No action on coal supplies TUC rats on miners

Congress. their first stab in the back leaders of the Trades Union A meeting of the TUC Finance and General Purposes Committee offered sympathy over the strike but nothing else.

Then they betrayedsed to organize a campaign of solidarity with the miners among the coal-handling unions.

When he heard of the blow, miners' president Joe Gormley said he was 'very disappointed'.

Speaking from the London headquarters of the National Union of Mineworkers he said: I would have thought this was one time the TUC could have shown itself to be The miners wanted a special meeting with union leaders representing dockers, seamen, railwaymen and lorry drivers to stop the Tories moving coal supplies and breaking the strike. But when inner the TUC committee-its cabinetmet they argued treacherously:

NUM had already direct touch • with unions whose members engaged in handling supplies, there was no necessity for the TUC to arrange a meeting of these unions. When he heard Than news Gormley retorted: am very disappointed they not consider this serious enough to get together to form concerted ideas 'I know some of the individual unions will react favourit would have been centralized, action had been The retreat by the TUC raises two questions:

Are we to another 1926, when the TUC leaders called off the General Strike and left the miners to fight alone?

Are the miners to be the next victims of the Tory war arainst the working class-like the postmen last year? They were driven back because the TUC's promises of support were only words.

• Everyone knows this strike is against the Tory government.

• Everyone knows that the Tory government want to smash the miners.

• And everyone knows that each retreat strengthens the Tories, whose war against the miners in *192% was 'moles drive them down their holes'. 'Daily Listen Telegraph' on the the right-wing miners' strike:

'Once the government has been challenged on this scale and on issue this im- portant, Mr Heath is unlikely to be content with less than a victory or, in victory, show great magnanimity.

This really is the language of class war and it scares the TUC leaders to death. The Tories are now relying on the TUC and the right-wing miners' leaders to sell the men out.

But this is not the attitude of the working class; they are behind the miners and, whatever the orders from the top, we are sure they will support them by practical action over coal stocks.

Trade unionists everywhere know the miners are ighting a battle for them.

Does any power worker, docker doubt that, with an engineer railwayman or alliance, they could force the Tories out?

Who stands in the way of such an alliance? Not the mer but the trade union leaders who showed their cowardice yesterday.

The way forward for the miners and all workers is to beat the Tories and bring in a new Labour government that will establish workers' control in the mines-so the men who work the pits can get the benefits of nationalization for the first time in 25 years.

There should be no flinching from the task after this retreat.

Workers on every coalfield must be mobilized behind the miners.

The aim should be to force the Tories to resign: to get a Labour government with a socialist programme.

Tom Jackson, the Post Office workers' leader, day called on other unions to support the miners. -Jiless they do something about it now, there is no hope for public-service trade unionism in future,' Jackson said.

Yesterday his union's London overseas telegraphists' branch committee passed a resolution calling on the TUC to support the miners by calling for 'a General Strike to defeat this illegal Tory government and force them to resign'.

Ernie Roberts, assistant general secretary of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, said in Newcastle: 'We want the sort of unity that should have developed around the Post Office workers' strike last year.

*If they win, so can the rest of us who want more wages. If they go down, so do the rest of us.' Gormley: 'disappointed' Saf ONLY day three of the national miners' strike and the witch-hunters have launched their first phoney campaign - the safety scare.

The 'Glasgow Herald' tront page carried this screaming headline: "Many pits face permanent closure over safety revolt'.

Other national newspapers peddled a similar line. The 'Financial Times', the paper of the bankers and brokers, said: 'Anxiety about pits safety'.

This sudden concern about pit safety will surprise miners up and down the country.

They work in one of the More s paid of 188 millights the ting trades Tynes three montes