Today, almost 25 years since the miners’ strike
began, the industry has been decimated, with only a few thousand jobs left. The
proud traditions remain as the Durham Miner’s Gala demonstrates each year, and
many miners have taken their fighting traditions into the wider labour
movement. But many of the pit villages are crumbling and the social effects may
never be completely overcome, on the basis of capitalism.
In parts of South East Northumberland, Durham and other former
mining areas there are a series of landscaped country parks, with lakes
populated by ducks, the odd swan and occasionally a pit wheel or a winding
house that houses a heritage museum or a craft shop. This, and the big
billboards with the European Social Fund logo and reference to ‘Coalfield
Communities’, represent all that’s left of the mining industry in many areas.
But this destruction wasn’t an ‘act of god’ or
some huge work of nature like the tsunami. This was a deliberately worked out
plan. It was an attempt to take on and smash the most militant determined and
class conscious section of the organised labour movement. And this was seen as
a critically important task by the ruling class ad their chosen instrument, the
Tory Party. It even had a name, the Ridley Report. Ironically Nicholas Ridley MP
was the brother of Lord Ridley whose ancestral pile sits right on top of the
Northumberland coalfield. Chain smoking Nicholas however never played in the
pit row or had to go hungry when his dad was out of work. He was living it up
down at Eton College with the other rich boys.
The Tories had been thrown out of office in 1974,
during the big upturn in strike action which is best remembered for its miners’
strikes, with power cuts and the three day week. Ted Heath went to the polls
asking the question: “who runs the country” and lost! The ‘70s were a period
where wave after wave of industrial struggle forced the bourgeoisie to look to
more extreme measures than ‘usual’, while at the same time the working class,
the unions and the Labour Party began to move towards the left. Many workers
began to draw revolutionary conclusions on the basis of their experience, while
Brigadier Kitson began to plot a military coup to overthrow that well known revolutionary,
Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
In 1974 the Tories drew up a plan as to how they
might take on and defeat a major trade union in the public sector or nationalised
industries as they were known at the time! Essentially it was a plan to launch
a one-sided civil war against the working class. The plan was quite thorough,
as became obvious when it was leaked to the Economist in 1978:
·
The government should, if
possible, choose who and when to fight;
·
The plan grouped industries
together based on an assessment of how easy they might be to beat;
·
Coal stocks were to be built up
at the power stations;
·
Coal supplies should be arranged via non union foreign
ports
·
Non union lorry drivers should be recruited;
·
Coal/oil dual fuel generators should be built at whatever
cost;
·
The state must "cut off the money supply to the
strikers and make the union finance them";
·
It was necessary to organise and equip a squad of mobile
police, ready to use riot tactics to defeat pickets.
But Ridley was no maverick, and it’s quite clear he wasn’t acting alone.
The plan was agreed by the Selsdon Group of right wing Tory MPs, a group that
included among its number both Norman Tebbitt and Margaret Thatcher who was
elected Tory leader in 1975.
Margaret Thatcher was eventually elected Prime Minister in
1979, by which time the right wing Labour government was utterly discredited
and the leadership isolated within the active layers of the labour movement.
Society was polarised, the Tories began to implement an economic strategy designed
to make the economy ‘leaner and fitter’. In other words they sought to make the
working class pay for the economic crisis that erupted between 1979 and1981. The
Tories responded by slashing benefits to the old and the sick, cutting services
and attempting to role back the welfare state, under the banner of “self
reliance”, “choice” and “the free market”.
The Ridley Plan was central to this programme, the
straightforward reason being that the organised Labour and trade union movement
represented the biggest single obstacle to their plans. 10 million workers were
organised in the TUC, potentially the most powerful force in British society,
and the working class was moving to the left. The Tories had to risk a
confrontation with the unions. The ruling class had no option, under conditions
of capitalist crisis. Like the conditions we face today either the bosses or
the workers had to pay. In the minds of Thatcher and her cronies there was ‘no
alternative’.
It would be wrong however to look at the Ridley Plan in
isolation. It was just one aspect of the Tories anti trade union onslaught.
Even today, after almost 12 years of New Labour, the laws governing trade union
activity in Britain remain the most repressive in any of the advanced
capitalist countries. Restrictions on picketing, the huge bureaucratic process
required to carry through strike ballots and the right of the government to
“sequester” trade union assets were all imposed to try and cut across the
potential for militant trade union struggle, which had been so much a feature
of the 1970s.
The ferocity of the struggle that the miners were forced
to wage to defend their jobs and communities however, revealed the limits of
the Ridley plan and the trade union laws. Despite the plans that the Tory government
had prepared and despite all of the legal mechanisms and ploys that they used
to undermine the strike, the battle of pit closures lasted for almost a year.
The level of support within the working class for the miners meant that
millions of pounds were raised on the streets and from the labour movement to
support the miners and their families. The Tories were forced to move the legal
goal posts on several occasions to try and shackle the National Union of
Mineworkers. Ultimately the failure of the trade union leadership and the
Labour leadership around Neil Kinnock to offer full political and industrial
support to the NUM was the decisive factor in the defeat of the strike.
The class struggle is a battle of living forces,
involving real men and women. The strategy and tactics of the ruling class are
an extremely important factor in the situation, but of even more importance is
the role of the leadership of the working class. The Ridley Plan was just part
of a drift under Thatcher towards authoritarian rule in Britain, authoritarian
rule now considered necessary by the ruling class. This was carried out through
parliamentary means, a form of ‘parliamentary bonapartism.’ as the Marxists
explained at the time. This reflected the crisis of capitalism and the fact
that the ruling class weren’t confident that they could rule through the ‘usual’
methods. Yet the strategy of the Labour Leaders was to adapt to the new
conditions by appearing to be “reasonable and moderate”. Meanwhile the trade
union leaders adopted a policy of ‘new realism’, essentially weakness and
collaboration. Under these conditions the outcome was inevitable – more attacks
on the working class and the poor, the weak and the old. At the same time
however the ideas of Marxism began to gain ground and began to become a
significant factor in British politics.
At the time of writing, the most likely outcome of the
next general election is still that of a Tory victory, albeit with a smaller
majority than that which seemed on the order of the day 12 months ago. The main
lesson of the Ridley Plan for the labour movement and the politically active
layers of the youth is that a Tory government would be forced to move against
the working class, to deal with the crisis that the capitalist system clearly faces.
In the dark corridors, and the city boardrooms similar plans will be being
drawn up today. Our task has to be explain the threat that this poses and help
arm the movement to fight and defeat the Tories.
