Discontent began to surface in the Yorkshire coalfield, where an unofficial Left (the “Forum”) began to challenge for the leadership. In Barnsley, a young faceworker and former Communist Party member, Arthur Scargill, played a key role in the Forum and the growing opposition. In December 1968, Will Paynter retired, and the Left candidate, Lawrence Daly, won the election for national secretary. This coincided with a change within the union, not over the question of redundancies, but the plight of surface workers, who worked longer hours with less pay than those underground. The South Wales miners, in May 1969, had passed a resolution demanding a reduction in hours for surface workers, through strike action if necessary.
Miners from all over the coalfields lobbied the National Conference as pressure built up for action over the issue. Unofficial strikes first broke out in Yorkshire, when on 13 October every pit in the Area bar one took industrial action. The following day all Yorkshire pits were at a standstill. Despite threats from the NCB, and the pleas of Lawrence Daly for miners to return to work, the strike spread through the use of flying pickets to Scotland, South Wales, Derbyshire, Kent, Nottingham and the Midlands, eventually involving over 130,000 miners. While the strike was going on, national negotiations over pay were underway. Although the NCB refused to give way over hours, fearing the spontaneous movement from below, they granted the NUM wage demand in full! The 1969 unofficial strike would prove to be a turning point in the union as well as a dress rehearsal for the battles that lay ahead.
At this point, the Donovan Commission came out with a recommendation to establish a Commission on Industrial Relations (CIR), as a means of controlling the power of the unions. This had originally been part of the In Place of Strife legislation introduced by Barbara Castle that had been vehemently opposed by the Labour and trade union movement. But Will Paynter, the “Communist”, described it in his memoirs as “a useful and constructive piece of machinery” and “ideal for the job” of modernising industrial relations. In reality, it was a vehicle for class collaboration and harmony under capitalism, a means of gluing together the interests of employers, union officials and shop stewards.
Paynter found the CIR so attractive that in February 1968 he accepted a job as CIR head on a salary of £6,500 p.a. (as opposed to £15 a week for a surface worker), and sat down alongside the likes of Leslie Blackeman, former personnel director of Ford, who dreamed up the infamous penalty clauses to outlaw unofficial strikes. Yet according to Paynter, it was an “independent” body, free from government interference and big business! When the Tories came back to power offering their own anti-union legislation, Will Paynter resigned, commenting, “Such measures are more likely to incite than to appease… Industrial relations and trade union and employer relations are not likely to be assisted by this kind of political knock-about.”[12] But these laws were nothing to do with “knock-abouts” and everything to do with class interests and the position of British capitalism. The CIR was the “voluntary” approach favoured by Paynter, whereas the Tories wanted to go that one step further in binding the trade union leaders to the state.
By the 1968-69 period, the “stop-go” policies and the price rises following the devaluation of the Wilson government, provoked a number of strikes over pay. In 1968, women machinists went on strike in the Ford Motor Company over equal pay. The discrimination against the machinists was symptomatic of the Company’s more general discrimination against women. Of the 38,000 male production workers, 9,000 were on Grade C – roughly one in four. The 850 female production workers included only two in Grade C – one in 400. Even with technical and clerical work included there were only twelve women in Grade C. There were no women at all in the two top grades D and E.
The militancy of these women workers, the most oppressed section of the workforce, preceded the general mood of militancy that was developing. The following February and March Ford workers went on national strike over wages. “The 1969 strike can also be seen as a turning-point for the British working class and the Labour movement as a whole”, writes Huw Beynon.
As it progressed, the Labour government became more and more involved and increasingly antagonistic towards the strikers and Jack Jones’s shop stewards. It was the harbinger of a lost election and of the 1970s when strikes would be bigger and longer and take place under the close scrutiny of the state.[13]
Following on from the example of the carworkers, dustmen engaged in a prolonged battle over wages in September, securing a wage of £20 per week. These strikes reflected a new militancy, after years of restraint, wage freeze and growing inflation. In fact, more days were lost in strikes in 1970 than in any year since 1926. Having been let down by a Labour government, the working class once again began to turn to the industrial front in an attempt to solve their problems.