The National Union of Mineworkers is alive and kicking, and is still representing miners, their families and their communities. The NUM is still very active industrially and politically. It is over twenty five years since the start of the Great Miners' Strike of 1984/85. We warned then that if our arguments for a role for coal in our energy requirements were not heeded then the country would pay a heavy price. Twenty four years on we have been proved absolutely correct.

Most of the nation's collieries have been closed, we are now at the mercy of foreign importers and gas and oil prices are rocketing. Our own gas reserves have been depleted at an alarming rate as we have squandered them in massive quantities in gas-fired power stations when we could have used coal.

At the same time we have been squandering our indigenous coal reserves, with which this nation was blessed, by sterilising them in closed coal mines. At the same time we have been squandering the talents of our skilled workforce by making them redundant.

 http://www.num.org.uk

"After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab."

"A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles."

"When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out."

"No man (or woman) has a right to scab so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with. Judas was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his master, he had character enough to hang himself." A scab has not.

"Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commision in the british army." The scab sells his birthright, country, his wife, his children and his fellowmen for an unfulfilled promise from his employer.

Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas was a traitor to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country; a scab is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class." Author --- Jack London (1876-1916)

Today our class face a new enemy in the form of Climate protesters, and those arguing for no new coal, those who stood aside the working class 25 years ago are now standing against the working class 25 years on.

More on the strike goto  http://underclassrising.net/0.html