Call preparea to stand wo and De couned on the major issues - joo security, hours, protection of earnings, Dare pensions, health, safety and the like or you take another path. path is the path of British Leyland... Such a path can never be trodden by miners. We come from a proud and dignified tradition, but over the years so much of our energy has been spent battling on two fronts: with the Coal Board and with the national leader ship of our OWI however, at long last we have it in our power to elect a leader who will fight tooth and nail for the men ne privileged to represent. Without question such a man is Arthur Scargill.' The emergence within the British labour movement, with its long-established tradition of collaboration with capitalism, event of truly historic importance. It represents, Ine oresent British imperialism, a first approximation by the British working class leadership confronting present crisis in the interests of the working class.
It is not surprising that this leadership has earned the dominant sections of the bureaucracy. They have been as keen as Thatcher to see the defeat of Scargillism, because its class methods are a threat to its policies of collaboration. David Basnett spoke for the dominant sections of the trade leadership when he attacked the miners' case and denounced Scargillism.
In fact 'Scargillism' will be the most abiding gain to come out of the miners' strike has been held together not simply by its rank and file but by the Scargill leadership of the NUM. It has mounted the longest mass strike in the history of any imperialist country. is that which remembered when the dust has settled. It is an incredible achievement of class struggle leadership.
No matter what the outcome of the strike, and that still remains to be fought for, the militants and membership of the NUM will not, unlike almost any other work feeling they have been betrayed by their union leadership -will be right. They will feel betrayed by Willis, Kinnock and the TUC and they will be right in that too.
For the debate over Scargill and Scargillism in this academic one. It is an issue of the entire future of the labour movement and the single most important question of orientation for the left in the coming period.
The emergence of Arthur Scargill and the forces he represents within the NUM, and the support the strike has generated, were the only way a class struggle leadership in Britain could ever be born out of the greatest class struggle within years.
The world would indeed have been a very nice place if a perfectly organsta clas!
hext step Now, at's current is an ne crisis of the struggle Wednesday, ly could months the development in the class struggle. will be Put another way, banner take up or distance?
return to What in fact - and they Scargillite paper is no been, will enter as a completely identified with is a left bureaucrat.
Britain for 60 is either Scargillism rong?
acress the unions and the Labour Parhave existed prior to the strike. But untortunate v immaculate conception occurs only in mythology. It is precisely out of the strike that the first class struggle leadership with a mass base has emerged for 60 years.
The fundamental choice the left has is whether it sees that development as an enormous step forward — in fact as an historic step forward -whether it identifies with it, or on the contrary if it sees what has emerged as some sort of dangerous diversionary , Is Scarcillism a the left should be proud to 'not? Does Socialist Action regard itself as a Scargillite' paper for example? Or is the Scargill leadership of the NUM something from which the left has to take a substantial has marked out Socialist Action from the rest of the left during the miners' strike is that it does very consciously regard itself as a - and far more so than 11 months ago. Its position has that what Arthur Scargill and the forces he represents have achieved in this strike is an indelible and wholly positive development in the class struggle. Scargillism positive and stitutive element into developments of a left in Britain. It is something to be and this despite the fact that Scargill was and Furthermore, given the enormous impact of the strike, there was and is no room fo. intermediate positions.
for Scargill which does not at all preclude taking up important issues
Socialist Action 15 February 1985