The Miners Strike Re-visited

Featuring on the media recently has been the Miners Strike which ended 25 years ago. SOYMB offers a SPGB analysis of what took place .

It used to be said that workers can learn as much from an unsuccessful strike as from a successful one. So what, then, were the main lessons of the 1984/5 Miners’ Strike? Not only were the aims of the strike not achieved but the strikers’ union was split and reduced to an ineffective rump. It hasn’t even been a case of living to fight another day.

The declared aim of the strike was to keep open pits which by capitalism’s standards were “uneconomic”, i.e. were not making the going rate of profit (some were not actually unprofitable in the sense of not making a profit, but the profit wasn’t big enough compared with what could have been obtained if the capital had been invested elsewhere). A government can keep an “uneconomic” activity going for strategic reasons that benefit the capitalist class as a whole, such as security of supply, and the coal industry had in fact been maintained at previous levels for this reason while coal was a strategic home energy source for electricity stations to power industry. The government decided that the time had come to stop subsidising the coal industry. In the absence of strategic security-of-supply considerations, no government can afford to tax the capitalist class to pay keep unprofitable production units open, but will be obliged by international competitive pressures to apply the capitalist rule of “no profit, no production” and close them down.

Both the government and the NUM leadership were aware that the issue of keeping the pits open was going to be a trial of strength. We now know that the government had planned for the show-down well before it occurred, so that it took place on their terms and at a time convenient to them. The best thing for the NUM to have done would have been to taken the government’s superior strength into account and settle on the best terms possible in the circumstances , such as big redundancy payments and perhaps keeping open some of the pits that were making some profit even if less than the going rate.This would not have been cowardice or betrayal, but a recognition of the harsh fact that under capitalism the workers are a subordinate class with only limited powers to affect the course of events. Far less than those of governments, an unequal distribution of power that is at the very basis of capitalism. Trade union activity, including strikes, is necessary as long as capitalism lasts but it can’t work miracles. Strikes are essentially a trial of strength, testing the situation; once it has become clear what the respective strengths of the two sides are then both sides know where they stand and a settlement can be negotiated on that basis. Once it had become clear in the miners’ strike that the government was not going to concede and was in fact in the far stronger position, there was no point in going on with the strike.

As it was, the overwhelming power of the state was brought to bear . An illegal national police force being established, and the miners' freedom of movement restricted.In the first three months of the strike one miner was arrested every twenty minutes—3,282 arrests in all. Over 80 per cent of these arrests were for "breach of the peace" or"obstruction". Obviously the government had instructed the police to use thuggish tactics in dealing with the strikers.

The true heroes and victims were the striking miners and their families. In the face of dreadful financial hardship, media lies, state violence, the threat of blacklisting and the inevitable petty quarrels of people under stress, they struggled to maintain solidarity and to keep the fight going. Even as families and friendships fell apart, they still remain committed.the miners' struggle has shown the importance of solidarity between workers of one county and another one country and another. The sense of common purpose and dedication which thousands of miners have shown during the strike contrasted sharply with many previous struggles in trade union history, where workers have been conned into co-operating in their rulers' interests. Let any miserable little cynic who says that workers are incapable of self-organised co-operation take a look at the tremendous achievements in communal self-help which the strikers and their women-folk set up.

Socialists, as class-conscious workers ourselves, are on the side of our fellow workers involved in industrial disputes with employers, but this does not mean that this is unconditional. Strikes should always be run democratically with control remaining in the hands of those making the sacrifice of going on strike. Paid union officials should be their servants not their masters or leaders. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all decisions have to be taken by secret ballot. Decisions could also be taken by democratically-mandated delegates. But whatever the decision-making procedure adopted it should be democratic. The miners' strike was not organised by socialists and therefore it is not surprising that tactics have been employed with which we disagreed. It is possible that the division within the NUM could have been avoided. Full, democratic decision-making within the workers' movement is always the surest guarantee of strength.

In any strike between robbers and robbed the Socialist Party is unequivocally on the side of the robbed. In the class war no worker and no political party can be neutral. But in expressing solidarity with workers in struggle, we point out that our sympathy and their temporary gains will be meaningless unless victory involves winning the war and not just one battle. To win the class war workers must organise as a class for the conquest of all the Earth and all of its resources.

The SPGB pamphlet on the Miners Strike is available here