Grim Prospects for Miners

OVER 700 miners took part in the Parliamentary lobby organized by the Scottish NUM last week and expressed their feelings on the subject of pit closures. Scottish miners are both angry and frustrated. The pit closures are to go on, and the prospects of alternative employment are grim.

Since 1947, 128 pits have been closed. The Coal Board's plan is for a further run-down of the Scottish coalfield. New pits such as the Rothes pit in Fifeshire, a f14 million scheme begun only in recent years, are to close now, as well as old, worked-out ones.

Not Profitable The Rothes pit stands over rich coal seams which the Coal Board experts say cannot be worked profitably. Scottish officials of the NUM predict that it will in fact close in May this year and that the 1,000 men who are working there will face a 'very difficult future'.

Lord Robens describes their plight as 'redundancy'. In other words, they face the sack.

Miners who are retained in the industry will have to travel to England and may only be offered jobs at lower rates of pay.

In Scotland the prospects of other employment are almost non-existent, with unemployment standing at 3.8 per cent in Glasgow and as high 10 per cent in other areas.

Do Nothing Once the Rothes and other pits close, some miners will have no option but to throw themselves on to the labour market and to take any job they can get. This is what the Tory government wants.

The right-wing leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers is determined to do nothing about this situation which will upset its close co-operation with the NCB.

It intends also to see that all the areas of the union are kept in line. It condemned the lobby This Paper is your Weapon IN the fight for socialism, The Newsletter is playing a vital role. Do you get it regularly? Don't leave it to the chance encounter, fill in this form and send it to:

Subscription Department, The Newsletter, 186a Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4. 7s. for 12 issues, or £1 8s. per year Name Address Registered at the G.P.O. as a newspaper Published by The Newsletter. iBoA Clapham High Street, London, S.W. 180 Clapham Hizh Street. London. S.W.4 Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU). which was organized by the Scottish area on the grounds that an approach to government and Parliamentary leaders was the right of the national leadership only.

The leading members of the Communist Party in the Miners' Union are not prepared to challenge the right-wing control of the union, organize the rank and file to replace them and lead a militant fight against the Coal Board.

Will Paynter, since his election to top office, has condemned every form of independant militant action in Yorkshire and Scotland.

Condemned

When the Scottish pits spontaneously called one-day strikes against pit closures earlier this year, Alex Moffat, secretary of the Scottish area, condemned them.

On the instructions of the National Executive the threatened one-day stoppage for March 7 was called off and only the march of 700 miners to Parliament was held.

The right-wing leadership has called a halt on demonstrations. What do Paynter and Moffat propose? Are the miners to wait for Robens to 'return to his socialist past' , as one poster called for on the Scottish march?

Sit-Down

At the Rothes pit the men are talking of staging a sit-down strike against the closure. Scottish miners are ready to fight against the Coal Board. What is needed is leadership and a policy.

The policy for the rank and file is not hard to find. It must be a call for an extension of nationalization, the complete lifting of all interest payments by the nationalized industries, and the control of the pits at naiional, regional and pit level by the miners unions through rank and file committee.

A leadership must be built by the rank and file to fight inside the NUM for this policy.

PUBLIC Glasgow Christian Institute, 70 Bothwell Street, turday, March 24, 7 p.

LAN TO BEAT TI TORIES ' G. HEALY