"We will stick to the end"

Scan page 4

British dockworkers stop scab labor Michael Schreiber recently visited England and spoke to several coal miners who are on strike. We reprint below remarks of two of the miners, Brinley Hill and Gary Horfall, who are from the village of Aylesham in Kent. The interview took place in the Labour Party headquarters at Greenwich, a suburb of London, on June 27, 1984. That afternoon, 50,000 people marched through the center of London in a regional day of solidarity with the miners.

Brinley Hill: What we're fighting for in Kent is this: We've got three pits down there-Snowdon, Tilmerston, and Betteshanger. All of them are on the hit-list of closures that lan McGregor, the American millionaire who is the new head of the coal board, has brought out. There are over 2800 jobs at stake in Kent.

Gary Horfall: Our village of Aylesham is dead. No one ever goes out. It used to be a happy place. If they As we go to press, delegates from the British dockworkers union have approved an agreement that halts their 10-day strike in solidarity with the miners. John Connolly, representing the Transport and General Workers Union, claimed victory in the settlement. 'We have reaffirmed our position about the use of scab labor, " he said.

The strike began July 10 to protest the use of scab workers to load iron ore at a British Steel Plant that the miners had picketed. Dockworkers were also battling to save an agreement that guaranteed about 13,500 jobs for life in return for selective SOCIALIST ACTION do close the mine, it'll be a ghost town.

Hill: There is no other work there. When they close a pit, it's a whole community they're closing. We're fighting for our families and the whole bloody community. I work at Snowdon. They tried to close my pit in 1981, but we stood up and fought against it. So, it was left open as a new development pit. That means going to a new vein. But the coal board only offered us 3 million pounds to do it, and provided that we cut the work force in half until the new vein was opened. We lost 400 men.

Horfall: We made two tunnels toward the new seam, but only got half way. Then, about six months ago, the coal board stopped it. There's enough coal in that new vein to last 100 years. There's no need to close the mine.

Hill: As a measure of the strength of feeling in Kent, if we take a fortnight ago, we occupied the Betteshanger pit to stop scabs from going to work. And three days ago, we occupied Tilmerston. The coal board had thrown out a scare layoffs and to protest the government's plans to sell off state-owned shipping lines to private corporations.

More than 90 ports were shut down during the strike, and about 75 percent of Britain's foreign trade was effectively paralyzed. Both the National Union of Seamen and the National Union of Railwaymen ordered their members not to cross the dockworkers' picket lines. Jimmy Knapp, general secretary of the rail union, pointed out that the longshore strike 'has arisen out of the miners' strike, and we've been 100 percent behind that from the start. "

AUGUST 1984 SARON' * DENTAREA Striking British miners. story that the pit had to be closed because it was deteriorating. We sent eight miners down to determine the truth for themselves. It wasn't so.

Horfall: Single lads like me stay up here all the time. Miners from Aylesham are based around Greenwich. Other miners, from Yorkshire for example, are based in other parts of London. In the evenings we speak at meetings and work to raise money, and during the day we picket the power stations. Most of the plants are being powered by oil that comes in by boat on the Thames, but the lorry drivers have pledged us their support. If we're there at the gates, they turn the lorries around.

Hill: This building, the Labour Party headquarters in Greenwich, serves as our control office. I have about 60 men to look after on a telephone list. If we hear from our office in Kent that there's something, let's say, at the Orgreave coke plant up near Sheffield, I tell the men that the big haul is for Orgreaveand we pull out of here and go there. We call that flying pickets.

A support committee meets here every Sunday. It is made up of Labour Party members, and other trade union members, and anyone else who wants to come along.

Horfall: The Greenwich support committee helps to organize food convoys that go down to our colliery. They have a soup kitchen in our local working men's club in Aylesham. The kids can come in and have a free meal. Older people who can't go far to picket help break out the food stocks when the convoys arrive.

Hill: The women are very active. They have a strike support group in our area of Kent, and there are committees all over the country. They not only help set up the kitchen, but picket, speak at public meetings, and defend our community. The Greenham Common women gave us help on the picket lines, and our women paid them back by going to Greenham Common to show support for their fight against war.

Horfall: As to violence, they always blame the miners. The government sent several thousand police to the Orgreave coke depot to show they could smash us. It didn't work, and anyone could see on Channel Four television, for example, that a policeman with a truncheon just pulled a man out of the crowd and banged him on the head. The man hadn't done anything.

Hill: To my belief, our battle is being won. Our union president, Arthur

Scan page 5

..Polish prisoners freed (continued from page 1: “Polish prisoners win amnesty!”) lectuals who came to realiz organization. They supervise the collection and distribution of food and clothes, and take their own initiatives such as a 10,000-strong demonstration in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, in May. Miners' wives have also taken the place of their arrested husbands on the picket lines, a step symbolized by the arrest of Ann Scargill, the wife of the NUM president, on a Nottinghamshire picket.

These preparations by miners and police came to a head in a new 'Battle of Saltley Gates, " this time held at the coke depot of Orgreave near Sheffield in South Yorkshire. For over a week thousands of miners battled with police. Arthur Scargill, who led the pickets personally, was arrested and suffered head and limb injuries.

British people who are fed the idea that their police are peaceable and unarmed were shocked to see on television "snatch squads" and helmeted police making repeated cavalry charges on the pickets. The pickets responded in self-defense by erecting burning barricades. The scenes resembled those in Northern Ireland and tended to confirm the charges of civil liberties organizations that Ireland was being used as a "laboratory of repression" for the British class struggle.

The coal employers, the National Coal Board, eventually stopped the shipments of coal from Orgreave to their destination at the Scunthorpe steel works. But the miners' strike is far from won. The indispensable condition for their victory is active support for the "flying pickets" from other workers— both nationally and internationally-to stop the movement of coal. With that support their fight against Thatcher can be won.

Scargill, is saying how there'll be power (continue Jacek Kuron The joint history of the four defendants began in June 1976, when strikes broke out following the government announcement of a rise in food prices. In retaliation for these strikes workers were laid off by the hundreds in Radom, Ursus, and Plock, and some were given heavy prison sentences.

A handful of intellectuals and students including the four defendants, all of whom had histories of opposition to the Polish bureaucracy, decided to take charge of the workers' defense, and KOR was born.

In its first year it supplied regular aid to more than 600 families of the victimized workers. Around this activity was created a network of workers and intellectuals who came to realize that more permanent organs for workers' defense were needed.

KOR—A history of struggle.

In September 1977 a KOR outreach office charged with supplying aid to all those who ran afoul of the regime was created by Romaszewski and his wife Zofia. At the same time a newsletter, Robotnik (Worker), was started with Wujec as one of its editors. Kuron's apartment became the hub of information received clandestinely from all around Poland about repressive actions and demonstrations opposing them.

This news center was later (in 1980) formalized into an information bank of nationwide strike activity. These activities have enabled an exchange of experiences to take place among workers from all areas of the country and are continuing to play a role in the regroupment of the leadership.

Michnik, at the invitation of JeanPaul Sartre, had spent much of 1976 in France, where he was able to publicize various defense cases and the objectives of KOR. Upon his return to Poland in May 1977 he, along with the other KOR leaders, was arrested. He was released in July because of the amnesty announced at that time.

Kuron was arrested again in August 1980 but released 10 days later after the victory of the Gdansk strikes, which gave rise to Solidarity. All four of the accused continued their leadership roles in the Solidarity movement. Kuron and Michnik started the "flying" university and an independent political review, Krytyka.

Three of the four were again arrested on Dec. 13, 1981. Romaszewski escaped the roundup at that time but was later captured and sent to prison in August 1982.

The charge against the defendants was seeking to overthrow the government by force. The real charge against them, however, is that they have courageously resisted the government's blackmail attempts-promises of freedom for the four (as well as for the seven other leaders who had been held without trial) if they will leave the country.

Their real crime in the eyes of the Jaruzelski government is simply that they have fought step by step for the right of workers to have their own organizations independent of the bureaucracy. They have steadfastly defended the most elementary of workers' rights.

No recognition of these rights has yet to appear from the government despite the amnesty. Indeed the brutality of the repression against Solidarity's organizing centers has been growing in the last few months. (See International Viewpoint, July 16, 1984.) And the amnesty specifically forbids renewed political activity on the part of those released from prison.

The international workers' movement must continue to support the struggle of Solidarity to form unions independent of the Jaruszelski regime and to demand the lifting of all restrictions on the democratic rights of the Polish working class.