Coal strike men to meet TUC chief
October, 1969
The Trades Union Congress intervened last night in the 10 day-old miners' strike which has halted production at 134 pits and cost the industry £10m. in lost production.
This morning Mr. Victor Feather, general secretary, is to meet leaders of the 77,000 Yorkshire miners who began the unofficial stoppage in support of a claim for shorter hours for surface workers. The meeting is at the miners' request.
His intervention comes at a critical stage in the dispute. Eight Yorkshire colliery branches voted yesterday to resume work on Monday, and only intensive and noisy picketing at Thurcroft pit, near Rotherham, prevented the afternoon shift from reporting to work.
Elsewhere the strike presented a confused picture. Two more pits in South Wales, with 1,700 miners, joined the stoppage, but there was a further trickle back to work in Nottinghamshire. Midlands National Union of Mineworkers leaders approved by a large majority the National Coal Board pay and hours offer.
A British Steel Corporation official said that coke production had been cut at several centres, but iron and steel production was not yet affected.
The two pits joining the strike in South Wales were Penrhiwceiber and Bargoed. Mr. Glyn Williams, secretary of the area strike committee, said : "The mood of the men at the moment is that they will continue with the strike until at least next Thursday, when the national conference will be held in London."
The conference has been called for October 30 to discuss the N.U.M. executive's recommendation to accept the employers' offer of pay increases up to 27s. 6d. a week, and a 40-hour week, inclusive of mealtimes. Whatever the conference decides, the issue will be decided later by a coalfield ballot of the industry's 300,000 workers.
Five more collieries in Nottinghamshire and two in Derbyshire were also understood to be returning to work.
Ninety men at the coal board power station at Bargoed, who said yesterday that they had joined the strike because they were intimidated by pickets, last night decided to return to work this morning.
Mr. Walter Haubenschmid, station superintendent, said that between 60 and 80 men came to the power station. "By the time I arrived there was considerable noise and shouting. It became quite ugly and noisy. I then telephoned the police and after they had arrived they stood by. "I spoke to them and they said that they did not want to come out on strike in sympathy but they were afraid of being beaten up."
A van-load of strikers setting off from Clipstone colliery. Nottinghamshire, to picket a neighbouring pit found their path blocked by a barrier of angry wives yesterday as they attempted to leave the colliery.
At Wakefield, Yorkshire, 70 wives told their husbands : "No housework until you return to work."
