THE NATIONAL UNION OF MINEWORKERS AND THE REVIVAL OF INDUSTRIAL MILITANCY IN THE 1970'S (BRITAIN)

Throughout the early postwar period, coalminers organised by the British National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) engaged in localised, sectionalised and unofficial industrial action. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s this pattern of industrial conflict was largely replaced by national, and in two important cases official, action. These developments in the NUM, similar to those elsewhere in the public sector, were due to a complex, historically specific interaction among changing governments and their economic policies, the expanding and contracting market for coal, a changing wages structure, and the internal politics of the Union. Whether Government economic policy provoked industrial action among mineworkers depended upon the overall balance of economic measures and the Party in power. In general, co-operative relations ensued when policy was directed towards economic expansion and redistribution. Conflict arose in response to Tory incomes policy in the context of generally restrictive economic policy. Even when policy was not expansionary and redistributive, Labour Governments secured the allegiance of important sections of the Union, due to miners' identification with Labour's general programme and accomplishments. The transition from a fragmented to a rationalised and national wages structure itself suppressed wages in relatively highly paid and traditionally "moderate" areas of the Union. Both forms of wage suppression occurred in the early 1970s, at a time when the market for coal was becoming increasingly buoyant as a result of the "energy crisis". The NUM had few reservations about exploiting its new-found market strength especially because fuel shortage was presided over by an anti-trade union Tory Party. The reformed wages structure resulted in a unification of wages interest and action in the coalfield. The internal politics of the NUM was greatly influenced by these developments: party political developments opened the way for a sharply critical left within the Union which advocated industrial action, and the rationalisation of the wages structure directed the attention of the left upwards to Area and National levels. The left developed increasing co-ordination against its right-wing adversaries, winning key positions and developing campaigning and mobilisational capacities, and pushed the Union towards industrial action in the early 1970s.