BY HUGH ROBERTSON
MANCHESTER, England - Miners in the Nottinghamshire and
Yorkshire coalfields are discussing how to resist a pay offer
imposed by the bosses at RJB Mining. A team of Militant
supporters visited six pits February 11-12. Members of the
Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) were in the process of
balloting for an industrial action, and miners in the
National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) were to start voting
February 15.
The offer is for a five-year contract with a pay increase 1 percent below the rate of inflation and the consolidation of some bonus payments into the basic pay.
In 1984-85 the NUM waged a yearlong strike over the issue of pit closures that generated mass support among working people. At the time there were 183,000 miners nationwide. Fearing the impact of this growing sentiment, the leaders of the labor movement blocked it from turning into active solidarity. With the strong encouragement of the government of Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher, NUM officials in Nottinghamshire led the majority of miners there to break from the union and form the UDM.
They continued to produce coal throughout the strike, allowing the state-owned British Coal to outlast the miners and defeat the strike. Over the next eight years, the government and bosses decimated the coal industry, despite protests that included a 40,000-strong march in London in 1992. In 1994 the remaining British Coal pits were sold off, the majority of them to RJB Mining, a company owned by Richard Budge. There are now 21 deep mines. Fifteen are owned RJB Mining, employing some 7,100 miners.
We first visited Welbeck, Thoresby, and Harworth in Nottinghamshire. The big majority of miners in these pits are members of the UDM; a miner in Welbeck reported that out of 470 miners there, 80 were members of the NUM. At each pit several workers stopped their cars to talk with the team or put a thumbs up as they went by. Most declined to buy the Militant saying they didn't take money to work, but readily took leaflets about the strike by airline catering workers at Skychefs at the London Heathrow airport.
There is a majority sentiment of anger against Budge in these pits. One UDM miner at Thoresby said it was "about time we gave Budge a run for his money."
An NUM miner took a Militant at Welbeck. His jacket, like many other NUM miners, carried several badges commemorating the 1984-85 strike. He pointed to how other workers such as nurses had recently won pay rises and said, "We need a strike." Obviously pleased, this worker said he thought the UDM miners were ready to fight.
Another NUM miner was less sure, saying he didn't think UDM miners should be trusted.
The next day we visited Rossington in South Yorkshire and Wistow and Stillingfleet in the Selby area farther north. Miners in these pits are almost all in the NUM. At Stillingfleet, despite the pit manager forcing the team to sell almost a mile from the pit head, miners stopped their cars for a discussion and five bought the Militant. Most said they were confident of a yes vote when the NUM balloted, but a minority of miners were clearly hostile.
Nigel Pearce, a miner and NUM delegate at Stillingfleet, said that he was excited by the prospect of a positive result for action in the UDM ballot.
"We've taken 14 years of beating," he said, hoping both unions would take a stand. Just prior to the ballot the NUM published an eight-page issue of The Miner, the first time it had been issued in two years.
The NUM in Yorkshire organized two meetings at Selby and Knottingley at which 100 and 50 miners, respectively, attended to discuss the ballot. A miner who attended the Knottingley meeting said this was twice as many as in similar meetings held two years ago.
There was no doubt there was a strengthening sentiment that the common enemy was Budge and that the miners from both unions could be part of a fight. However, most miners looked to Budge's reaction to the ballots, and although angry and ready to fight weren't yet preparing for action.
The UDM announced its ballot result February 12. Around 2,500 workers were balloted, and 56 percent of those voting were in favor of taking action. A miner later explained that when he went to work at Stillingfleet for the Friday night shift he found his NUM co-workers excited by the result of the UDM ballot.
The big-business papers reported nervously on the miners' vote. The Times, for example, commented, "Mr. Budge should renegotiate with the miners now, before his business loses what little confidence is left."
UDM officials announced February 26 that they would be putting a revised deal before union members in the coming days. The new deal would mean pay raises more or less keeping up with inflation. Meanwhile, the NUM announced March 2 that its members had voted 57 percent in favor of industrial action.
In Yorkshire, the team found out through local papers about a one-day strike of bus workers involving more than 1,700 members of the Transport and General Workers Union in Sheffield, Rotherham, and Doncaster. We visited the bus depot in Doncaster and found a spirited picket line. Strikers reported that this was their first strike in 15 years, and it was 100 percent solid, despite a divided strike vote.
The strike came out of frustration at the fact that they had not had a pay raise for five years, except for profit- related bonuses, and that their boss, First Mainline, had withheld the last profit-related payment as they "hadn't reached their profit targets."