Coal 'talks about talks'

Workers Press no. 666, 19 January 1972 · scan pages 2, 3

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MINERS' leaders have agreed to TUC general secretary Victor Feather's invitation to meet the Coal Board this morning for 'talks about talks'.

NUM president Joe Gormley said yesterday that the general secretary of the trade union movement 'was entitled tr call us together.

But Gormley added that any useful talks must include the possibility of an improved offer.

Asked how this move would be viewed in the coalfields he replied:

I don't see why anybody should read anything sinister into it unless they want to MINERS IN Scotland stopped essential oil supplies to power stations yesterday, writes Stephen Johns from Edinburgh.

Oil tankers were turned away at Cockenzie power station outside Edinburgh by pickets after the interventior by Scottish miners' leaders.

'Our aim is to bring the generation of electricity in Scotland and in Britain, for that matter, to a halt,' said Jimmy Young, a member of the Scottish miners' executive.

The district strike committee of the Lothians area will meet today to extend the ban on oil.

Without these supplies the coal burners in the power stations cannot be started off each day.

Oil supplies were stopped after two Transport and General Workers' Union representatives from the big Grangemouth refinery on the Firth of Forth met members of the Scottish executive on the Cockenzie powen station picket line.

Asked if electricity was the miners' concern, EC member James Tennyson replied: 'We surely are concerned with the disruption of industry in this country because our strike is against the government.' He was speaking after a meeting of 700 Lothians' miners had made it clear that they would outlaw any attempt to bring in an independent tribunal to judge their claim.

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