Back to Miners Strike index
Back to article index
On 'free collective bargaining'
The Miners' Strike in Britain can only be successful if it expands into a general strike. It cannot become a general strike because its aims are too particular to the mining industry. Those aims are insufficient even to achieve a national strike of miners. A mirage of a general strike appeared on the horizon because of the dock strike and the threat of a seamen's strike. But the seamen's strike never materialised, and the dock strike, achieved by dubious means, collapsed internally.
GORMLEY AND SCARGILL
Ten years ago, a miners' strike, enthusiastically backed by the Labour movement, brought down a Tory government. The miners' leader was Joe Gormley, who knew the union inside-out, having made his way from the coal-face to the Presidency. Gormley had no systematic ideology. He was a Lancashire Catholic by origin. Lancashire Catholicism, being a survival of the Catholicism of old England, is unzealous and not very Roman. Gormley appears to have remained a lukewarm Catholic with a mind of his own, being attracted neither to Marxism nor to the Catholic Action lobby in the Labour movement which was developed by Irish elements. He therefore had no ideological axe to grind.
Lack of ideology did not imply a lack of militancy. He was one of the most effectively militant trade union leaders there has been in Britain. He got results. He won all his strikes. He carried the miners to the top of the wages league. And he brought down a Tory Government.
Scargill is an ideological militant above everything else. He thinks out a part and plays it. It is probably not true that he always has a hairdresser to hand so that his hair can be instantly lacquered for the cameras, but neither is the rumour unbelievable. Scargill is very concerned about his image. Gormley did his job and never gave a moment's thought to image.
Another important difference is that Scargill did not make his way from the coal-face to the Presidency through the mainstream negotiating machinery of the union. He progressed along a secondary line, negotiating safety arrangement : a sphere in which demands were almost automatically met.
Gormley's handling of the NUM created an illusion which fooled Scargill. Gormley made the union appear to the public as a monolithic militant force which had only to be committed to battle in order to win. And since Gormley was known to be an un-ideological moderate, the idea naturally presented itself that if a moderate could achieve such remarkable results with this force an ideologically motivated militant could storm heaven with it.
(The illusion was somewhat like that created by Napoleon's Imperial Guard. Through judicious use it acquired a reputation for invincibility, which became a great psychological force in many battles. When the Imperial Guard moved, the enemy knew that the battle was lost. Then came the battle of Waterloo, at which the Imperial Guard was for the first time thrown against British infantry. It was handled recklessly by Napoleon. The British infantry knew nothing of its invincibility. And it was methodically shot to pieces as it moved in column towards the thin British line.)
FREE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AND SOCIALISM
Gormley was a "free collective bargainer", as Scargill also considers himself to be. But Gormley was a wholehearted practitioner of free collective bargaining, while Scargill is only an ideologist of it.
Gormley explains his position thus:
"I became quite a disciple of John L. Lewis who was President of the American Miners for forty years. His theory was that it wasn't his job to decide the size of the industry, but that it was his job to fight like hell for the best wages and conditions for those who worked in it. I said at the time: 'There's a good deal of sense in what he says, because the fact is we're not able to decide the size of our industry. It's being decided by pressures from outside. We can't say it will be any bigger than other people are allowing it to be. So we should be concentrating on getting the right wages'.
"I took the argument to the NEC. [This was in the early 60s.] Bill Paynter [a member of the Communist Party] was the Secretary, and I told him: 'We must all be out of our sweet minds. Here we are, accepting pence or shillings for our members, simply because we're afraid of pit closures. But we're not stopping any pit closures. We've not even been able to defer many pit closures. Most of them have happened exactly as Alf Robens has planned them'.
"To this day I remember Bill's reply. 'Well, Joe, if we take that line, it means accepting the Board's and the Government's plans for the coal industry'.
"'Bill', I said, 'I don't give a damn what it means accepting, but our job is to fight for a good standard of living for those people who are going to work in the industry'" (J. Gormley, Battered Cherub, 1982, p.62).
In 1975, following the successful national strikes of 1972 and 1974, the NUM won its biggest wage increase ever, "not through any strike or threat of strike, but through what is called 'free collective bargaining’. I put it like that because, although I'm obviously in favour of it, the word 'free' in that context has always amused me. Negotiations never have been free. They never will be. They are always subject to the situation at the time..." (Battered Cherub, p.l62).
The situation at that time was an increased dependence on coal due to vast increases in what was then a monopoly price for oil. Finding himself unexpectedly in a seller's market, Gormley negotiated hard and effectively over the price of mining labour, while restraining his NEC from going over the top.
"At the end of it all, we had brought the miners back to the top of the industrial wages league. We have remained there ever since" (p.l45).
"I was born a Socialist, and I shall die a Socialist", says Gormley. He does not show how keeping the miners at the top of the wages league contributes to the development of socialism. But neither does he streamline the ideology of the market in the way that Scargill did when he was Crown Prince of the NUM in the late seventies.
Scargill developed his views in great detail in various interviews and radio phone-in programmes. The miners lived in a capitalist market. It is impossible to be a socialist in a capitalist market. The miners were in a strong position in the market because of the oil prices. The only rational thing for them to do was to screw every last penny they could out of the market. The society found itself increasingly dependant on coal, and it should be made to pay through the nose for it.
Of course, that is exactly what Gormley did. But Scargill thought that even more could have been got. He thought that because, though he was a very slick operator within the framework of the NUM, he has a very slender grasp of economic and social realities. Gormley continued to deliver the goods during the first two and half years of Thatcher government. But Scargill has delivered nothing at all since he took over in 1982. Gormley said that his aim was that every miner should have a Jaguar for going to work and his wife a Mini for the shopping, and he went a long way towards realising it. Scargill bungled his first round of wage negotiations because all he was interested in was a strike, and he has now brought the bulk of the mining population to an economic condition which it has not known since 1926 .
Gormley believed that socialism could evolve gradually while each trade union fought its own corner to the best of its ability. He had no time for social contracts and suchlike, and he thought that Jack Jones was bad news. Scargill was also opposed to social contracts. But he has no time for Gormley's idea of socialism as a product of long-term social evolution. He has a sharply etched idea of socialism which has far less connection with his sharply etched idea of market trade unionism than Gormley’s vaguer socialist ideal has with his pragmatic trade unionism. The connection depends entirely on "revolution". And Scargill’s notion of revolution is very obscure. He has never set it out systematically. And he is not a member of the CP, the SWP, the WRP or any other party with a systematic programme. He is a sort of maverick common denominator of the ideological left.