Young miners must fight for their future!
Class Fighter1983 1983-04-01Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 2 →
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Young miners back strike action to defend jobs which make them want to did in steel. young miners get involved in the union. have every reason to get With anything up to 70 involved in the struggle to pits facing the threat of defend • their industry and clesure and axe man Mac- with it their jobs and their Gregor being moved i to future. the rank and file. like CND. machine.
Peter Tatchell defeated by press smears and rightwing Labour readers sabotage. YOUNG Socialists who want to see the Thatcher govern ment booted out will have been disappointed to see the miners vote against taking industrial action to save the TymawI/Lewis Mertlyr Colliery.
The result indicates the need for a massive fight against the right wing leaders of the TUC whose action of should we say inaction, has sapped the confidence of the working class.
It also shows the need for a decisive revolutionary leadership which will fight the right wing in the NUM to the death.
Otherwise we will see Arthur Scargill and the left on the executive capitulate again to the right wing, like they did when a ballot was called which derailed the momentum of strike action which was spreading like wildfire through the coalfields.
Many of the older miners are blaming the younger miners who were not in the coal industry during the strikes of 1972 and 1974 for the No' vote in the ballot.
This is partially true as many do not realise that what they have got had to be fought for in struggle.
Forced to tight
But as the Tories and their allies continue to attack the mining industry young miners will be forced to fight and could provide the basis for a fighting rank and file leadership within the NUM which was the case in the 1920s.
At the moment it is noticeable that young miners are not very active in the union. Steps have been taken recently which give miners under 21 a reserved race on the NUM branch committee.
take s This, progressive thougl it may be, is not enough. Many branches find diificulty in getting one young miner to take the post.
We have to presert lively politics to young workers do the job in mining that he BUTCHERY VOTE YES Y
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