Friday 23 October 1992

TAKE MINERS' ANGER TO THE STREETS

Tribune leader, 23 October 1992

The government's change of tack on coal closures in the past week has not been a complete U-turn. Even though only 10 pits are now to shut at once, with the fate of the other 21 pits originally ear­marked for closure to be reviewed, the government's intention remains to imple­ment the whole closure programme as soon as it can.

Nothing that Mr Heseltine has said this week has even approached an admission that the root of the coal crisis lies in the idiotic blunder of electricity privatisa­tion. All that he offered on Monday was a moratorium on two-thirds of the pit clo­sures, pending examination of the com­petitiveness of individual pits in prevail­ing market conditions. He explicitly ruled out any review of the energy policy that has created those market conditions.

By Tuesday, the government had backed down in the face of continued criticism from its backbenchers. The re­view is now going to take in the question of Britain's strategic energy needs. John Major agrees with Labour that the Com­mons Select Committee on Trade and In­dustry should be given a key role in ex­amining the closure programme.

Labour has not got everything that it wanted. The government has pointedly refused to think again about the 10 pits which it still wants to shut at once. But with British Coal forced by the courts to keep even these pits open until mid-Jan­uary, the party can afford to be pleased with the first stage of its campaign against the pit closures. It has played an honourable part in winning time for the case to be made against the Government's plans. The question now is what it does with that time. Part of Labour's effort must, of course, be to pursue in Parlia­ment the case against the closures and for a coherent energy policy for Britain.

Labour can hammer the government for the disaster of electricity privatisation, with its protection for nuclear power and its de facto encouragement of the "dash for gas" by the electricity distri­bution companies. It can press home its insistence that the Government conduct a thorough examination of the long-term future of the coal industry and take ac­count of the social and economic costs of pit closures. But a wide-ranging assault on the government in Parliament is not enough. Labour must also do all it can to mobilise opposition to the pit closures outside the corridors of Westminster.

The change in popular mood since the pit closures announcement is tangible even in Fleet Street and the Tory home counties. Those who were prepared to give the Tories the benefit of the doubt after "Black Wednesday” a month ago, thankful that interest rates had not, after all, gone up to 15 per cent, have turned against them. For thousands of British people, the destruction of the coal mining industry is the last straw. The govern­ment has lost its credibility.

It is crucial that Labour articulates this change of mood, not just in Parliament but throughout the country. This Sun­day's demonstration in London against the pit closures should be a stepping stone towards a massive campaign of popular mobilisation, with Labour taking the lead, against the government's whole economic strategy.

People demonstrating in the streets will not remove Mr Major from Number Ten but, with the government drifting and its Commons majority vulnerable to back-bench rebellion, there is a real possibility that a sustained show of popular anger could force a genuine U-turn.