Labour Values

Back to Miners Strike index
Back to article index
Previous

APPENDIX 2

THE NCB AND THE NUM

When the coalmines were nationalised in 1946, the miners achieved a demand for which they had been fighting for two generations. The Labour Government viewed the nationalisation as essential in order to ensure the efficient utilisation of a vital national resource: the coalowners had proved themselves incapable of running the industry efficiently; their pursuit of profit had led to inefficiency and the gross exploitation of the miners who hewed the coal.

James Griffiths MP, a former Welsh miner and trade union leader, was a member of the Labour Cabinet in 1945. He commented at the 1948 Labour Party Conference:

"As one who has fought for a generation or more a campaign for nationalisation of the mines may I say that I want to see it an efficient industry, for it is only an efficient industry that will give men the best conditions of work and the best conditions of labour. If it is to become efficient that must be the only test." (Labour Party Conference Report 1948, p.171.)

Griffiths was speaking on a resolution which called for trade union participation in management of nationalised industries at all levels. He continued:

"Let me say at once I agree that this (participation by unions in management) is the first stage, and this stage must be continued until it becomes real socialisation. It cannot be real socialisation unless every worker engaged in an industry feels that he is a partner in a great public service. There must therefore be participation at every level and, most important of all, at the lowest level, namely at the pit, at the factory and elsewhere." (Ibid.)

Cooperation but No Involvement

In fact, any notion of the National Union of Mineworkers participating in the management of the National Coal Board was scuppered by the union leadership. The Communist Secretary of the NUM, Arthur Horner, was wholeheartedly committed to the success of the National Coal Board. But, he could not bring, himself, as a Communist who looked forward to the dictatorship of the proletariat and "real" Soviet Socialism, to agree to the union becoming involved in the management of a nationalised industry which was still functioning in a "capitalist economy".

[fn] See the review of Nina Fishman's biography of Arthur Horner elsewhere on this site.

The President of the NUM, Will Lawther, had been left-wing once, and had by 1946 become a real conservative. He concluded in the 1948 debate at the Labour Party Conference:

"We as a miners' organisation do not want to have people in the ridiculous position that we see on the Continent where the president or secretary of a miners' organisation is also on the Coal Board running the industry, so that he has on occasion to pass a resolution to ask himself to give himself something....The position for the Trade Union is to remain independent of the Coal Board and independent of whatever Boards or Executives may be set up." (Conference Report, p.170.)

Nevertheless, the NUM co-operated with the National Coal Board in an informal, but determined manner. The NUM's leaders had known what it was like to work for the private coalowners, and they realised fully that the National Coal Board was a different kettle of fish altogether. The NCB guaranteed miners a living wage, and was committed to creating decent working conditions in the industry. The Labour Government had charged the NCB with running the industry, not only efficiently, but also to run it with the welfare of the workers as a prime consideration. This great gain was something which the NUM leaders were not about to squander.

Until the mid-1950s, Britain suffered from coal shortages. Coal was the primary means of running the nation's industry, heating the nation's homes, and generating the nation's electricity. Sometimes, the coal shortages were not too serious, at other times, there was hardly enough coal to run the country for another week. The problem was not only that there were too few miners, (there was of course a general labour shortage, and since mining was not as attractive a job as factory work, the labour shortage was more severe in the pits than elsewhere). There was also the fact that the Government of the day could not afford to invest in new pits fast enough to meet the demand for coal. Therefore, old pits which should have been closed long before were kept open.

The often-referred to period of pit closures in the 1960s was so dramatic in terms of the numbers closed in a short period of time because the old stock had been kept going long after time. Neither the NUM nor the NCB had wanted to keep these old pits open. It had been a matter of sheer necessity because of the shortage of resources available from the Government to invest in new capacity.

The arrangements for "collective bargaining" in the newly nationalised industry were not "adversarial". That is, the collective bargaining in the industry was based on the shared desire of the NCB and the NUM to make a go of running the industry. There is a dense network of consultative committees running from the pit upwards to the Board level. It is through these consultative committees that the plans of the management are aired and the union's reaction canvassed. It is through these consultative committees that differences are ironed out without the need for industrial disputes.

The Strikes of 1972 and 1974

There have certainly been unofficial strikes at the pit level since 1946; but these have been few and far between. By and large, the coal industry has been one of the most peaceful, if not the most peaceful, industry in Britain. The flexing of the NUM's muscles in 1972 and 1974 is instructive.

In 1972, the NUM held its first national strike since 1926, over wages. The reason that it was necessary to go on strike was because the NUM itself, under its Communist Secretary, Will Paynter, had pressed on the Board the principle of equal wages for miners in all the coalfields. The National Power Loading Agreement (NPLA) had been conceded by the Coal Board because the NUM had been keen to do away with any kind of incentive payment and move to one basic wage for all miners at the coalface.

The operation of the NPLA had, however, produced widespread discontent from miners who were used to being able to earn wages much higher in those coalfields which were easy to work. Miners in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and the Midlands were keen to be earning wages of the size to which they had been accustomed. In addition, the ex-Communist Secretary of the NUM in 1972, Lawrence Daly, was committed to bringing "class struggle" back into mining. He had rejected any notion of making a success of the nationalised mining industry in favour of an idea which held that in order to build socialism it was necessary to engage in militant struggle everywhere.

In 1974, the miners again went on strike over wages. They had done well, indeed very well, in 1972. Given the opportunity to score again, Joe Gormley saw no reason not to do so. (Daly had by this time paled into insignificance.) Though Gormley was undoubtedly committed to the notion of a nationalised coal industry, he was also not averse to winning concessions for his members. After all, the lean days of the 1950s had gone forever, and the nation could now afford to pay the miners better. In the 1950's the NUM had acquiesced in the damping down of the economic struggle, because there was patently nothing to be gained by striking: there was nothing in the Government's coffers left over after other vital commitments had been met. There was a lot more wealth around in 1974, and Gormley didn't mind trying to get some for his members.

Management, the Union and Ian McGregor

Being an official of the NUM, whether at pit level or on the National Executive, is quite different from operating in any other union. Management in the Coal Board (at least up until Ian McGregor) behaved as if the NUM were as important a consideration as meeting production targets or listening to management higher up in the Coal Board. The NCB management had learned to work with the NUM because it paid off. With NUM co-operation, they could run the pits more easily, and more efficiently, than without it. Moreover, from the beginning, the feeling that the NCB had to behave differently than their predecessors had been developed. The Board management took great pride in producing coal; but they knew that the NUM officials took as great a pride in so doing and they worked together.

Ian McGregor's coming certainly changed the nature of the NCB management. Before McGregor, each pit manager had been very much his own man, with a minimum of control from above. It is no wonder that both the management's union, BACM, and the deputies' union, NACODS, were so reluctant to take sides in this miners' strike. McGregor had begun to upset the old ways of doing things and they didn't like the changes which threatened to take their old power away.

Nevertheless, the NUM itself had rejected the alternative to McGregor in 1977. At that time, the Coal Board had wanted to move to a system of industrial democracy in the mines: of the NUM having a formal place in the management of the industry. Arthur Scargill was instrumental in 1977 in making certain that the NCB offer was rejected. He did not want to have a say in which pits should be kept open and which pits should be closed, because we were still living in a capitalist society! Thus, the NCB's serious offer, made with the encouragement of Tony Benn, the then Minister for Energy, was rejected. And with that rejection came the seeds of Ian McGregor and this pit strike.

In 1946, the National Coal Board was given the statutory responsibility for managing the coal industry. In 1977, the National Union of Mineworkers turned down the chance to change that statutory responsibility into a shared one, whereby both Board and Union would manage. It is difficult to see how Scargill can challenge McGregor's right to close pits now, given his earlier refusal to have anything to do with such decisions.

(For more about the coal industry and the 1977 events see The Economic Development of the British Coal Industry, Neil K. Buxton, Batsford Academic, 1978, and The Miners Debate Workers Control, an account of the debate of a special NUM Conference at Harrogate in 1977, published by the Ernest Bevin Society.)