CAPITAL -Could you say something about the effect of the Power Loading Agreement locally? Well apart from its other effects, for my own part the most important feature in the PLA has been a very cunning phrasing of the whole agreement which weights it very heavily in favour of management. If you take clause after clause they say "the men shall do this, shall comply with that", and when it refers to management, it says simply "the management may"; and it gives almost complete autonomy to management to select what they think are suitable workmen, suitable face-teams, suitable development teams, and this militates very badly against the more progressive, outspoken type of worker. -Would you say there has been a loss of control by the workers to the management? Most certainly. In fact in my own pit, there are very few men on the Union Committee left to operate on the forward production points. In fact, the election of a militant to a position on the branch committee is usually the signal for his very cunning persecution and isolation and this is a deliberate process on the part of the Board. It is done by in some cases offering them better jobs, or a more convenient shift to work on the changeround; whatever the way, I understand it's happening on quite a wide scale. -What kind of organisation do you have in the pits] believe you don't have a shopstewards organisation there?
No we don't. The organisation is from a branch committee, and this takes a very! loose form. In the big branches there's a committee of twelve, and sometimes it's a non-representative type of branch committee, maybe the twelve most popular chaps in the pit, and they may not have anything to do with the key sections of the pit. - Does this mean that there's no immediate union representation at the point of prodaction?
Yes, it's a very bad situation for us, and more and more, I think, the lads are beginning to realise that, until we have this sort of representation at the coal faces, at the point of production, it weakens their whole -What position have the NUM leadership adopted to this sort of thing? about solidarity actions?
Disgusting, and that just about sums up the general feeling. And the question that must be asked here is just how long we're going to tolerate an organisation which up to now hasn't in any shape or form come up to expectations with regard to organising and assisting unions to organise and get assistance. Everyone knows that had the TUC moved into action the Post Office workers would never have been allowed to go down. -How do you see the prospects for the strike? I'm very confident. Theze's a vast amount of capital tied up in this wet st and if the cards are played correctly the Coal buard are very soon going to have to say to the Government, if they haven't said so already, that they're going to have to take the responsibility for this, because some pits stand to lose as much as £2 million in capital equipment within a period of two to three weeks. And I would say that this is our main weapon. We must ensure that there is no assistance given to the Coal Board in maintaining it. Responsibility lies with the Board and the Government to settle the dispute quickly in order to save an enormous amount of public capital. -If the strike goes on for some time, do you think we will see the Tories trying to use the Industrial Relations Act against the miners? I would welcome this, very much I would wel. come it, because I don't think the Tories have ever been faced with a strike of this nature. They'd have to withdraw troops from the various parts of their small empire to cope with the situation if they eve: . to use the IRA. -How do you think we can defeat the Tories? By united action. That is why I say, if only the Government would move against the miners" union, even if this just meant imposing a cooling off period. It would probably be the very thing we require in order to get to grips, because it's easier to defeat an opponent when you can get to grips with him than when he's always taking a step backwards and you can't land a telling blow on him. I think this is the thing that would really worry thema real solid strike in a key industry and the others coming in behind. halt, while productivity even since 1963 has increased from an output of 33.4 cwt. per manshift to 44.2 cwt. in 1970. The result has been hardship for the miners and hefty profits for the Coal Board-profits transformed into losses after interest payments to the former mineowners are taken into account. In 1970 for example, the industry made an operating surplus of £34.1 million, which ended up as a profit of C0.5 million after interest payments. This gives NCB the excuse to turn round and claim they can't afford' to grant wage increases.
These factors have always been present, of course, but new factors such as unemployment have entered the situation. Whereas previously miners in the Midlands and the south of England regarded redundancies and closures with something approaching indifference, since there were always plenty of alternative jobs going in other industries in the area, the high level of unemployment nationally means that even in these areas redundancy can mean permanent or long-term employment. The crucial split between militant and conservative coal fields, which has always been played upon by the NUM bureaucracy (in the 1970 sell-out for example has begun to heal. The 7 percent Tory wage rise ceiling has forced the greatest solidarity between all coal fields for decades.
SOME WEAKNESSES The miners are entering this crucial battle with a position, it has to be admitted, less strong than last year. They will be receiving no strike pay, and single miners especially will have to fight the Social Security very hard to receive anything at all. There is talk of hardship payments to single strikers from the NUM, and the special pre-strike issue of The Miner printed a brief guide to Social Security payments for strikers. But what is required is the organisation of strikers to squeeze everything they can get from the SS-and the NUM so far has shown no willingness to see that this happens. It is important that militants with experience of Claimants Unions link up with local miners to set up strikers claimants committees. The real millstone round the neck of the miners in this fight, however, is undoubtedly