like to Name Address to the authors of this pamphlet, 'lies in the incompetence and lack of militancy of the national executive'.

This is dangerously and consciously misleading.

Since nationalization and up until last year, the general secretary of the NUM was a Communist Party member.

The Communist Party held At no time did this Party mobilize its members for a fight on wages and closures.

This was not simply lack of militancy, nor was it because they were particularly incompetent, but because the political line of the Communist Party-a parliamentary, peaceful road to socialism and peaceful co-existence between the workers' states and capitalism — prevented any struggle against the Labour government and the trade union bureaucracy.

STRIKE-BREAK

The Communist Party hailed Vic Feather's intervention in the recent strike as a 'breakthrough' and acted as a strikebreaking force.

It is impossible to write any pamphlet on the mines that is of the slightest assistance to miners that does not explain and analyse the counterrevolutionary role of the But this might also make Workers' Control' Conferences difficult to organize !

So, the political revisionism of the Ken Coates variety prevents those men who are influenced by it from drawing any of the political lessons of the last 20 years in the mining That is why they wind up in the camp of class collaboration and reformism. • The solution for mining is bound up with the building of alternative revolutionary leadership — which is what the authors of the pamphlet are opposed to.

blacks out