Another voice

A missed opportunity

Auberon Waugh

/Throughout the long months of Mr Scar- 1 gill's attempt to enforce a national coal strike without the ballot or the 55 per cent majority which the constitution of his union until very recently required, two interesting facts have emerged. The first is that public opinion is overwhelming against Mr Scargill and the bullying tactics of his union officials. Public opinion may be hopelessly weedy on the question of abolishing the metropolitan county coun- cils, but on the NUM's plucky and sincere attempt to hold the rest of the country to ransom it seems remarkably firm — and not only in the south of England.

Of course, it may be helped in this matter by the fact that the miners do not have a leg to stand on, either in logic or in equity. No amount of rhetoric or bluster against the press, or against Mrs Thatcher, against multinational corporations or against the capitalist system, can long disguise the fact that coal-mines without any coal left in them have to close down and so, by equally ineluctable logic, do coal-mines whose remaining deposits are so poor or so hard to extract as to make them uneconomic. The National Coal Board has guaranteed that not a single coal-miner will be made redun- dant if he is prepared to move to another colliery, and the redundancy terms rise to a lump sum payment of £36,480 for a miner under 50, and benefits to the value of £68,751, for example, to a man of 55 who has been a miner since he was 20.

If the newspapers are to be believed, the NCB has been deluged with calls from miners wishing to apply for redundancy on these terms, as one would expect. Mr Scargill might as well call a national coal strike in protest against the progress of the seasons as against the closure of exhausted or uneconomic mines on these terms. One suspects, in fact, that he would do just that, if he thought the executive would support him. It may well be that we are still suffer- ing from the effects of the 1972 Battle of Saltley Coke Depot, when the weak, incompetent and unpopular government of Edward Heath was first brought to its knees and then thrown out by the miners.

On the face of it, there is something quite extraordinary in the NUM's supposition that it can bully the rest of the country into keeping empty and uneconomic mines open indefinitely, paying coal-miners and coal- miners' sons even to the tenth generation an extravagant wage when there is little or nothing to do down the mines but play cards and attend the hairdresser or manicurist. Perhaps only the events of 1972-74 can explain this absurd conceit. They must know that conditions have changed since then. With the collapse in oil prices, coal is no longer as competitive as it was, even without the heavy uncompetitive bias against British coal achieved by the featherbedding policies of successive governments.

On top of this, the environmental argu- ments against nuclear power, being based on the hazards of waste disposal and possi- ble risks of an industrial accident, have been overtaken by the certain and apparent devastation being caused by what is known as acid rain, through the sulphur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants and other industrial chimneys. To a large ex- tent, the case against nuclear power was whipped up by coal sentimentalists and Labour Party hacks like Michael Foot — it had very little to do with the real risks of a disaster. Now we know that whatever possi- ble risks may be involved in nuclear power, coal produces nothing but an ever-present environmental and ecological catastrophe — and one which is going to be drawn to the attention of politicians with increasing frequency and vehemence as the years go by. The case for further investment in coke- burning generators had already collapsed even without these actions by the NUM to prove how unreliable was any power source which relied on their labour.

All of which may help to explain why Mr Scargill and, apparently, the Communist Party of Great Britain (weakly supported by Messrs Kinnock, Hattersley, Kaufman et al.) are going for broke on this occason. It does not quite explain why they should go for broke on an obviously dud hand. If the NCB, Mrs Thatcher, and Mr Walker are telling the truth, and they have six months' supply of coal available, then Scargill can- not possibly win. The only reasonable deduction is that the NCB, Mrs Thatcher and Mr Walker are all lying — 1 suppose that bluffing would be a politer term — and although there may be plenty of coal (I use the word 'coal' to cover all industrial, coal- derived fuels) in NCB stocks around the country, there is no certainty of transport- ing it to the power stations where stocks may be measured in weeks', rather than months', supply.

However much the Government may have tried to distance itself from the NCB's squabble with its employees, I do not think that any of us can doubt, after Saltley, that if the NCB loses this strike and accepts Scargill's demands, the Government will collapse. So will the pound and the Stock Exchange. That, of course, is what Scargill hopes to achieve. I am not saying he will succeed, and I do not think he will, but as the possibility of his doing so increases the

Government will be forced to bring in some considerably more robust measures against secondary picketers than it has yet been prepared to contemplate — including mY own beloved police baton charges, if not my actual military pickhandles. And this brings me to the second interesting fact which has emerged throughout the coal strike (see paragraph one). This is that the Government is much too terrified of the workers to take advantage of its support from public opinion — even to the extent of whipping up resentment against the NUM's militants and, through them, against the whole overweening trade union hierarchy. Let us examine the oPP°r- tunities it is missing. Presumably Mr Scargill decided he could not be certain of winning a strike ballot. I think he was right to ignore poll-findings published in the Sunday Times and elsewhere assuring him that he would win one. Even to my unsuspicious mind, they smacked of disinformation. But having deCided to call a national strike anyway, be tried to impose it by sending thugs frog) South Yorkshire (and South Wales and Kent) to terrify and bash up anyone wh° refused to obey. Never mind that Ibis behaviour may (or may not) have been illeg- al. It runs so contrary to everyone's instinct for natural justice as to constitute an of- fence crying to heaven for vengeance. When his thugs proceed to terrorise work- ing miners' families by throwing bri heirck.s through the windows, risking injury to t children, it would need only a little en- couragement from official sources to whiP up resentment against Mr Scargill to the

point of a public lynching. •

I am not, of course, suggesting that anything useful might be gained by ch particular course. But instead of any su initiative, official reaction has been so in,e„6, as to persuade a majority of miners 11.1: they had better succumb to intirnidatinl and join the strike. That is the bald Irin:"`, behind official boasts of the number 01 Nottingham collieries still open. So now let us examine the o ides which Mrs Thatcher is missing. The Preset° posture of the NUM is somewhat similaran that of the House of Lords in 1908 a. overprivileged, unpopular minority eng, ;ts ed in a savage rearguard action to protec.yen privileges. Mrs Thatcher has a guld,,t pportun nt opportunity to introduce an inch's" equivalent of the 1911 Parliament Act -- possibly reinforced by a referendum which would smash the power of the rnm u a tants for once and all by insisting tha.olnal strikes be subject to a ballot, and nan ak strikes to a national ballot, as well as ing intimidation a much more criminal 1" fence than it appears to be.

ahead. But then, if Mrs Thatcher werfe,

way

That seems to me the most obvious as

clear-sighted and as intelligent as we al_ in suppose she would be writing colutrin' involved in the Spectator and we would be the dirty and undignified business °f governing the country.