Eminentoes/The British Lenin

...arson, the use of telegraph poles as battering rams on "p~cket" hnes, tnpwtres to bnng down mounted Jackson One commentator d~d quote, ruefully, a Mondale supporter's remark that h~s man came over hke "a cross between a Presbyterian minister and a tree" The President's candidacy, in contrast, was greeted wath a long "profile" m the Observer by Robert Chesshyre, who has been consistently and virulently hostile to Reagan The "profile" was riddled w~th smde comments and accused the President of trymg to 'hmpose hfelong [s~c] censorship on the 128,000 top administration officmls "ITV's Channel 4, the "serious" channel, broadcast, and repeated during the campmgn, a documentary which among other things called the President a puppet, a threat to American democracy, a danger to world peace, and a passwe tool of medm mampulators Following the Mondale-Reagan debates, "Channel 4 News" brought in a medical amateur to comment on Reagan's syntax and state confidently that it showed h~m "on the verge of semhty" There has of course been some senous comment For example, early in EMINENTOES the campmgn Conor Crmse O'Bnen, wrmng m the Observer, shrewdly analyzed the role of the man who "plays" the President He also dealt acerb~cally w~th the ~ssue of foreign pohcy "expertise" There was a ume Xvhen foreign policy experts (hke McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara) were held m superstmous veneration lee-cold brams, one was told, were at work Pretty thick ice ~t turned out to be On another Sunday O'Bnen made a pomt that ts extremely rare m the Brmsh press, and almost nonexistent on Brmsh telewslon People who have hved through a long shce of the twentieth century are hkely to be aware of a need to avoid hubris, and leaps in the dark Reagan often sounds as ff he hadn't learned that lesson, but the gap between his rhetoric and h~s behavior suggests that he may have Among the contemptuous references to the President's medm skdl there does occasionally appear a ghmmer of recogmt~on that his appeal to Americans contains more than the pohce protecuon, the ambushing of pohce cars and wolent assaults by rampabnng mobs on pohce stations, the use of nml-guns, catapults to f'u'e ball bearrags at pohcemen, pick-axe handles, and Molotov cocktmls For nine months, the mmn area of worker resistance to the umon-~mposed strike, the Nottinghamshire coal field, has often resembled a battleground What ~s it all about~ Those unfamthar with the Brmsh situation may be unaware of the fiscal and regulatory racketeenng normally assocmted in Britain w~th the operation of a "natlonahzed" industry To begin w~th, the coal industry m the U K is state-owned (some small amount of private open-caste mmmg is allowed under hcense) A "public" corporauon, the NaUonal Coal Board (NCB), has a statutory monopoly of production Other fuels, such as od, are discriminated against by taxation The (state-owned) Central Electricity Generating Board Is forced to take THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1985 meretricious unguents of polmcal snake off In a perceptwe column from America, Frank Johnson of the Tzmes noted how much Mondale resembled a BnUsh parliamentary-style pohtman, with a repertoire of facts and figures and the backchat skill to exploit them But, Johnson concluded, he distrusted Mr Mondale's "facts" and was more persuaded by Mr Reagan's simple truths It ~s an unfortunate characteristic of Brmsh reportage on the election and on America generally that men hke Johnson and O'Brlen have only a minor effect on British pubhc oplmon The media audience seems on the whole to prefer the gross slmphst~cs of hostile reporters and cartoomsts in the press and on the other media Many here are convinced, for instance, that Reagan appeals purely to materialism in the young, and that once-ws~onary students have abandoned their idealism to follow and vote for h~m This extraordinary v~ew suggests that m the British d~sdam of Yankee gulhbd~ty there ~s more than a touch of the sooty pot ms,sting that a bright new kettle ~s black 7q by John Burton large quantmes of British coal that it would prefer to purchase (because cheaper) from elsewhere (including America) Import regulations against coal imports have been deployed by successive Brmsh governments to further entrench the state monopoly An American mnocent of state ownerslup m industry rmght think that all this would allow the NCB to extort a whacking monopoly profit from the hapless Brmsh energy consumer As It turns out, however, many nauonahzed industries have a capacity for making losses that exceeds even the abthty to extract monopoly profits Thus the NCB last fiscal year registered a deficit of s 3 bllhon The basic problem is that while the NCB does not have many internationally competmve p~ts, ~t also has a tall of h~gh|y unproducUve pits--kept going by vast subsidies--that jack up the general price of its coal substantially The average price of Brmsh coal at the pithead is s per ton (and ranges from s to s as compared to s163 per ton for deep-mined coal of comparable quahty from the eastern United States In 1983 Mrs Thatcher appointed an experienced coal and steel businessman, Ian McGregor, as chmrman of the NCB with instructions to increase its efficiency and reduce the tax and energy price burden imposed on the rest of the Brmsh economy Mr McGregor responded with a shmmmg plan that involved the closure of some desperately uneconormc pits and reductmn of the work force by 20,000 men This was to occur without compulsory layoffs but wRh generous severance fees to those volunteering to quit, at levels of up to ten times the standard payment in U.K industry However, Scargill and his union's executive committee have refused to of the mines Every two weeks or so countenance the closure of any since February, he has even claamed uneconormc pit According to Scargfll's that power stations have only eight unyielding "negotiating" position, all weeks of coal reserves left (In fact, pits must be kept open and working, since a wildcat strike in major British not only for current miners but for coalfields in 1981 the government has their children in perpetuity, until utter been stockpihng significant reserves for exhaustion of their vems ItS power plants ) Equally pronounced On the surface, the conflict between McGregor and Scarglll may be portrayed as one between hard-nosed business economics arid concern and compassion for dying mining vdlages This, at any rate, is how the recently enthroned (Anglican) Bishop of Durham has sought to portray the events of the last nine months, and in his stand he has been supported by other bishops, including the Archbishop of Canterbury Alas, the current coal dispute I n Bntaln has little to do with a conflict between the alternative secular principles of "economic reality" and "social justice" Scarglll is not interested in finding some bargaining compromise In a troubled industry, nor does he care about the interests of taxpayers, consumers, or employees in the manufacturing industry--not to mention the coal-mining industry What he is trylng to do--indeed he said as much before a cheering national rally last spring--is create a national insurrection that would bring down the Thatcher government This, then, is not an industrial dispute but a pohtlcal one, and the violence in Britain's coal fields is a civil war between a band of revolutionaries and those who will have no truck with it are a matter of long-expressed public Scargdl made further use of these rampaging "squadrons" during the NUM disputes of 1971-2 and 1973-4, with evident success He correctly detected two critical weaknesses in British society First, the British police were unarmed, untrmned in not con- theorist to wonder what is going on trol, and unablenas non-national, county-based forces--to deal wRh nationwide outbreaks of quasi-military attacks upon installations Second, British society as a whole remained nonplussed In the face of such violence, assuming that there must be some just cause behind it On the first occasion, the Heath government conceded open defeat, foreseeing a breakdown o f power supA r t h u r Scarglll's poht]cal objectives phes and sewage On the second, faced by chrome power shortages (forcing the record In the June 1975 issue of Imposition of a three-day work week) the New Left Rewew, a Marxist Heath went to the voters on a "who runs the country--the government or quarterly (to which the Bishop of Durham has also contnbuted), Scargdl the unions ?'' ticket, and lost exprained his general view of British society THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1985 British commentators He is a hard and committed man whom another British The issue is a very simple one it is them recently he had been by some leading and it is us I wdl never accept that it is anything else because it is a class battle, it IS a class war nee-Marxist, Mr Jimmy Reid, has compared to Lenin Sure enough, Scarglll believes that a disciplined and In March 1984 ScarglU reiterated his views in the Communist newspaper, the violence agmnst them Scargdl's attempts to generate a general strike-through pohtlcal cronies In other unions--has also met with conslderabte defiance, The dockers, so vital to an island country'heavlly dependent Morning Star, calling for the "rapid unquestlomng force, willing to commit upon exports and imports, have twice and total mobilization of the trade union movement" to "defend our class" and for the defeat of the "capitalist system " While Scarglll has been perhaps a htfie too open for his own good, his mastery of tactics to achieve his alms has been nottung short of brilliant He is a master at Newspeak, forever insisting that Britain has the most efficient deep-tinned coal industry in the world, or that police attempts to protect nonstrlklng miners constitute illegal state Interference In the operation has been Scargill's command of the techniques of mass intimidation through trade union violence--most notably in his reliance on "massed flying pickets/squadrons " These formldable quasl-mihtary operations were first deployed by Scargdl in 1969, when he was president of the Yorkshire area of the NUM We launched from the coalfield here squads of cars, rmmbuses and buses, all directed onto pre-dete.rnuned targets, wRh five, six, seven-hundred miners at a um~ Of course, the police were going to come, but they couldn't cover forty points at aume without bnngmg the British armed forces In violence as its leader dictates, can, in an atmosphere of chaos and economic breakdown lndwced by violence, create a Lemnlst-style revolution in the U K And he has such a disciplined force His hard-core support, a virtual private army, is estimated at four to five thousand men He can also draw upon the resources of far-left revolutionaries both in the U K (some of whom have positions of power in local government) and abroad Contacts between ScarglU and Qaddafi's regime have recently surfaced On October 8, ScargiU says, he met in the headquarters in Paris of the Commumst CGT French union with "some people who said they were from Libya and trade unionists " This meeting lasted six hours Quite apart from the fact that trade unions do not exist in Libya, the Sunday Times has revealed that Scargill actually met with a Mr Salem Ibrahlm, "identified by French security services as Qaddaft's paymaster and as a senior Libyan intelhgence officer" Under pressure of press inquiry, Scarglll has revealed that he also met that day with "people" from Hungary and the Soviet Union The miners' Scottish president, Mr Mick McGahey, has recently revealed--under media pressure--that $1,138,000 of aid has been received by the NUM from "Soviet comrades " The Sunday Times has also exposed a number of secret meetings of NUM personnel, including Scarglll, with persons unknown from the Soviet embassy in London (After the miners' strike in 1972, Scarglll, his wife, and daughter were among one hundred officials of the NUM who spent a one-month, allexpenses-paid holiday in the USSR ) One does not need to be a conspiracy behind all this Unlike Lenin, however, who decried the revolutionary potential of trade unionism, Scarglll believes that trade u n i o n s - - a t least In the United Kingdom--can be an effective Trojan horse for the Sovietization of a democratic society It is in this assumption, among other calculations, that Scarglll has got things wrong For major opposition to Scargill's program for LenlnlSt revolution through the unions has arisen not from Mrs Thatcher's government, or from Industry, but from rank-and-file British umon members, starting with a sigmficant proportion of the NUM itself They have gone to work in defiance of Scarglll's dictates, threats, and use of What will happen this time r Scarglll should not be underrated--as until been ordered to strike by their leaders, orders which they have ignored A slrmlar attitude pervades the workers in the crucial electric power and road transportation industries Recently two ordinary members o~ the NUM mounted a successful legal challenge to the effect that Scargtll's imposed strike was a breach of contract and contrary to the union's own constitution With Scargfll now refusing to accept the rulings of British courts, the issue has become one of the rule of law vs the rule of Mr Scarglll In the meantime the High Court is seeking to sequestrate all of the NUM's funds and the NUM has responded by trymg to remove its assets from the jurisdiction of British courts--by placing them in America and elsewhere There will be no general strike in Britain, for the simple reason that a very large part of the population does not want to live under the sort of regime that Scargill would dictate The attempt to generalize the strike across British industry would reveal the extent of opposition to Scarglll's alms and methods Above all, the British proto-Lenln has been misled by the easy success of his earlier campaigns of organized violence in the 1970s He does not yet realize how deeply he hlmgelf has transformed the economic and political debate in Britain Since the Initial exercise of Scarglll's techniques in the late 1960s, the question of how a diverse society can cope with orgamzed group violence has been an increasingly nagging one for the British They hoped the question would go away, but it hasn't, and accommodation to unpleasant reahtles is proceeding [] apace ICOMING NEXT SPECIAL MONTH SECOND INAUGURATION 29...

...umted over Grenada Bntmn heard and read of Yankee aggressiveness, polmcal "nmvet~," overkill, failure to consult alhes, etc Grenada's wdd welcome to American troops smothered th~s outcry into an embarrassed sulkiness, wath ITV reporters scouring the island for a supporter of the New Jewel Movement who would complain on camera Hostile reporters hke Trevor F~shlock of the Ttmes smped sullenly at the "charm school" fnendhness of GIs m Grenada, and sneered pathetically at the presence of crates of Coca-Cola Th~s sort of thing kept coming from Flshlock long after the Ttmes had changed ~ts editorial mind and acclmmed the "rescue" of Grenada Reportage on the recent elect~on mamtamed the generally Democratic party bins of "serious" journahsm m Britain The opacity of Mondale was reported with dismay and puzzlement, but h~s pohc~es were gwen friendly treatment, w~th headhnes like "Mondales Robm Hood Gamble" and the backhanded "Mondale losing m the 'Macho' Stakes " Ms...

...Ferraro was given gentle treatment, as were hangers-on hke the egregious Reverend THE BRITISH LENIN F o r many a long year, trade umons have been turning the BnUsh economy into an industrial museum through monopohst~c wage demands, restnctwe practices, and pohucal pressure to prevent mdustrml adaptation For an equally long time, many Britons have sustained themselves against this impoverishing force w~th the ~dea that, although m the grip of one of the most powerful yet backward-looking umon movements m the world, the homegrown variety was at least markedly less wolent than its American counterpart This comforting Brmsh allusion has now been irreparably damaged, if not destroyed, by the extensive campaign of wolence that has accompamed the partml strike m the Brmsh coal-rmmng industry, engineered--against his own umon's consmuUonal rules--by Mr John Burton ~s a Research Fellow at the Institute o f Economw Affmrs in London 28 Arthur Scargtil, presldent of the Nauonal Umon of Mmeworkers (NUM) Nothing hke th~s mob wolence and intim~dauon has been seen m Britain since the Fascist marches agmnst the Jews organized by Sir Oswald Moseley m the early 1930s Smce the beginning of the strike m February, a group representing mmers who have braved mt~midatton to go to work (originally about one quarter of the work force now rising to 30 percent) has recorded over 5,(XX)_ acts of mttm~dauon and violence The tactics deployed by some of the strikers, and far-left pohtlcal agitators who have joined them, range through the attempt to suspend the operauon of coal mines and steel mills by mass mUmldatory "picketing" and noting (by up to 20,000 men), the waylaying of workmg miners, threats of rape and death agmnst their wwes and famdles, stoning of their houses and autos...