Scargill's lawyers no answer to pay sell-out

Scan page 1

the union"- that was how Arthur Scargill reacted to the NUM executive's vote to sabotage the drive for higher wages by going for local productivity deals.

By upholding the 12 month rule the executive intend not simply to delay the wage claim but to kill it off altogether.

The vicious right wing clique behind Daly and Gormley have reached new level of bureaucratic rul for outcome Despite his strong words Scargill's first action on returning to Yorkshire was to start legal action against the executive and to call on militants to wait for the outcome of this action. productivity , deals represented. 'In my view it is an attempt to refrain from pressing ahead with the wages demand of £135 a week and an attempt to overturn the annual conference decision?.

Ludicrous

This attempt is certain to succeed if Scargill does not drop his ludicrous attempt to ask High Court judges to do what he himself ought now to be acting on. He said:

I shall be demanding that our miners in Yorkshire are not paid any less than any others around the country".

To back that Scargill will need to fight for strike action now.

If the executive wishes to give areas autonomy to negotiate local conditions Scargill must press for immediate strike action in Yorkshire on the £135 claim and spread that action throughout country.

Kent, Wales and Scottish miners would all follow Yorkshire in strike action, bringing many other areas in their wake.

Mick McGahey Vice President, and Scottish miners' leader, must be forced to back talk of strike action with the action itself.

The simple fact is that the nine. delegates who voted against productivity deals represent a majority of the membership.

Gormley is determined the Lib-Lab coalition must be preserved, and its pay limits upheld, no matter what the cost to NUM members.

Hence the two-pronged thrust to overturn conference votes and to tear up the results of the recent ballot.

At the same time Gormley intends to press for a 'league position' for miners in the form of a guarantee on future pay intentions, similar to that offered to the firemen.

This would take the steam out of future wage claims and could lead to 'master contract' deals of pay claims once every three years with inadequate inflation clauses designed to ensure that pay rises more slowly than prices.

If the lefts' on the national executive do not act now the miners union will be reduced to a powerless body which far from leading a drive for higher pay, will be used as a dead weight against all other sections.

A turn to the courts is a complete diversion from this question and a betrayal of the Scargill's place is on a picket line-alongside his miners. £100 per week wage with cost of living clause protect against inflation.

The defeat of the righ wing carries a message fe every section of workers loggerheads with bureaucrat and reactionary leaders.

Principles Widespread support can b gained in the working clas for principled policies, whil those who accomodate to th right wing or compromise o principles offer no way fo ward.

The Cowley results giv the lie to all those who sai that leading militants, by th sharpness of their struggli were isolating themselve from the working class.

While we will hav political differences wit Fryer, his re-election as cor venor marks, as one militar remarked the return of trad unionism to the plant"

Fryer has declared h intention is to fight to reunit the shop stewards movemer and to hold regular meeting of TGWU stewards.

This will open the way fo the fight to regain and defen living standards and workir conditions in the factory.

Scan page 2

170,000 US miners are no W on indefinite national strike action in a battle that is decisive for the future of their union, the UMWA. dollars in payments to the health and welfare funds.

The UMW has had to borrow money from the banks to finance any mer lical militant miners.

In a recent string of unofficial strikes Miller has worked with the FBI to hunt down and expel striking miners.

He has sent union thugs Democratic Union, Patrick replied to Labor speaker: • "The labor movement's got to get together, and if we can