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THE ATTITUDE OF THE WORKING CLASS TO THE MINERS' STRIKE
The working class, far from rallying behind Mr. Scargill's calls to Class War, have remained at home and kept their own counsel. They have persisted in treating the miners’ strike as simply another incident in the economic struggle about which they could not usefully do very much. They have, therefore not regarded themselves as traitors for sitting at home and watching the picket lines on television—anymore than they did for sitting at home during the NHS Pay Dispute, the 1981 Steel Strike or the recent Vauxhall strike.
Mr. McGregor has pronounced British workers to be uncivilised for tolerating the picket-line violence of the miners' strike. In fact, the British working class has long operated with the view that each man's economic struggle is his own to wage inside his union as he sees fit and as best his union can. It is this view of the economic struggle which has enabled trade unions to continue to operate. Because all the working class' forces are never risked in a single episode, there is always strength and will to carry on and fight when necessary.
Workers have felt no kinship, but they have been perfectly willing to allow the miners to fight their own strike as they saw fit.
(The TUC General Council certainly imposed some kind of order on the economic struggle when it was willing to lead, i.e. up to the 1970s. Workers were willing to accept the General Council's right to judge the disparate disputes in the economic struggle, and to give aid and comfort to some, whilst discouraging others. There was, of course, nothing absolute about this order: a union was still free to wage its economic struggle even though the TUC opposed it. The TUC's generalship of the economic struggle had the effect of making it more uniformly successful for the unions, since it tended to be those disputes which could be won which the General Council was willing to support.)
NO SYMPATHY
Most workers feel no little sympathy for the miners and varying degrees of disgust for Mr. Scargill. Mrs. Thatcher and Leon Brittan have been quite unable to bring the British worker to their side against Scargill, because the British worker is well aware that to hound the NUM beyond the pale might then have repercussions in future on his own ability to fight back when he needs to use it. Most trade unionists would be well pleased if the miners kicked out Arthur Scargill and installed a practical, realistic union leader. But until the miners do come to their senses, it is not up to another trade unionist to tell them what to do.
The British working class has cannily and stolidly sat back to watch Scargill and the NUM fight as best then can. Thatcher has had to fight against them on her own because the principle of trade unionism and being able to fight has been seen by the British working class as too important to be abandoned for the sake of beating Scargill.
Had Mrs. Thatcher and Leon Brittan been able to bring themselves to tackle the NUM and Scargill on different ground, a swifter isolation and demoralisation might have been possible. However, both politicians let their individualistic inclinations have free rein in their approach to the strike. And, in the circumstances, their gut reaction of individualist revulsion to the coercion used in this strike was irrelevant. Many other people, including trade unionists, felt it too. It remained irrelevant. Other trade unionists would not have fought the strike in this way. But it is, after all, the miners' strike, for them to fight as they see fit.
The British working class would certainly have turned on the NUM if pickets had flouted law and order totally, and engaged in a fight with the police for the sake of beating them. But things were never let go quite that far by Mr. Scargill. He always pulled up his lads, who had been acting mostly without direction from above, when they were in danger of waging a battle against law and order for its own sake. Therefore, the British working class has sat back and let both sides get on with it.