Arthur Scargill with miners in Ollerton in April 1984 (Pic: John Sturrock)
Most of the miners’ leaders have refused to call for mass picketing as the only way to guarantee victory for the strike. But there is one notable exception – Arthur Scargill.
He repeated the call when questioned at a meeting in Cynheidre on Monday:
‘We need to scale up the picketing. We need mass picketing to stop the flow of oil, coke and iron ore… We want nationwide leafleting of power stations and steel works. We need to look at 1972. It wasn’t the AUEW and Lord Scanlon but the workers in factories that made Saltley’.
Arthur Scargill has been saying such things at meetings of particular groups of miners for ten months now. Unfortunately, he has not spelt out the truth – that the majority of the executive will not accept such a policy and that it will only be implemented if rank and file activists force the hand of the Area leaderships.
Yet unless this happens, the present wait and see policy will continue.
(12 January, 1985)
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