Notes
The meeting at the Brant Inn, Groby, on Tuesday is historic. For nine members of the national executive of the National Union of Mineworkers to meet and to encourage miners to cross picket lines until a national strike ballot is held is an extraordinary break with tradition. Some of the rebel executive members may have been driven to call the meeting because their members — in areas which had voted against striking — were ignoring their in- struction not to go to work. In other words, the union leaders felt that the only way they could maintain their union authority was by undermining that of their own national ex- ecutive. The mess is therefore complete, and Mr Peter Heathfield, the union general secretary, has himself come quite close to acknowledging it. He said on Tuesday: 'I Would not like to speculate on what will be done by a full executive', and that he had received letters indicating a 50-50 split on the question of a ballot. If Mr Heathfield is admitting so much, it is obvous that '50-50' is not the real ratio of opinion either on the national executive or among miners. It may therefore seem incomprehensible that Mr Arthur Scargill, the miners' president, does not back down now and save further em- barrassment. There are two possible ex- planations for Mr Scargill's behaviour. The first is that he believes his own propaganda. If he really thinks that Mr MacGregor Wants to destroy the coal industry and that Mrs Thatcher wants to destroy the working class, he can only follow one policy — to light all the time, even, if it must be, against his own members. But the second, and more important explanation has to do with Mr Scargill's own history. His hour of trium-
ph was the successful closing of the
Sahley coal depot by flying pickets in 1972. Since then, Mr Scargill has believed that in- tirnidatory union tactics can overawe wavering miners and frighten the public authorities into submission. Although his rosition is becoming more and more dif- r:icult, it is also clear that his pickets are dangerously close to succeeding. The number of mines working is pitifully small given the number of miners who want to work. It is the need to protect that desire to ‘v_ork which justifies the police in stopping ,I1,yirig pickets even more thoroughly than they have already done.
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