Miners face renewed

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Gormley: keen to make profits their jobs.

The Tory government has demanded that the NCB meet stringent new financial targets by 1983-4.

It is clear that to achieve this the NCB will need to axe up to 50 of the less profitable pits and seek thousands of redundancies.

Already a press campaign has been launched to promote redundancy payments which, it is claimed, will offer a miner of over 55 €20,000 and substantial handouts to younger miners who sell their jobs and thus assist the war on working conditions.

And the first threatened pit -Tymawr Lewis Merthyr Colliery near Pontypridd-has been only temporarily reprieved while a management/union inquiry investigates ways and means of making it profitable.

In the words of Joe Gormley, who negotiated this holding operation:

"I hope we can prove that we can make the pit viable"

"I would like to see South Wales and every other area viable and making a profit"

Yorkshire NUM President Arthur Scargill, in putting forward his challenge for the leadership of the union when Gormley retires, has nailed his colours to the mast of defending all jobs, the fight for a four day week for miners ("promised as long ago as 1919") and an annual wage of €10,000.

Standing ovation

Such a stand is clearly correct, and Scargill's announcement that he will "stick by his principles" despite the attacks of the media won him a standing ovation from the Scottish NUM conference last week.

But in a situation of mounting trade war internationally Scargill must also state where he stands on nationalist demands to ban imports of coking and other coal as a "solution" to the threatened closure of British pits.

It must be made clear that, so long as no NUM jobs or wages are lost. it is of no Cont'd p.11, col. 6