Scargill and Corbyn: sad memories and disturbing premonitions

An old friend came to visit us recently, and it was a delight to have her with us. Among many other conversations, we remembered many of our early experiences together, including the time when her husband, whom I shall call Alan, and I would travel in and out of work with a third friend, and talk at length in the long commute through appalling traffic.

The Miners’ strike
Great courage defeated by brutal opposition and lousy leadership

It was 1984, and in England the great miners’ strike was raging. Alan was something of a champagne socialist: from a wealthy background, he’d attended one of the great (and expensive) schools and had never lacked the money to indulge his sense of social conscience. He stood hard and fast on the left and one of his fundamental stands was unqualified and entire support for the miners.

“I support the miners too,” I would assure him, “just not their union leader.”

The union was the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the leader Arthur Scargill.

Many years previously, I’d spent some time in one of the mining villages, Conisbrough, of one of the great English coalfields, South Yorkshire. I’d come to know a few miners and when they struck in 1972 and 1974, I was overwhelmed by their courage, their determination and their superb organisation. They won both strikes and I was delighted with their victory.

In 1984, their courage and determination were as powerful as ever. Not so, however, the organisation.

Firstly, the strike started in March. You don’t have to know a lot about the economics of the energy sector to guess that the time of greatest demand for any kind of fuel would be the winter. In March, the peak period of demand was just passing and the country was about to enter the time of lowest need for coal. In other words, there could be no time better selected for the opponents of the miners to be able to weather (literally) any strike. In fact, to wear the strikers down until, exhausted, they could carry on no longer.

In addition, the 1972 and 1974 strikes were so effective because the miners were united across the country. The NUM had a strict rule book and it explicitly specified that a national strike could only be called with a 55% majority of all those voting in a ballot of the entire union. Scargill knew he wasn’t going to get that majority, so he resorted to a cunning plan. He would have the regions strike, one by one, which only required a simple majority in each of them.

Naturally, like most such devious plans, it failed. Some regions refused to strike and, in particular in the Midlands, a large number of miners kept working throughout.

With support for the strike split even within the NUM, other unions didn’t come out in support themselves. That meant that the strike became a struggle between some of the miners – a majority but still too few – and the government of Maggie Thatcher. With the miners so weakened, the timing so poor, and up against an enemy so strong-willed, there could only be one outcome to the strike.

The miners struggled on but, almost a year to the day after the start of their great battle, they were beaten and went back to work, unsuccessful, defeated. Over the next few years, the government took apart coal mining in Britain, shutting down nearly all the collieries. It was one of the worst defeats the working class movement has suffered in the country.

Alan, of course, didn’t see things that way. He saw the miners as right and anyone who dared to criticise the timing or leadership of the strike, as a backsliding reactionary enemy of the noble working class. So I was entirely wrong and Arthur Scargill deserved our unqualified support.

The commute in that car began to feel even longer than it actually was.

Curiously, after the strike was finally lost, Scargill did two things which, in my mind, mark him for the kind of man he truly was. He had himself named President of the NUM for life, so no one else could ever take over from him at the head of the shadow of a union he still nominally led. And he moved into a luxurious home the NUM owned in London, which he occupied until the remnants of the union finally to took him to court to drive him out.

In other words, he had all the sense of entitlement of any man of the right (think Boris Johnson), while claiming to belong to the radical left.

Why do I mention all this today? Because within Labour I’m up against a huge number of people who could be Alan’s heirs. They demand total, unbending, unquestioning allegiance to the party leader, Jeremy Corbyn. This is because they believe him incapable of ever being mistaken, just as Scargill was sure he could never be wrong. 

In my view, however, Corbyn’s as poor a leader as Scargill was. Up against a deeply unpopular government, he has led the party into a poll position that is constantly behind, possibly by as much as ten points.

In other words, it feels to me as though this man of the radical left is intent on doing to Labour exactly what Scargill did to the NUM. And now, just as then, those of us who don’t share the enthusiasm of his supporters, are regarded as traitors.

I can’t end this without mentioning one particular irony. Corbynism is keen on taking Britain into an era of socialism. A key element on that journey is nationalising major industries. The belief seems to be that a nationalised industry is owned by the public. That was a belief that was pardonable before we’d really tried nationalisation, back in the forties. Now, though, we know that a nationalised industry belongs to the state, not the people. What therefore matters is who controls the state.

Against what body do today’s Scargillites or Corbynists think the NUM struck? It was the NCB, the National Coal Board, the nationalised coal extraction industry. It proved itself just as vicious and forceful an enemy of organised workers as any private company. In its final victory over the NUM, it proved itself even more effective.

Nationalised industries are a stepping stone to socialism? If you can still believe that after what happened with the NCB, I’m afraid you’re as prone to self-delusion as Alan was, as Scargill’s admirers were and, sadly, as Corbyn’s are today.