Another view entirely was put by pickets from Murton pit in Durham to the newspaper 7 Days: 'We've held ourselves because we were sold out by our own leaders and the Labour Party. They want the pickets to be respectable. Being respectable got us where we are at the bottom.
But if the NUM leadership hesitated to act at the beginning of the strike, the rank and file did not. Théy set out determinedly to smash the employers' offensive. London a power station.
miners struck power station the oil Special 'hard" brought in, police. Fiercest of pitched Then it started.
strike.
law had all faile the police back." major industrial union. than they were then.
The lorry working class. struggle government The key targets were of course the power stations, which were picketed until they shut These pickets were so complete that in 'naval blockade' was established. Miners took over a pleasure boat and wen down river, complete with loudhailers, to stop coal being transported by water into Battersea The clashes on these pickets were ferocious. They reached their culmination when one miner was killed by a speeding scab lorry. But the back real workers' Scabs were pulled from lorries and loads dumped on the road.
At Keresley the floodlights were shot out with an air rifle, the junction box for the lights was smashed with a sledge hammer, six inch Halls wore cmocduca In lne arive, and broker glass spread on the road. At Alderman's Green •tine set by the The fiercest struggle came at Longannet power station, where the electricity board was prepared to use helicopters to bring in workers and six naval boats were used to bring oil in.
squads the police were ; who threw workers in jail without bail or trial. Mick McGahey, the Scottish Area President of the NUM, was assaulted by the If Longannet was the fiercest battle, Saltley coke depot in Birmingham was the greatest victory. For a week six hundred police fought to keep the depot open. Four police and countless miners received severe injuries. After four days battles between roughly equal numbers of police and pickets, the working class of Birmingham acted.
Two hundred shop stewards from all the major factories in the East Midlands district of the AUEW met. The following morning further police reinforcements were called in, and six out of the debot Forty thousand workers struck. Eleven thousand poured down the hills onto the picket. The police were swept aside. At 10.45am on the morning of 10 February 1972 the gates of Saltley coke depot were slammed shut. They never re-opened until the end of the Saltley was the end as far as the ruling class was concerned. The violence of the scabs, , the campaign of the press, and the open use of the As Tory MP William Deedes put it: "Th crux at places like Saltley was not how the las was interpreted but how it could be enforced. It was not doubtful law but numbers which held At Saltley and in hundreds of other unsung struggles the rank and file of the NUM hac broken the back of the capitalists' assault. The government's income policy was smashed.
There were still setbacks to come. In 1973 the hospital workers suffered a severe defeat. But the government of Heath had been shaken to its foundations. It had been shown that a government could be defeated in struggle by a The second miners' strike of 1974 rammed home the lesson by bringing down the Heath government. In the February 1974 election the Tory Party received its lowest proportion of the votes in any general election this century.
The great lessons of the 1972 miners' strike still apply today. The TUC and union leader: are no more prepared to wage a struggle now But the Ford and lorry drivers' strikes last winter showed once again that the industrial working class have the power to destroy any government policy.
drivers' strike in particular showed the power of mass picketing and why the Tóries are so determined to destroy it. No victory for the Tories in any other field can make up for decisive defeats by the core of the Victory is possible by SHRAN against. even the most reactionary As in 1972 it will be the fight between the and Thatcher that will determine the outcome of the class struggle.
Socialist Challenge 21 June 1979 Page 13