The Labour government, the TUC bureaucracy and the capitalist press were unanimous in their glee at the result of the NUM ballot on Labour’s incomes policy. The result gave the media a ‘mandate’ to give full rein to their red-bashing and put-downs of the so-called “mindless militants” among the NUM leadership.
There is now a growing feeling among the rank and file of the NUM that the ballot of the membership was ‘rigged’. Not rigged in the accepted sense of the word, such as a deliberate falsification of voting returns; no, this rigging was of a more insidious and devious nature.
First, look at the conditions under which the ballot was taken. It was only eight days after the end of the 1975 NUM Annual Conference (which had decided to ‘seek’ wages increases that would result in faceworkers receiving a basic wage of £100 per week) when the NEC decided to ballot the members on the question of the government’s “anti-inflation” package. That Conference had been subject to the pressure of an appeal to the NUM’s traditional loyalty to the Labour Party by a Prime Minister who has many times ‘deplored’ the ‘interference’ of political parties in trade union affairs. Nevertheless, Conference decided to ‘seek’ £100 for faceworkers.
Disarray
The right wing majority of the NEC read this to mean that faceworkers should eventually achieve a basic rate of £100 — but exactly when was open to speculation. Then, rather than call a Special Conference to discuss the £6 limit (which should be part of the normal process of the NUM) they embarked upon a new course of action.
In the period when the pits are in a state of disarray — the holiday period when collieries close on a staggered basis to ensure continuity of production — the NEC called a ballot of the members. The recommendation of the NEC was to vote ‘Yes’ to a reactionary policy which would result in wage cuts and deprivation for the members and their families — a policy directly contrary to the objects of the union as laid out in the rule book (where it states that the objects of the union are a) to defend and advance the living standards of the members and b) to abolish the capitalist system).
By emphasising ‘collective responsibility’ the right wing of the NEC sought to silence the opponents of the £6 wage policy. In this they were largely successful. Campaigns for a rejection of the £6 limit were weak even in Yorkshire and Scotland.
The campaign against the £6 limit was both organisationally and politically overshadowed by the joint propaganda drive of the government, the TUC, the press and the NEC right wing.
A workforce that had just come back from holiday — had just ‘got away from it all’ — was subjected to a deluge of ‘national interest’/’all pull together’ propaganda from all sides. The traditional response of the NUM left — McGahey, Scargill and Co. — was totally inadequate. Their emphasis on the miners’ ‘special case’ and their ‘just deserts’ could offer no clear alternative to a membership that knows how crucial the support of other sections of workers has been to the two victories the miners scored against the Tory government. The left’s ‘special case for the miners’ could offer little way out of the corner into which the miners were being driven by the propaganda barrage. In fact, in stressing the miners’ sectional needs, the left only served to reinforce the illusory “class-wide” gloss that the Jack Jones flat-rate plan was giving to a wage-cutting policy.
In this way, the ballot was ‘rigged’ from the start. Many rank and file members are now saying that if the ballot were retaken now, the result would be reversed.
The Yorkshire area’s call for a Special Conference to review the wages question is a reflection of this feeling. It must be fully supported. In all probability the NEC will deny the rank and file the opportunity of changing their minds, stating that the ballot result should be binding until they decide otherwise.
This is largely due to the over-concentration of full-time officials on the NEC — bureaucrats who, because of the gulf between their own living and working conditions and those of the rank and file mineworker are totally unaware of the very real hardship that the pay limit entails.
Basically, these leaders accept the view that workers must pay the price for the crisis, and they have no alternative other than policing Labour’s wage cut policy. As one miner put it: “What justice is there in them bastards getting over £100 a week for sitting on their arses thinking of ways to sell us cut, when we can’t get it for working bloody hard ripping and producing coal.”
However, all may not be lost. Full time officials may have short memories, but the rank and file have not. Already in the winter of 1970/71, many rank and file miners became fed up with the frustrations of combatting ‘official’ bureaucracy and struck over their pay claim. Such action is a very real possibility on the issue of the £6 limit.
In the event of such action, there will have to be an all-out effort to spread it. Otherwise militant miners will face isolation, and the forces of the union throughout the country could be fragmented. The bureaucracy will play an easy game of divide and rule.
Sound base
It is essential therefore that miners prepare now to co-ordinate rank and file action in all the major areas of the NUM. What is needed is a rank and file organisation within the union which is capable of breaking the right wing stranglehold of the full-timers. This will not appear overnight. It will need consistent and concerted work by rank and file activists in the union — bulletins, newsletters, regional and national link-ups and conferences — in order to build a sound base on which a real rank and file group can be constructed. And it will need a clear and class conscious political programme to avoid such failings as those of the left over the ballot.
No flashy facade of a “rank and file” group (such as The Collier, one of the IS group’s “industrial promotions”) can substitute for this work.
In a situation of mounting tension leading to the outbreak of actions to break the £6 limit, such work will receive a tremendous impetus. The coming struggles will act as a spur, and this could transform the effectiveness of even quite a rudimentary rank and file structure. But such a structure must be begun now; otherwise there will be nothing to build on.
The task is not an easy one. But a great deal depends on it, both for miners and for the working class as a whole, in a situation where miners could help to defeat Labour’s attempt to make workers pay the price of capitalism’s crisis. In the event of unofficial action being taken, no effort should be spared to spread it and make it effective.
