Spartacist League Dayschool :The Great Miners Strike 1984-85
Saturday 10 April, 12 noon – 5 pm

Guest speakers include: Howard Hopkins, former miner, Celynon South Colliery, South Wales; Wally Roberts, former miner, Lea Hall colliery, Staffordshire; Dick Hall, former miner, Warsop Main colliery, Derbyshire

Royal National Hotel, Woburn Place, London WC1
Nearest Tube: Russell Square or Euston
For more info: 020 7281 5504

Class war and class treason

The 1984-85 miners strike was one of the most significant battles ever waged by the British working class. For their courageous refusal to buckle, even under massive attack by Margaret Thatcher's brutal Tory government, the miners won unstinting support from trade unionists and from all the oppressed layers in society — women of the coalfields, Irish, blacks and Asians as well as gays and lesbians. To this day, Arthur Scargill and the NUM are vilified by the capitalist class, its media and Blair's New Labour government, all of whom have a visceral hatred of working-class struggle.

Twenty years on the chorus of attacks on the NUM for not having called a ballot refuses to die. The miners — who had voted with their feet and set up picket lines at every pit — knew that the call for a ballot was nothing more than an open appeal for strikebreaking. Yet this was the rallying cry not only of then Labour leader, the despicable Neil Kinnock, but also from “socialists” such as Workers Power and today's Communist Party of Great Britain, then known as “The Leninist”. As for the Socialist Workers Party, the late Tony Cliff boasted in a London meeting at the height of the strike that SWP members in steel plants in England, Scotland and Wales were crossing miners picket lines.

The Spartacist League/Britain insisted that the NUM must not be left to go it alone against the full might of the capitalist state — its cops, courts and jails. We fought to the best of our ability to spread the strike to other unions, calling for a “Fighting Triple Alliance” — of the miners, railworkers and dockers — to “Shut down the country!”

While the vindictive Thatcher government was out to destroy the NUM, internationally the imperialists were intensifying their drive to destroy the Soviet Union. Although bureaucratically degenerated under Stalinism, which usurped political power and ultimately undermined the socialist consciousness of the Soviet working class, the fundamental gains of the Bolshevik Revolution continued to be embodied in the Soviet Union. Scargill spoke out against this anti-Soviet crusade, correctly saying that Polish Solidarnosc, the only “union” Margaret Thatcher ever loved, was “anti-socialist”. For this he was witch hunted by the TUC who set out to isolate Scargill and the miners union. Unlike the Workers Revolutionary Party who set up the NUM for this attack and the likes of the SWP who joined Thatcher in heralding Solidarnosc, we fought against the witch hunt of Scargill and for the defence of the workers' gains in the Soviet Union. As we noted, Scargill was as capable of recognising the class line in Poland as he was in Britain.

The miners were betrayed by the treachery of the right-wing Labour and trade union leaders. However, particular responsibility also lies with the Labour “lefts” who refused to challenge Kinnock as well as the leaders of the dockers and rail unions that had the power to shut down the country if they had struck alongside the miners. The reason they did not shut it down is political — this would have posed the question of who would open it up again, meaning which class has power in society, the capitalists or the workers. While Scargill led the most militant battle he could have, he refused to break with the Labour Party. Instead he remained tied to Labour “lefts” like Tony Benn and Dennis Skinner and their perspective that “socialism” could be achieved through the election of an Old Labour-style government.

The miners strike demonstrated the need for a revolutionary party with a conscious understanding of the historical, international interests of the proletariat — a tribune of the people that could unite all of the oppressed who came out behind the miners in the struggle for workers power. Such a party must base itself on the hard-won lessons of the miners strike. Join us in our commemoration of that great event — learn from the miners who fought for all of us, and join us in the fight to build the multi-ethnic revolutionary workers party this country needs.