SALES OF THE ‘MINER’

Last Friday two of us took copies of the Miner to sell for the first time at Hatfield Main colliery, south Yorkshire—a coal-field which has anything up to 1,000 ‘unofficial’ strikes every year.

The Miner is a fortnightly paper written by working miners and published by Bradford (Lancs.) branch of the National Union of Mineworkers.

It calls for a policy of struggle against the closing of pits and against the National Coal Board’s attacks on price-lists. It criticizes leaders of the NUM for failing in this task.

After ten minutes at Hatfield Main sales were still slow. Only half a dozen had gone.

Then the union secretary, a local Labour councillor by the name of Kelly, came out of his box and advanced towards us, armed with a large piece of chalk.

Tv TWELVE INCHES HIGH. He proceeded to chalk on the ground in front of us, in letters 12in. high, the words: ‘THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL TRADE UNION PAPER.’

We assured him and the gathering crowd that he was saving us a good deal of breath, for we had been at great pains to explain to all our customers that we were not selling the Yorkshire Miner.

The Yorkshire Miner is the official organ of the Yorkshire NUM, and is largely written by officials— particularly by Machen, the president.

We tried to engage Bro. Kelly in discussion. But after a couple of sentences shouted across the yard he retired to his box, from which he did not emerge until we had left.

From then on, as the men walked up for their pay, we called their attention to the secretary’s warning and pointed out that the Coal Board and the local Tory Press were against the Miner.

Vv THE MAGIC WORD. And the men showed their opinion of the magic word ‘official’ by buying sixty copies in the next half-hour. _ The miners have seen the union, the Labour Party leaders, the Communist Party leaders, the NCB and the government in every ‘official’ statement, telling them for many years to work harder and help build towards future prosperity.

Now they are threatened with unemployment and wage cuts. Because the union has signed an agreement which makes ‘official’ strikes impossible, the men have to fight back with unofficial stoppages.

And Bro. Kelly thinks he can stop miners reading a paper by saying it is not ‘official’!

Another docker, Willie Burns, said it was a deliberate plan by the employers ‘to create a situation where five men are fighting for one job’.

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Another grievance of the men at this dock is that they have to sign on three times on a Friday, and are paid only after the third signing—even though the bosses know there will be no work all that day.

Consequently some men have to spend 6s. to 7s. on bus fares there and back to collect around 12s. for the day.

Glasgow portworkers are discussing the possibility of forming an all-Glasgow docks committee to fight the employers’ attacks.