Tower colliery
The fighting spirit that saved a pit
A long-standing Socialist Party Wales member has just been elected to the Lodge committee of Tower Colliery National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).
This is an historic result, as she is the first female member of the NUM ever to be elected onto a Lodge committee.
It is a reflection of the respect she has politically and for her
trade union work amongst miners at Britain’s only workers’ co-operative
pit.
Alec Thraves recently interviewed her for the socialist.
TOWER COLLIERY is a militant pit. It has been for decades and after the
miners’ strike – as pits were closed – fighting socialists also came to
Tower from other pits like Mardy, Penrikyber and St. Johns.
When Heseltine and the Tories announced their pit closure programme in
1992, Tower was at the forefront of the opposition, with Tower activists
speaking all over Britain and helping other NUM lodges to organise a fight
back.
Eventually in Spring 1994, the Tories came for Tower and after a fierce
fight, the pit was closed. But Tower miners wouldn’t accept defeat. They
raised a public campaign – against stiff competition – to be allowed to
buy the pit back as a co-operative with their redundancy money.
On 2 January 1995, the Tower workforce marched back to the pit behind
the NUM banner, accompanied by their families and their supporters.
Today, both Tower NUM and Tower as a co-operative campaign for the
renationalisation of the mining industry and the power generation
industry. Tower NUM continues to support other workers in struggle – on
the picket line, financially and in strategy discussions with workers in
dispute. Most recently they have supported civil servants in PCS, the
firefighters, Ukranian miners in Donetsk and Hoover workers in Merthyr.
How long have you worked at Tower and what is your job?
I’m a printer and I do all the print and signage work at the pit,
including the underground safety signage. Tyrone (the current chairman of
the pit and former NUM Lodge secretary) hired me in summer 2000, the day
after an industrial tribunal ruled in favour of an employer who wanted to
sack me for leading an industrial dispute.
But I’d worked at Tower before on short contracts and I was well known
in the pit because I’d fought alongside the boys in battles in the past
and in solidarity in which they’d taken part.
Has the buyout succeeded and what impact has it had on the workforce
and community?
We’re very aware at Tower of the problems of being an island of
socialism in a sea of capitalism. To be honest, it’s not an easy
situation. We’re still here and the traditions of South Wales NUM are
still very much alive – and we’re very happy about that – but we get
implicated in compromises not of our making. And political consciousness
has gone backwards within the pit to a certain degree.
Having said that, the fighting spirit that saved the pit has done an
enormous amount for consciousness beyond the pit gates. As a union, we get
delegations and visits from all over Britain and all over the world,
asking for solidarity and also advice.
Tower NUM is seen as a "tower of strength", because we’ve fought as
socialists and we’ve survived. And the fight isn’t all in the past. For
all Tower’s successes, survival is always a battle. We don’t have British
Coal to threaten us with closure any more, but we don’t have them to
smooth our way with equipment and contracts, either.
What role does the union play in the workers’ co-operative and what is
its relationship with the board?
Tyrone likes to say that the union should have a 40% say in the running
of the pit. In reality, power and influence can’t be fixed so definitely.
There are things we may not hear about as a union, until after they’ve
been decided, because the directors have negotiated them as a "business".
Then again, when the workforce do decide on something, they have to
decide whether to act as a union or as members of the co-operative.
Usually, it turns out to be best to act as a union.
But, it can be complicated, particularly because there are three – not
two – poles of power in the pit: the directors, the union and management –
and management are mostly old British Coal management, because their
qualifications are needed legally to operate the pit. It’s an interesting
situation and one of the many ways in which Tower, in microcosm,
foreshadows issues that could arise when workers take control of the
running of society.
To be honest, the main reason the union has as much power as it has is
that Tyrone gives it a lot of support. We’ve got some excellent socialists
on the Lodge and in the rest of the workforce, but we need to build our
sense of unity and purpose back to what it was when we had to fight
British Coal. Tyrone is retiring in two years’ time.
Why did you decide to stand for the Lodge committee and what were the
main reasons for your success in this overwhelmingly male environment?
When I first came to work at Tower, I was a veteran of a number of
industrial battles, but I was as much in awe of the NUM as anyone else.
That kind of romanticism, though, has no place in the day-to-day battles
of life as a trade unionist.
And yes, even at Tower – which is a workers’ paradise compared to
anywhere else – conflicts crop up pretty regularly. So, it wasn’t five
minutes before I was involved. When I thought I’d put in enough work to be
a credible candidate, I stood for a place on the Lodge.
Being the first woman on an NUM Lodge committee isn’t something I
really think about. We’re socialists in the union and that’s what matters.
What do you see as your main objectives as a member of the Lodge
committee?
Let’s just say that you can never have too many fighting socialists on
the Lodge.
As a prominent member of the Socialist Party, do you get support for
your socialist ideas at the pit, particularly for our demand for a new
mass workers’ party to replace New Labour?
Over the years, long before I worked at Tower, I was getting support
for our campaigns from Tower NUM. In 1991, Tower NUM was the first union
organisation in Wales to affiliate to the Campaign Against Domestic
Violence.
And it’s supported countless other of our campaigns, with visits to the
pit of comrades from Siberia, Kazhakstan, etc.
Virtually every member of the workforce at Tower sees him or herself as
a socialist, so it’s easy to bring the ideas of the party into work. And,
of course, the Lodge has the socialist on subscription. But there is a
fair amount of debate, as well.
A lot of the boys didn’t support our position on the war in Iraq. And
there are real differences of opinion on whether a new workers’ party
could succeed – or even whether we should go down that road. But a number
of the boys do support the idea and I believe that support will grow.
Peter Taaffe [Socialist Party general secretary] had an excellent visit
to Tower to discuss a new workers’ party a couple of months ago – and he
made more impact in a morning than I could have made in a year.
What do other readers think about the issues raised in this article? Write to [email protected] or post comments to our comments page or PO Box 24697, London E11 1YD.
Life At Work
No pits left – but plenty of warehouses
I ORIGINALLY come from South Elmsall, in West Yorkshire, a former
mining town in what was once called ‘The Labour Heartlands’. My father
used to work at Frickley Colliery.
Steve Faulkner, Sheffield Socialist Party
As a town ravaged by Thatcher’s pit closures in the early 90s, the
decimation of South Elmsall’s industry gave way to a boom in warehousing.
Of the new warehouses built around the town the largest employer was
Next, which today, with three warehouses operating (and another one being
built) has succeeded Frickley Colliery as South Elmsall’s largest
employer.
I’m a student with a part time job as a warehouse operative where I
have become a shop steward. I began working for Next three years ago as a
17-year-old whilst still taking my A-levels.
As my shift was Sundays only, I could fit the job around my studies.
With the opportunity to work overtime in the holidays, the job was one
which I could ill afford to lose after I started at university,
particularly when wages could be around £9 per hour for unskilled labour.
Socialist
As a committed socialist, joining the recognised union (USDAW) was a
formality, and it wasn’t long before I needed the union’s assistance.
Whilst working, I had a copy of the socialist with me, which I tried to
sell as I worked. However, I was caught by a supervisor chatting to a
friend, whilst he was taking a look at the paper.
The supervisor then told us we should not have been talking and
confiscated the paper, saying that it could only be retrieved at the end
of the day. When I went to retrieve the paper, the same supervisor told me
that it had been shredded, as I should not have had the paper with me.
Once the union was involved the supervisor had to apologise to me, and
give me back £2 for the paper, even though I only paid 50p, the other
£1.50 going to the fighting fund!
As soon as the opportunity arose, I stood for election as a shop
steward and have now held the post for around eighteen months. At times I
have been frustrated with bosses, with my own work, with other members I
represent and those workers who I do not represent, but on the whole I
feel that during my tenure as shop steward, I have made some positive
changes.
"We choose our representatives"
ONE EXAMPLE of this is a recent run-in I had with a manager who tried
to claim that, as I was a weekend steward, I had no business interfering
in week matters (which I was doing as I was working overtime during the
holidays). Instead, week stewards should be the ones dealing with the
matter, in order to "build up relations" with the company.
After bringing this up with my senior steward, he instructed me to:
"Tell him to fuck off! The union chooses who its representatives are, not
the company!" It was clear to everyone in the union that this manager did
not want me involved as he knew that I got things done.
But despite this, the changes are limited. As the old cliché goes, a
union is only as strong as its membership and, despite the union clearly
gaining in strength in the last year or so, it’s a far cry from the
National Union of Mineworkers, which many workers at Next used to be
members of.
One reason for this is disillusionment in USDAW’s right-wing, pro-New
Labour leadership and its constant line extolling ‘partnership’ with the
employers. Despite being the only union recognised by the company, many
workers will not join USDAW.
Some are not involved with any union at all, whilst some – TGWU, or GMB
members – believe in the false dawn that a new union’s leadership would
simply solve the problems facing workers at Next.
A large influx of immigrant workers (mostly Kurdish) has also led to
many people shifting the blame for their working conditions from the
bosses to the immigrants.
Profiteering
As most of the immigrants are working for profiteering agencies rather
than for Next, most of them are in fact worse off than the rest of us, as
they have no fixed hours and can be laid off at any time.
Racist graffiti is rife in the toilets and the BNP stood in the local
elections. Despite the BNP only finishing fifth, it still received a
worrying 800-plus votes. A former USDAW senior steward is now an active
member of the BNP.
Of course, the beginning of these problems can be attributed to the
political battles which Margaret Thatcher fought, and won, against the
miners.
After struggling against the Tory government for longer than a year and
still not coming out on top, many workers have become resigned to the fact
that unions have only so much power and so lose their ‘revolutionary
zest’.
In an article in The Mirror a couple of years ago, the paper’s
political writer Paul Routledge – who is well acquainted with the area –
claimed that South Elmsall was officially classed in the worst 10% of the
country. But the fact remains that the miners could have won their class
war with the British ruling elite, and that the only thing limiting a
union’s power is one’s own expectations.
Working on weekends, where most of the workforce is young and still in
full-time education, many of the workers have no experience of what the
role of a trade union is, and how unions can be used to help fight their
battles.
But at the same time, these workers do not carry with them the scars of
defeat in the past and we should look to them to help create a fighting
union, capable of implementing real change for workers.
