THE MINERS' strike has seen the emergence of the first mass class struggle leadership in the British labour movement for 60 years. What has developed with Arthur Scargill and his base in the NUM is the sharpest turn in the political development of the left wing of the labour movement in Britain since 1968. The biggest opening for Marxists in Britain since the stalinisation of the Communist Party in the 1920s.
For all the militancy of the working struggles developed in Britain from 1968 to 1975, they still took place, in important measure, within a traditional tramework. They above all militant trade struggles. They were directly interrelated with struggle in the They ran largely parallel to, and not clearly in tandem with, rise of powerful social movements women, blacks, in Ireland, gays, students and many other layers.
The miners' strike of 1972 did see important physical solidarity with the miners from different layers of the population but there was no ongoing organisational framework that to be contined. After 1975 serious setbacks were suffered by the labour movement at the hands of Wilson and Callaghan's incomes policies.
The explosion of struggle in the 'winter of discontent' 1978-79 later had a huge effect in feeding the rise of demands for democratic reform Labour Party but again it did not directly feed into the development of policy or organisation inside What is decisive about the miners' strike at that political level is that it has brought into being a quite new, and qualitatively different relation between the different forces in the labour movement.
The British labour movement has historically had, as Trotsky put it, an 'aristocratic' character. It has never had to face a true show down fight with the British ruling class of the type that has taken place in other West European countries. Even after 1926 the economic strength of British imperialism allowed it to opt for a 'reformist' rather than a fascist solution to the problems which confronted it.
Under these conditions
labour movement as a whole, and not just its leadership, was deeply ingrained with fixation parliament, with chauvinism, with sexism, racism, with sectionalism of every sort. Even in 1926, for example, nothing on the scale and dynamic of women's involvement in the miners' strike seen today occurred. The ideology of penetrated deeply into the labour that only inthe the among Photo: JOHN CHAPMAN for of the the national with permission leaderhip, empire the NUM leadership Within the Labour Party the left developed chiefly fixated on elections and conference resolutions. The 'trade union struggle' was seen as something separate. the But the 1984 miners' strike has left no room for that type of luxury. If women had not played the role they have in the strike it would have been defeated months ago. But women did not ask the of the NUM or the men in the strike, before participating in it. The massive women's action in was imposed on the NUM - although to its credit the immediately ATIONAL UNION TORKSHA welcomed the enormous ally of wollen Similarly blacks, lesbians, gays, young people, supporters of Irish Republican struggle, fighters for colonial freedom, threw themselves into the struggle without asking permission from anyone. And not merely has the strengthened the sciousness of tens of thousands of miners their supporters throughout the labour movement but their consciousness has been radically changed as a result.
A new type of Labour left in the constituencies, and in parliament, has also emerged :WORKF of the Britain is 1926. Left it could have been organised that phenomenon wing The potential created. the Labour left it is seen in the massive involvement of the Campaign Group of MPs in the strike.
In short what has happened out of the miners' strike is a real class struggle left in the labour movement. One that has a base in a powerful industrial union. One that takes in the most oppressed sections of the population. that extends from top to bottom movement and across all its structures.
The single most urgent task which exists in the labour movement today is to begin to organise that left wing. For, contrary to views in some sections of the left, not passing through some sort of equivalent defeat to On the contrary the radicalisation in society is only just beginning. Whatever the immediate outcome of the miners' strike the curve of struggles of all types in British society is moving upwards and not down.
The left which emerged in the miners' strike came the only way — out of a vast explosion in the class struggle. It could not pre-planned or pre because it differed from the previous left precisely in being based on action in the class struggle and not just resolutions on internal party affairs.
But now the task is to spread what has been generated through the entire labour movement. So 'Scargillism' is not confined to And so that in the next struggles which develop that left is, at least in outline, organised in advance.
miners' strike is the greatest turning point in British working class politics since 1926 Organising the left wing with clear demands and structures is the key step in building on the full what has been The first step of that left wing which needs to be built is to continue to fight for the miners' vic-