NATIONAL Union of Mineworkers honorary president Arthur Scargill denounced “treacherous” labour movement leaders on Saturday for failing to support the 1984-5 miners’ strike.
Speaking at the annual memorial meeting for David Jones and Joe Green - the two miners killed during the year-long strike - Mr Scargill heaped scorn on the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock.
Denouncing Mr Kinnock’s “collaboration with British Coal bosses in their attempt to smuggle coal into steelworks in south Wales to break the strike,” Mr Scargill, who was arrested and jailed for his picket-line defiance of police attacks on his union members, also lambasted “those union leaders who refused to back us.
“Their failure to support the miners is the same as crossing a picket line,” he stormed.
“But not crossing a workers’ picket line is the eleventh commandment of our movement - trade unionists do not do it!”
The scene at the NUM’s old council hall in Barnsley, bedecked with bright union banners and packed with hundreds of defiant miners, was in stark contrast to the dour sight of half-demolished steel forges and shuttered metal-cutting workshops that now litter the surrounding south Yorkshire countryside.
Beneath proud banners proclaiming “Not Thyself, But The Cause,” and “Learn from the past,” Mr Scargill regaled the meeting with anecdotes from his encounters with the authorities during the strike.
He related how, with the former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher threatening to seize the NUM’s funds, a barrister acting for the government had failed to grasp the union’s response.
“Why do you request donations to the strike fund in cash? Don’t you know that this makes it more difficult for the courts to sequestrate it?” Mr Scargill quoted him complaining.”‘Blow me, I never thought of that,’ was my reply.”
But Mr Scargill also highlighted the sobering effects of what he called “the treachery of those in the labour movement who did not stand with us during the strike.
“Some 20,000 miners were injured, 13,000 arrested and more than 1,000 lost their jobs. Entire communities were devastated,” he explained.
NUM president Ian Lavery emphasised that, “despite the collaboration with the bosses of some union leaders, most workers know what a union means and backed us.
“We are proud that we fought, because this was not just the miners’ fight, but a fight for our class.”
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/britain/scargill_slams_past_union_leaders_treachery
Speaking at the annual memorial meeting for David Jones and Joe Green - the two miners killed during the year-long strike - Mr Scargill heaped scorn on the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock.
Denouncing Mr Kinnock’s “collaboration with British Coal bosses in their attempt to smuggle coal into steelworks in south Wales to break the strike,” Mr Scargill, who was arrested and jailed for his picket-line defiance of police attacks on his union members, also lambasted “those union leaders who refused to back us.
“Their failure to support the miners is the same as crossing a picket line,” he stormed.
“But not crossing a workers’ picket line is the eleventh commandment of our movement - trade unionists do not do it!”
The scene at the NUM’s old council hall in Barnsley, bedecked with bright union banners and packed with hundreds of defiant miners, was in stark contrast to the dour sight of half-demolished steel forges and shuttered metal-cutting workshops that now litter the surrounding south Yorkshire countryside.
Beneath proud banners proclaiming “Not Thyself, But The Cause,” and “Learn from the past,” Mr Scargill regaled the meeting with anecdotes from his encounters with the authorities during the strike.
He related how, with the former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher threatening to seize the NUM’s funds, a barrister acting for the government had failed to grasp the union’s response.
“Why do you request donations to the strike fund in cash? Don’t you know that this makes it more difficult for the courts to sequestrate it?” Mr Scargill quoted him complaining.”‘Blow me, I never thought of that,’ was my reply.”
But Mr Scargill also highlighted the sobering effects of what he called “the treachery of those in the labour movement who did not stand with us during the strike.
“Some 20,000 miners were injured, 13,000 arrested and more than 1,000 lost their jobs. Entire communities were devastated,” he explained.
NUM president Ian Lavery emphasised that, “despite the collaboration with the bosses of some union leaders, most workers know what a union means and backed us.
“We are proud that we fought, because this was not just the miners’ fight, but a fight for our class.”
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/britain/scargill_slams_past_union_leaders_treachery
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Lost Solidarity
17.03.2009 09:23
Members of the T&GWU worked opencasting coal right through the Miners' Strike.
There has not been a sound Labour Politician since Stafford Cripps was charging nineteen and elevenpence as the top rate of income tax. Anyone know at what earnings level that rate kicked in? The present Crisis is as least as bad as Cripps faced, and there is no Politician who puts forward a relevant answer. They pour oil on the flames. They destroy the value of Money and risk Hyperinflation, - perhaps they are Fascists trying to re-create Hitlerism. It would be better to follow the Weimar Republic and appoint a Hjalmar Schacht who had to cope with the Versailles conditions that created Hitlerism.
To make make some relevance to the article, perhaps it should be asked "Does Scargill support New Labour's efforts to restore Growth?"
Crippsian
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Time for Taxation for Sound Money
18.03.2009 08:52
"To combat inflation, Cripps planned to take from taxpayers $1⅓ billion more than the government would spend. The surplus removed from the pockets of potential spenders would be used to reduce the national debt."
".. for those who live on investment incomes—a special tax on rents, dividends and interest, which Cripps promised would apply for only one year. This "capital contribution," graduated up to 50%, on top of the high regular income tax rates, would send many an investor's total tax far beyond 100% of his income.
Well-to-do Lady Mountbatten, for example, who gets about $240,000 a year from investments totaling $8 million, pays $220,000 in income tax. This year she will pay an additional $120,000 capital contribution. That looked very much like a capital levy of $100,000. Cripps did not call it that. "The contribution," he said, "is considered to be a charge on capital, and in many cases there will, in fact, be no other way of paying it." The tax will hit about 125,000 investors, bring in more than $400,000,000 (balancing an equal amount of revenue lost by lowering taxes on small incomes)."
Fascists have taken over New Labour, there are Fascist Policies. They are not traitors to the Working Class, they are middle class Lawyers, as are all the other major politicial parties. They follow their own class interests making work for lawyers and drowning us with bureaucracy. They make the Rich richer, and the Poor poorer, you see above what should be done to make the UK fit to cope with the coming Depression. Simple old fashioned socialist policies that built the foundations for prosperity, applied today, they will build the foundations for survival.
Think about the alternative ... Brown's road is a short cut to Mass Extinction.
Old Socialist