While McGahey Prepares Escape

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• THE SCARGILL WAY In this, with the backing of the press he may well win a measure of support in a few sectors in Yorkshire.

But for any miner who sees defence of the living standards of the working class as paramount, this right-wing campaign must be contemptuously rejected. must be rallied behind a Nupport in the ballot on the TUC pay cuts *FOOTNOTE The coordinated efforts of the Tory press, television and radio are daily at the beck and call of the right wing. But the move by the Yorkshire area NUM to put adverts in Nottinghamshire papers urging opposition to the TUC wage-cuts plan has provoked wails of protest from right-wing Notts President, Len Clarke.

He described the . Yorkshire action as a "diabolical liberty" Presumably the only voice allowed free access to Notts miners through the press must be Clarke himself. So this is what "freedom of the press" is all about.

Recent articles in The Miner? , official journal of the As support got under way for a massive "No" vote in ballot, the elt talkers of the communist Fariy were already begınning to look for an escape from the possibility of strike action.

This emerged clearly from the statement of Mick MoGahey, Scottish miners' President that "we shouldn't go ti alone"

Ihe only possibie meaning of this is that if the miners vote to reject the 44% wage cutting plan, while the bureaucrats at the TUC Congress on June 16th vote to accept, that Stalmists like MeGahey wil advise against strike action in the name of "unity"

No argument could be more reactionary. It was not the bureaucrats represented at the TUC who backed the miners in 1972 and For years any attempt by the National Coal Board to introduce "participation" has been met with constant opposition from militant workers. From this article it is clear that the NUM bureaucracy are preparing to do the job for them.

So strong has been rank and file opposition to having anything to do with management that local NUM branches have refused to distribute the Board's journal Coal News.

COMPLAINTS

The NUM's Economic SubCommittee now complains about this attitude, by saying, "The existing colliery consultative committees had degenerated into little more than complaints committees"

The article tries to skirt round the fact that all final decisions will 1974 and paved the rank and heir victory - it was membership in the T&GWU and other unions.

These rank and file members have been excluded from any democratic voice on the 4%% pay plan. And of course there would be a mass of support, as before under the Tories, for any section of workers in struggle against wage. cutting.

For McGahey however, the only people who matter in the labou movement are the full time union CP members in the NUM musi watch out for a new depth of betrayal now being carefully pre pared by their leadership.

Miners must be ready to lead the struggle on behalf of those workers denied a voice on policy. They wil not be left isolated.

Board and all this sort of thing. That's not workers' power. Workers' power is to take into the hands of the working people all the means of producing wealth, distri bution and exchange"

We pointed out then that "by refusing to acknowledge the difference between a fully fledged socialist economy and the concrete struggle for workers' control now which is both the only solution to the problems facing the working class and . the concrete way of posing the necessity of a socialist planned economy) Scargill was maintaining the purity of his socialist rhetoric..but doing nothing to carry forward the struggle to defend jobs, wages and the democratic rights of the trade union movement"

OPPOSITE

Now Scargill has come down control, the apposite of workers openly on the side of "partici control. And talk of 'electing' managers is simply a smokescreen to conceal the unchanged faces in the NCB itself.

The case of Alan Grimshaw, dismissed by the NCB after expos ing huge overcharging by subcontractors for spare parts for power-supports, just scrapes the surface of the links between management and private capitalists and highlights the importance of a struggle to expose deals like these by fighting for opening the books of the Board to elected workers' committees.

Only in this way, not by sittin on 'management teams' responoble to Coal Board management, can a real struggle for workers' mana ment of the industry begin.

This attempt to deal a body blow to the independence of the miners' union will only be defeated by a consistent struggle sost is advocates, right and left. in the NUM.