Paying for energy profits in disease and death

This descent of the energy production industry into 19th century activities such as “fracking”, which was last tried in Scotland 150 years ago, and marginal drift mining show that capitalism cannot safely tackle the growing energy crisis.

The tragic deaths of four miners in South Wales last week highlighted one side of the increasingly desperate search for energy sources. Camp Frack, set up by local residents and climate activists on a site near Southport in Lancashire, to protest against plans by mining company Cuadrilla Resources to drill for shale gas, draws attention to an equally dangerous activity.

The camp is opposing plans for “fracking” – hydraulic fracturing – where water with chemicals is pumped into rocks to shatter them, releasing the carbon gas which is piped to tankers and transported to power stations. Cuadrilla, backed by Australian mining money and with BP's former chair Lord Browne in support, is one of a number given licence by the Coalition government to pilot fracking. The company is looking at sites across 437 square miles of Lancashire.

Its first operation was suspended in the summer, when geologists suggested they had caused two earthquakes that shook the seaside town of Blackpool. In the USA people living near fracking operations say it causes seismic shifts and serious illnesses. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently conducting a large-scale study on the impacts, and the Camp Frack protesters are demanding the British government halt all activity until it reports.

As well as the health and geological risks, burning shale gas gives off more CO2 than coal. But the risks to the people, the environment and the wildlife of the Ribble Valley have been simply ignored. The US anti-fracking film Gasland, was nominated for an Oscar last year and you can find out more about it here.

The sum total of possible shale gas deposits in Britain would meet the need for gas for a grand total of 18 months. It is only in the total absence of anything resembling a coherent strategy for energy that such a risky activity could be given the go-ahead for such short-term returns.

Meanwhile, the National Union of Mineworkers has warned that tiny collieries like the one at Gleision where four miners died as a result of an inrush of water, may be operating “under the radar” of mine inspectors. The soaring world price of coal has led to an expansion of small, privately-owned drift and open cast mining in the UK over recent years – operations that sometimes open and shut in response to commodity price fluctuations.

Gleision, which produced smokeless coal for boilers, is one of the smallest and remotest of these kinds of laissez-faire operations. Chris Kitchen, general secretary of the NUM, said: "We have grave concerns about safety standards in these kinds of mines. We fear that safety is often set at minimum standards so that costs can be kept down. They are not generally unionised or easily visited by inspectors."

Britain's five remaining deep-mine collieries, such as Kellingley in Yorkshire, have teams of safety personnel, high standards, and a unionised workforce alert to problems. "You are not going to have that kind of thing in a small drift mine that employs nine people."

As the Energy Bill currently going through Parliament shows, the reality is that government efforts to promote energy saving and efficiency, or local power generation strategies and clean sources, are minimal. The scale of what they plan – lots of advice and fine words but little funding or subsidy – shows they are not serious.

As long as we live in this undemocratic profit-driven energy society, the government will make sure the energy corporations keep the market sewn up. Only by challenging the ownership and control of energy production will we ever be able to put the focus on safety, clean energy and conservation.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

The stakes couldn't be higher

The stakes are being raised in the confrontation between BA management and cabin crew members of Unite who are fighting to protect jobs and conditions. Coming a quarter of a century after the end of the biggest confrontation between unions and the state when the miners fought pit closures in a struggle lasting a year, the company’s reaction to the strike means it is more than just another industrial dispute.

BA chief executive Willie Walsh has overt and covert backing from the state in the form of New Labour and all the major political parties as well as every single major media outlet that endlessly highlight the predicament of stranded passengers. Newspapers like the Daily Star and the Evening Standard spend large sums to dish up the dirt on union leaders like Derek Simpson and Bob Crow.

The cabin crew strike is, therefore, a crucial test case. From the employer’s and government’s point of view, any resurgent trade unionism must be nipped in the bud. That is why there is similar hostility to the plan by members of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union to stage the first national strike for 16 years to block the loss of 1,500 jobs.

A few days ago, the BBC hosted a discussion on its “Moral Maze” programme in which it was said that the right to strike should not exist. This was supported by former Tory MP Michael Portillo. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stated a similar view pontificating that “we cannot tolerate large-scale industrial disputes in this country, particularly at this time as the economy comes out of recession.”

While BA claims that the strike is costing the company £7 million per day, financial analysts in the City have estimated a daily loss of £15 to £20 million. Calling on BA to negotiate a “sensible” agreement, Unite estimates that seven days of strike will cost the company over £100m. When a company is prepared to sustain losses on this scale, Unite is right to say that BA “has embarked on an ambitious and expensive attempt to destroy trade unionism among its cabin crew”. But Unite leaders are failing to draw the key lessons from history and are pussy-footing around. We have been here before.

At “Digging the Seam”, a three-day conference held the University of Leeds last week, participants reflected on the consequences and legacy of the 1984-1985 miners’ strike. The outcome of that year-long confrontation was that members of one of Britain’s most powerful unions, the National Union of Mineworkers were compelled to return to work. Thousands of its members ended up in jail and thousands more sustained injuries due to police violence. Within a decade the NUM was reduced to a shadow of its former self by the destruction of the coal industry. Pit village communities continue to suffer devastation.

Just as then, the struggle being conducted by BA cabin crew and rail workers is more than just an industrial dispute. It is over rights to have a job and provide a service to their fellow human beings under terms which are not dictated by a management motivated solely by shareholder returns.

The history of a single union taking on a ruthless employer under conditions of economic and political crisis is highly relevant in today’s situation. Even more now than then, no single group of trade unionists in today’s globalised world and with a far smaller trade union movement, can take on and defeat a state-backed company.

These confrontations come as Alistair Darling admits that New Labour is preparing public spending cuts which will be "deeper and tougher" than Margaret Thatcher's in the 1980s. Treasury cuts will add up to a staggering 25% of departmental budgets and will last until 2017, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. It warns that Britain faces "two parliaments of pain”. The employers and the state have launched a war on several fronts. And Unite is funding New Labour’s attempt at re-election!

An increasing danger is that with the present bunch of union leaders patently incapable of learning from history and organising a co-ordinated resistance that defies laws banning solidarity strikes, groups of workers will be picked off one by one. Firm, decisive, bold leadership is key to the outcome of these struggles. At this point in time, its absence in the trade union and working class movement is there for all to see.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Durham Gala brings past struggles to life

It was an awesome and poignant sight that sent shivers down your spine and brought a lump to your throat - the first colliery band entering the pristine, green old racecourse at Saturday’s 125th Durham Miners Gala.

The men and women playing the shiny brass instruments marching behind their colourful pit banner were not some quaint folk tradition. No, they stand for much more. They, and the dozens of other colliery bands, who took pride of place at the Gala, or “the big meeting”, are living symbols of a working class movement that has gone through the harshest of histories.

These communities have endured two centuries of sheer backbreaking drudgery and high mortality rates, the betrayal of the 1926 General Strike, the erosion of jobs, and, finally, the trial of strength between the Thatcher government and the National Union of Mineworkers, led by its president Arthur Scargill, a quarter of a century ago.

The magnificent attendance of around 50,000 at the gala is a demonstration that those workers and their families have not forgotten that history. On the contrary – the grandparents, mothers and fathers and their children strolling through the sunshine – were only too aware that today’s generations stand on the shoulders of their ancestors.

The Gala has been held continuously since 1869 interrupted only by miners’ strikes and the two world wars. At its height, it attracted 250,000 workers and their families. On Saturday, three new banners, Westoe, Boldon, and South Hetton, joined the parade. Two of County Durham’s worst pit disasters - West Stanley in 1909 when 168 men and boys were killed and Easington in 1951, when 83 died – were also commemorated. Gala co-ordinator George Robson said that enthusiasm for the Big Meeting was growing, with groups restoring their banners: “I am dealing with 46 or 47 lodges or community groups and they are springing up all the time."

Amongst those present was an acute awareness that what the miners’ endured in their year-long strike 25 years ago was on the agenda again today, albeit in a new and more comprehensive form which affected all workers as a vast new economic meltdown takes effect. Matt Wrack, secretary of the Fire Brigades Union and Bob Crow of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union joined Dennis Skinner MP and NUM president Ian Lavery and Durham Miners Association and former NUM general secretary David Hopper on the speakers’ platform. Hopper accused Labour MPs of "paving the way for the return of the Tories” while Crow denounced the government and said the future for workers did not lie in the direction of New Labour.

Surveying from the edges and even strolling through the racecourse for the first time at a Gala, police Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) armed with batons and cameras, strutted their stuff, despite the entirely peaceful and festive nature of the occasion. They were a reminder of the confrontation with state forces in the 1984-5 strike for jobs.

Although the miners were forced to end their strike in the spring of 1985, without achieving their objective of preventing the pit closures, they demonstrated the fighting capacity of their union and their class. The strike marked the end of the post-war epoch in which pressure politics of trade union action could achieve aims such as higher pay and the protection of jobs. The image of the British state as an even-handed mediator standing above the classes in society was stripped away as police cavalry charges and jail sentences rained down on those who had dared to fight for their jobs.

As A World to Win’s new book, Unfinished Business, launched at the Gala concludes:

“The miners in 1984-5 found that they were unable on their own to save their jobs and communities. Ultimately, the power to determine their futures rested with the state and capitalism. Today, new generations and other communities will, like the miners, rise to the challenge and create a leadership that sets its eyes on the main prize: the conquest of power. This is the way to prevent capitalism from turning another industry and its communities into a wasteland. The great miners’ strike remains unfinished business.”

Corinna Lotz
Secretary, A World to Win

Salute the miners’ strike for jobs

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the start of the great miners’ strike in defence of jobs and communities. Their year-long confrontation with the state and the Tory government remains an outstanding example of the determination of ordinary working people to fight for their rights.

By the time of the strike, officially, unemployment in Britain had risen to around 3.25 million – although the real total was nearer 4 million - and the privatisation of all the great state industries, starting with British Telecom, was underway. It was the miners alone who answered the call of history, and challenged the right of the state and governments to put people out of work and into poverty.

The strike was provoked by the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher when the state-controlled National Coal Board (NCB) on 1 March 1984 announced plans for the closure of 20 pits in Yorkshire with the loss of 20,000 jobs. The government was in fact secretly planning for the closure of 70 pits throughout the country and the virtual destruction of the industry.

The 600 miners at Cortonwood colliery in South Yorkshire met on Sunday 4 March and voted to strike, calling on the Yorkshire Area of the National Union of Miners for support, which was duly given a few days later. The miners of Scotland, Wales, the North-East, Kent and North Derbyshire came out on March 12.

So began one of the longest, most decisive, most determined and extraordinary strikes of all time. The government had prepared very carefully for this showdown, building up stocks of coal at the power stations, while at the same time switching some of them to burn oil.

They had appointed Ian MacGregor, the butcher of the steel industry, as the new chief at the NCB. State agents were planted in the unions, including the NUM, and the government cultivated good relations with the leaders of the right-wing unions. Social security laws were changed and the scope of the anti-union laws was extended. Plans for the national deployment of police were drawn up. In short the power of the state machine was considerably enhanced.

Within a few days, when it became evident that many of the Nottinghamshire miners might defy the strike, the forces of the state were unleashed. Thousands of police from all over the country were drafted into Nottinghamshire in order to seal the county off from the mass pickets of Yorkshire. Road-blocks were set up round the county, coaches were turned away, pickets had their cars smashed, and if they did get through (which they usually did in large numbers), they were met by thousands of police at the gates of the pits. Nearly 10,000 miners were arrested altogether during the strike, and over 8,000 of them were charged. Hundreds were jailed.

Injunctions and contempt of court actions were taken out by the NCB, and later Arthur Scargill, the miners’ leader, was served with a High Court writ while he was inside the Labour Party conference. On 5 October, he had a second writ served on him for simply declaring the strike official and a week later the union was fined £200,000. This led the following month to the seizure and sequestration of all the funds and assets of the union to the tune of around £10m.

Neil Kinnock and the other leaders of the Labour Party sat on their hands, while continuing to hide behind the call for a ballot. The trade union leaders, terrified of the implications of the strike and of breaking the law, hardly even turned up. They confined their activities to giving money and searching for a compromise solution, which was never to be had.

Inside the mining communities there emerged a new source of strength, the wives and the women. They joined the picket lines, set up soup kitchens to feed everyone in the community and organised a joyful Xmas 1984, insofar as money would allow. And all over the country hundreds of thousands of individual trade unionists and other supporters gave money and material support — and this flowed in from France, Australia, the Soviet Union and other countries.

The miners were eventually forced back to work. On 3 March 1985 they marched into the pits proudly behind their bands and their banners without a settlement. They were driven back not by their leaders – who stood firm – but as a direct result of a long process of back-sliding and abandonment of principles on the part of the Labour Party and the TUC in the face of the new offensive of the corporations internationally.

The Thatcher government had deployed the full might of the state to the task of defeating the miners because they represented the final, and the most formidable obstacle to its aim of making Britain fit for the corporations as one of the centres of the new globalised economy.

Today, the fight for jobs is once more top of the agenda as the global capitalist economy plunges into slump. As in 1985, most union leaders have abandoned any resistance to the state and the employers. The heroic miners’ strike remains an inspiration, however, and provides valuable lessons for today. Above all, the miners demonstrated that the power of the capitalist state stands between working people and the right to determine their own future in terms of jobs and communities.

P J Arkell
Photographer during the miners’ strike