The atmosphere at this year's miners' conference at Morecambe was much to be expected. In the wake of the national strike, the mood was finely balanced between the new militancy of the rank and file and the backpeddling of the executive. Some time before the conference President of the Union, Joe Gormley, pre-empted the recent TUC/CBI moves by approaching the NCB. The talks were aimed at establishing a new strategy for tackling miners' pay which could "avoid the confrontations of recent years". He and the executive thus came to Morecambe to "sell" this new policy to the rank and file. But this is no longer the placid membership of the fities: this is a rank and file which earlier this year secured the most decisive working class victory since the war. Thus the stage was set.
Joe Gormley caricatured the classic right wing trade union leader in his opening address. "For God's sake," he pleaded, "do not let us give the impression to the public and our customers that we believe as a union that the only way to solve our problems is by the use of the strike weapon." These remarks were designed to undermine the militancy of the wages discussion the following day where a motion from Kent was proposing the union demand new minima of E30 per week for surface workers, £32 for underground and £40 for face workers, (as opposed to the present E23-£25 - £34.50). The Tuesday debate demonstrated how finely balanced was the final outcome. Conference unanimously passed a composite resolution with the above rates set as new minima but with the executive's addition of a threshold agreement. In itself this is hardly a moderating of the motion (as some people have suggested) - on the contrary, we have always argued that wages agreements should contain built-in cost-of-living increments with the index, of course, under the control of the union. What is decisive about this composite is the fact that taken together with the proposed threshold agreement, the new minima are no longer a demand but a "negotiating target". As Lawrence Daly explained in his summing up, it is a "flexible resolution"', only a "desirable objective".
Nevertheless, the fact that rates were voted upon and that the claim was linked to a call for a ballot on industrial action in the event of an unsatisfactory reply from the NCB, gives the leadership less room to manoeuvre than they had hoped for and perhaps expected after an earlier motion from COSA (white collar section) fixing no definite rates but calling for pay increases to be tied to the cost-of-living and increased productivity and efficiency" had been narrowly passed, 171 votes to 141. Perhaps the most important part of the conference was that which concerned not wages but hours. The question of pit closures has been one that has haunted the industry for years, Since nationalisation, 400,000 jobs have been lost, whilst since 1960 alone, the number of collieries has fallen by 56 percent from 698 to 289. But in this discussion too, the struggle between the rank and file militants and the executive failed to produce a really decisive answer to redundancy. Conference did unanimously pass a resolution proposed by the Scottish area for a reduction in the working week from 37% to 30 hours. This is a great step forward though it should not be seen as a one-off demand: any suggestion of redundancy should be met with the demand for a reduction of the working week with no loss of pay, or with no loss of earnings for men forced to leave for geological, safety or other reasons. Otherwise the executive, having declared its commitment to the new productivity deal earlier on, might accept the six-hour day in return for more intensive shift patterns - the vicious "continental" shift systems. Already Gormley has indicated his willingness to negotiate on this point. But as we have explained many times before, the key question in the case of redundancy, as in all other areas, is for the union to fight for a position from which it can veto management plans. This is the only way in which the fight for control can be waged without taking responsibility for the running of the industry. What this means in practice is that the union must wage struggles to achieve a favourable balance of forces, a position of strength from which it can impose such a veto.
A very encouraging move in this direction was a resolution from Nottingham calling for industrial action to fight pit closures. This idea had been brewing round the country amongst the rank and file for some time. The Welsh conference had very militant contributions on this question. Here at Morecambe, however, the executive successfully manoeuvred out the reference to "industrial action" in a composite motion to protest the closures. As one delegate pointed out though, "this does not rule it out for ever".
And nor does it. But what the whole conference demonstrated clearly is the need to forge a genuine rank and file movement within the NUM that can prepare for such illustrates this more clearly than the struggle for nationalisation of the mines. The programme of any rank and file movement must be one therefore that demands that the workers' organisations themselves should have the right to decide what is in their interests and what is not; one that puts the struggle for socialism to the fore.
Miners rally in Trafalgar Square, February 1972 "eRS BG Members and sympathisers of the IMG have produced such a programme and a 56-page pamphlet "After the Miners" Strike -copy to 182 Pentonville Road, London N.I. What Next! ; cost 10p. Write for your HRED BUT WAGES N.U.M..MARDY LODGE • PEACE FORWARD TO -SOCIALISM
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Lawrence Daly urges miners to accept offer at the end of the last strike; now new proposed rates are no more than a "desirable objective", a "negotiating target".