A homage to British miners

Today I would like to pay homage to Britain’s miners. It is 25 years on from the start of their epic struggle to defend their communities. Their message was that, neo-liberal economic policies, operated as state dictat, would have a disastrous outcome for their country. They were so right.

Their year long strike in 1984-85 was against mine closures, to save their communities, their livelihoods and Britain’s energy supply. In this they failed, but in the desperate defence of their industry they showed the true value of human solidarity, of a kind needed to overcome the present global crisis.

They, their children and now their grand children have suffered the horrendous consequences of their defeat. Unemployment remains very high in their wrecked communities as over 300,000 jobs in the coal industry alone were killed off. Their children and their grand children are targeted by drug pushers. A few are joining gangs. Drug addiction and alcoholism are higher than elsewhere. Sounds familiar?

Be in no doubt who these men were. Former Tory Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan summed it up when he said in 1984, in a pointed message to Mrs. Thatcher, ‘the miners are the best men in the world – they defeated the Kaiser and they defeated Hitler’. They were in the front lines and dug the tunnels in the dangerous mud of Flanders and northern France. Kiwis know they were not alone.

I had the great privilege of advising their union for 10 years until 1993, on health and safety and technology. Throughout, they remained cheerful, and often incredibly funny. They would ring up the National Office and ask, ‘Is that the Marie Celeste?’ after the name of the ship found sailing around the world with no crew. As the mines closed, staff members were made redundant, too. In the end, few were left.

The defeat of the miners represented the virtual death of industrial Britain. Industry is now one third of what it was in 1979. North Sea oil and gas is running out fast, all but a handful of mines are now shut, never to be revived. The UK will be importing all of its fossil fuel by 2020, with huge balance of payments costs.

If someone asked me, 'How would you fix Britain?' I would have to say - go back to 1983 and reach an industrial modernisation and technology agreement with the miners and present it as a model for the rejuvenation of British industry. This was on the negotiating table in 1983 but Mrs. Thatcher refused to discuss it. In the 1980's, the UK had the most technologically developed coal industry in the world, after Prime Minister Harold Wilson set up Plan for Coal, out of the 1973/74 oil shock. It could have led the world.

Never has any community of working people contributed so much to their country and yet been so badly treated. The miners powered the industrial revolution. At the peak of the coal industry in 1913 there were 1.1 million miners or one in 10 of the work force.

They dared to oppose Thatcherism. In the US this was Reganism and here it was Rogernomics. The deregulation they all promoted has brought the global economy to its knees. The removal of banking controls led to crazy new financial instruments, the housing bubbles and a soaring, toxic debt. This blew up in September last year.

The Immingham strike

John Monks, European Trade Union Confederation general secretary and former TUC GS was interviewed on Sky TV and handled this difficult issue every well, I thought. It spelt out the issues for workers' rights in europe and in the UK.

I note also that one of the strike leaders said they had sent the BNP packing when they showed up to support them. Brown and Mandelson need to realise that a failure to properly transpose the Posted Workers Directive into UK law and take other measures, means that in deep recessionary conditions, there will be further support for the BNP among the unemployed and poorly paid.

Immingham is an important test point for UK politicians and for the CBI; for if they do not care, as long as British employers can have access to cheap labour anywhere in Europe or at home, the chickens will surely come home to roost. It is a very important test point for the unions as well, as Immingham is one of the few places in the Yorks/Humber/Nth Lincs region where they still have some bargaining power. These are guys who are pretty tough and being paid quite well in a sea of lower wages.

I have seen an analysis of average BNP support across the North West in advance of the European elections and it is rather optimistic that it is not widespread enough to win a seat, albeit it very strong in pockets as around Burnley etc, but the point is that it is very high indeed in depressed regions, such as the former mining towns in both West and East north of England. If that depression grips more towns then BNP support will increase....the LP is nearly moribund in many places in the north and the unions are very weak indeed at local trades council level.

What is interesting in what I have read is that the press are broadly sympathetic for once to the workers' side and do not seem to have mentioned that the strikes are actually illegal, with the unions subject to fines if they are not ordering their members back to work, around the country.

For Brown and Mandelson, it is the toughest test of all, as it will decide if they remain 'free market Keynesians' more sympathetic to the employers' side, or true inheritors of Roosevelt and his New Deal for labour (he gave orgainsing rights to american unions in the 1930s as part of the New Deal) On that I am a sceptic, I'm afraid, but unless they do make it clear that they stand on the side of working people, they will may well fail in reviving the British economy.......their strategy of throwing so much money at it, without trying to lift the people's spirits, is unlikely to succeed. They need to give new rights to workers and to unions to organise, as Roosevelt did and try to secure an EU style social dialogue agreement which the unions can also deliver on.

Immingham is a case in point - will they commit themselves to resolve the inadequacy of the Posted Workers Directive transposition in the UK and press to have the recent European Court of Justice judgements on cross border employment cases resolved in EU legislation? They could set this down as collateral for the unions, in return for bailing out CBI members with taxpayers money. It is the government's choice - will they remain false "Rooseveltians" and in the end just hand power to Cameron, who will care even less at the end of the day and is leader of a party which has by no means resolved its European arguments?