Bloody Strike

Miners'fury brings anguish

As the bloody confrontation between militants of the 180,000-member National Union of Mineworkers and the state-owned National Coal Board entered its 36th week, the most disruptive labor unrest the country has witnessed since the General Strike of 1926 was no longer just a power struggle between miners and mine managers over the issue of unproductive collieries. Instead, with economic losses mounting and with television providing scenes of charging mounted police and rock-throwing strikers, the dispute had become a national trauma.

Although some of the most dramatic fighting yet between strikers and police broke out last week around mines in Yorkshire, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher remained uncompromising. Addressing the Lord Mayor of London's annual banquet, she declared, "This challenge will not succeed. The government will hold firm." The Catholic bishops of England and Wales, however, were sympathetic to the miners in their first statement on the strike. N.U.M. President Arthur Scargill, speaking in the southern Wales town of Aberavon, was cheered wildly by an audience of over 4,000 when he condoned violence on the picket line. "I am not prepared to condemn the actions of my members whose only crime is fighting for the right to work," said Scargill. At the same meeting, the Trades Union Congress's new general secretary, Norman Willis, bravely decried "the brick, the bolt or the petrol bomb" as weapons detrimental to the miners' cause. He was jeered with savage shouts of "Off! Off! Off!"

To most observers of the long-running strike, the psychological advantage appeared to be tilting toward the coal board. One reason was the disclosure late last month that the N.U.M. had sought financial assistance from, of all sources, Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi. Last week in London, Scargill unabashedly made a similar appeal for assistance at the Soviet embassy. TASS said that Soviet miners have contributed half a million pounds to the British miners' union. The strike was also weakened by last month's decision of the smaller mine safety supervisors' union not to join the N.U.M. walkout. If the supervisors had struck, all of Britain's 174 coal mines would have been shut down, including those that have been operating during the strike.

Meanwhile, the coal board has reminded strikers of the prospects of up to $1,764 in wages and back holiday pay by Christmas for miners who return to work by the beginning of this week. For striking miners who have lost an average $7,500 each, the reminder was a shrewd ploy. In contrast to the 200 miners a week who had been returning to their pits by late October, more than 7,000 men have returned over the past two weeks.

To date the conflict has cost 60 million tons in lost coal production. And with some 125,000 miners still out, the strike is far from over. In Yorkshire last week, strikers overturned and wrecked automobiles, hurled gasoline bombs at a police car and a police station for the first time. Thirty-five policemen were injured and 45 strikers arrested.

But the beginning of the end of the trouble appears to be at hand, and assessments of the emotional losses have begun to be tallied. Perhaps the most eloquent statement on the damage to the national psyche came last week from the 90-year-old Earl of Stockton, who as Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963. Bent with age and leaning on a silver-topped cane, he rose from a red leather bench in the House of Lords to deliver his maiden speech to a hushed, expectant house. Referring to the strike, he said, "It breaks my heart to see what is happening to our country today. This terrible strike is being carried on by the best men in the world. They beat the Kaiser's army and Hitler's army. They never gave in. The strike is pointless and endless. We cannot afford action of this kind."