Lord Thomson's lackeys speak

out. You had the 'Sunday Times' February 13 urging the government to stick it out to the end against the miners. Gone was the liberal handwriting about the miners' special circumstances. Battle to one could doubt that the Tories were faced not only with the NUM, but with the whole trade union movement.

Under the heading 'Why the miners must not win', the 'Sunday Times' urged the government to even more forceful action (John Davies had already put most of the country on a three-day week). Is the price of fighting the miners worth paying? the paper asked.

It concluded that Otherwise there would sharp reversal of the limited success against spiralling wages and prices' which the Tories, in their eyes, had gained so far.

Surrender 'would be an even more damaging and insidious prospect than the imminent national stoppage of industry. Any recognition of inflation would remove still further the possibility of attacking unemployment and the prospect of expansion would diminish'.

On the same page, Ronald Butt spoke of the 'almost lethal blow' that might be delivered to 'the economy and the fabric of British society by "this minority' of intransigent men.

'The point may come, he said, 'when the Prime Minister may have to choose between the coercion of a minority, led by men whose motives now seem to be predominantly political, and the safety of the state.' The fact that the leaders of this illegal Tory government are a minority whose motives are most certainly political appeared to have escaped Butt's attention, but it was graphically borne home by overwhelming popular support behind the miners.

The safety of the capitalist state was paramount in Butt's mind.. "This potentially catastrophic strike is, moreover, taking place,' he wrote, 'at a time when question whether Britain is becoming ungovernable JOHN SPENCER can be asked in all seriousness. Industrial and community life is being paralysed because the miners allow themselves to be misled by their leaders and tempted to use duress on others.

'In Ireland, similarly, well-meaning or silly men are captive is, indeed, silent: • The majority to ill-meaning men in the interests of destruction .

It was to remain so silent that the Wilberforce court of inquiry was forced to offer an increase way beyond the wages norm, and yet the miners' executive still felt strong enough to demand more.

Noting the bankruptcy of parliamentary democracy in this situation, Butt goes on to lament the arrival of what he calls 'something dangerously like a Weimar Republic phase of our history'. He hopes the silent majority will put this right by slapping down workers' unwarranted pretentions.

'Four years ago, at the height of the Paris mini-revolution, the supporters of de Gaulle and of order marched-250,000 of them, with hooters blaring and lights flashing - along the Champs Elysees. They marched peaceably as a demonstration of national order. That in tact, was the moment when the "revolution" collapsed.' Butt, of course, fails to point out why de Gaulle was able to rally his supporters not at the 'height' but at the final stages of the May-June events. It was because the Stalinist leaders of the working class had been able to regain their bureaucratic grip over the masses, in the absence alternative revolutionary leadership.

Other Tory commentators knew this basic mechanism of betrayal "Tactics like these suit only those who industrial anarchy,' the paper fulminated.

Plainly the Tories' great worry is that the working class has got out of control, that its bureaucratic leaders will be pushed too far and break up Heath's crisis-ridden government.

The Common Market debate in eight-stons, Toty is alone.

brought this fear evel mOre sharply to the fore. The ultrachauvinist 'Express', which has long opposed into Common Market, was forced out into the open.

Their editorial on the morning after the debate gave a token word of praise to the Tories who 'stuck by' their anti-Market convictions. But it also uncharacteristically praised Heath and the Liberals their firmness 1n support of entry. 'The insensate fury which Labour members directed at Mr Thorpe is the measure of their frustration, the editorial said. They are enraged that he should have acted accord-