Mick Brooks looks back at the 1984-85 miners' strike (see also The Ridley Report. How the Tories planned to take on the miners and the working class.) The British ruling class consciously prepared to take on the miners after they had suffered humiliation in 1972 and 1974. In order to push through a generalised attack on the whole of the working class they needed to defeat its vanguard.
The present economic crisis, through its sheer scale and reach, is bringing about a wholesale change in the consciousness of working people the world over. It is the poor, the oppressed, and the workers who shoulder this weight in order to hold up the privileges of the rich. There is no portion of the working class that has so greatly and extensively borne this affliction than working women.
In 1918-19 the German workers could have taken power. Had they done so world history would have been very different, as it would have a huge impact on the workers of Europe, thereby breaking the isolation of Soviet Russia and thus stopping the Stalinist degeneration. A genuine international federation of socialist republics could have been built. Unfortunately the German Communists committed a series of errors, errors which we must learn from and prepare for the future.
