REARGUARD STRIKE ACTICO
The National Union of Mineworkers' strike is the most important since the present Government took office. It is important largely because of its symbolic character: the miners embody in themselves both the history of the struggle between labour and capital and, more particularly, the memories of the 'twenties. It is important in a most practical and immediate sense as well, in that it is the last throw of the labour force of a dying industry. On the even of the strike, when he seemed anxious above all to prevent its outbreak, Mr Derek Ezra nonetheless could not deny that the Coal Board planned to close a further thirty-two pits in the coming year — the NCB continue to plan the liquidation of a substantial party of their own industry. In response, Mr Lawrence Daly, the general secretary of the union, could say only that further pit shutdowns "will only lead to further industrial action." Mr Daly was concerned, that is, to support the policies, followed by all recent governments of this country, which have had the effect that most interest groups, labour and capital alike, have been maintained in the enjoyment of their favoured status quo, as a matter of public policy. The most brilliant example of this policy has been Lord Roben's chairmanship of the Coal Board. In order to meet the return on capital requirements of the government of the day, he diversified into computers and information retrieval services, so that the productivity of the most consequential of modern technological techniques went to sustain the most backward and outpaced of industries and labour forces.
It could not go on. Nonetheless, the inclination of the Coal Board and the Government was to let it go on. Mr Ezra offered the miners a 7.9 per cent wage increase — only fractionally below the unofficial government norm of 8 per cent — but he included in his package deal a backdated productivity payment which would increase the real cost of the proposed award by about 5.9 per cent. Though the management of nationalised industries is theoretically independent of the decisions of ministers, it is difficult to imagine that this offer was made without the consent of the Treasury and the Cabinet Office. It is almost wholly disastrous, in that it proposes the further subsidation of an uneconomic industry. Further, it gives grounds for doubt about the seriousness of the Government's intention to shake out British industry, and require a decent return on capital in all nationalised enterprises. The productivity agreement featherbeds the miners, and creates a wholly illusory relationship between costs and prices. Mr Ezra has said that, if the NUM demands were met, coal prices would rise by 15 per cent. If Mr Ezra's own offer were accepted, prices would rise by about 10 per cent. We cannot, for much longer, go on in this country with a system in which domestic labour expectations condition price levels, and vice versa. We need to create an industrial relations situation in which costs as between the domestic producer and the domestic consumer bear a favourable relationship to costs as between the domestic producer and the foreign consumer: in other words, we need so to arrange matters that every major domestic production-consumption industry .— like coal — is not only costeffective, but actually sustains the export industries. If we conceive of our economic affairs wholly in domestic terms — in terms of what wages and prices the home market will bear — we shall never achieve the desirably effective relationship.
It is supposed to be the policy of the present Government to point this out to us. They have not done so, not least because they have sanctioned a series of productivity agreements — of which Mr Ezra's offer is the most recent — which exaggerate the immediate effect of wage claims, and cushion workers and trade unions against the harsh requirements of an internationally competitive economy. The instinct of the Government has been right: its practice too often wrong.
It now looks as if the rest of the trade union movement outside the National Union of Mineworkers is beginning to. recognise, if not yet fully to grasp, the facts of industrial life. Although Mr Scanlon's Amalgamated Engineering and Foundry Workers Union has made a grant -to the mineworkers, Mr Jones's Transport and General Workers Union did not immediately follow suit. The Trades Union Congress has offered nothing but moral support, and not even much of that. Mr Scanlon, Mr Jones and Mr Feather all burned their fingers on the postmen. The failure of the postal strike made it easier for men such as these to ignore tM, emotional hangover from the 'thirties. Tlif miners have traditionally occupied '6 special position in the Trades UnidA, Congress, in the Labour movement, and Om the imagination of the public. Coal, and tills industry of mining it, has traditionall/N been the most central and basic of all OIL industries, a great source of strength asic wealth, our chief supplier of power. But thi t contraction of the industry has proceedec inexorably, despite the vagaries of passini E governments.
The leaders of the NUM wanted a Rotill Table conference of all unions to work Oct a scheme to support the miners' strike preventing any abnormal movement ° coal, oil or electricity. The refusal of tl leaders of the main unions thus to suppd (and, in effect to strengthen and 11N prolong) the miners' strike demonstrate ; in brutal fashion that the miners can tic longer elicit automatic support, and the the moral authority the miners earned 11 I 1926 has now dissipate d itself. There e cruel symbolism about the event j1 Yorkshire this Wednesday, when fote ' miners on picket duty were injured wit& the driver of an oil tanker ignored the instructions not to deliver his load of fuel The oil got through, the pickets we't brushed aside. There may well be mud public sympathy for these pickets, alll indeed for thestriking minsers who have fallen well behind in the wages scramble' Such sympathy must not be allowed t° obscure the obsolescence of the coic industry. The miners are the rearguard 0 an era, and their strike a backward" looking and hopeless gesture.
The Prime Minister has often called 101 and his policies signalled, a new departtle1 in the conduct of our economic affairs. settlement below the line of Mr Ezra's ofief — which has now been withdrawn • would demonstrate the courage of professions and introduce a certain realll, into the economics of labour relations i1 Britain. A victory over the coal miners rearguard strike action would demoIl strate the determination of the Gover0 ment to bring the country face to face will the truth of our situation, and show t10 Mr Heath's administration, unlike it', • Labour and Conservative predecessors, prepared to discard the emotional legl of the past, in order to seek the rewards the future.
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