NUM ballot

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Yorkshire miners voted last week on whether to give their Area Executive the authority to call strike action against pit closures.

Yorks NUM President Arthur Scargill said in the January issue of Yorkshire Miner that the Tory government is seeking revenge for 1972 and 1974 and want to smash miners' jobs so that the union would never again be able to protect its members.

Scargill went on to write:

"Give us the authority to save your job so that you and your sons are not added to the scrapheap of unemployment. Vote YES as though your livelihood depended on it: it does.

The Yorkshire ballot follows a little publicised vote by South Wales miners which was 95% in favour of industrial action to protect jobs.

In the three-week campaign thousands of Yorkshire miners attended meetings throughout the coalfields. Support has been pledged from Scotland, South Wales, Derbyshire, Kent and Lancashire.

Miners must ensure that in the event of threatened closures this verbal support is turned into all-out action to defend every job.

However it is not lack of militancy that is the main danger but the limited programme the campaign is being fought on.

The cal of all literature and meetings is for import controls. but this is a call for an answer within capitalism-a system whose crisis is forcing forward the closure of whole industries.

What is needed is a programme of action to bring down the Tory government and bring to office a workers' government answerable to the rank and file.

The call for import controls creates the illusion that "British" capitalism can be propped-up and somehow cater for workers' needs.

It cuts across the necessary international solidarity of the working class in the face of the world-wide attacks of the employers.

We say "Yes' to action against pit closures: nationalism and import In August 1980 workers at the Southend Borough Cleansing Department were told that their Department needed to make savings of £180,000 if the service was not to be allotted to a private contractor.

Management demanded rationalised working methods and an end to "restrictive practices"

Union officials and stewards went so far as to propose a package of measures to save an estimated £217,000. But their plans were dismissed by the Highway Committee chairman Norman Clark.

By late November articles began to appear in the local and national press stating that

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• AL led jointly by the Campaign for Dem le Labour Movement and Socialist O Islington Central Library, Holloway NEED says: As councils face the SSE CONFERENCE Saturday March 21 10.30a.m. -5.00 p.m.

London N7 tils and credentials from CDLM, 165 Road, Smethwick, West Midland. Policies to Stop the Cuts OCT. rgar Barc Tenants back-p insults

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