CALL STRIKE’: U.K. miners’ mandate

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33452, 6 February 1974, Page 11

CALL STRIKE’: U.K. miners’ mandate

The miners have voted, by an overwhelming SI per cent, in favour of a strike in support of their 17 per cent wageincrease claim, and last night crucial last-ditch talks between the Prime Minister (Mr Heath) and the leaders of the Trades Union Congress on averting a stoppage ended in deadlock. The general secretary of the T.U.C., Mr Len Murray, who said he was very unhappy that the two sides had been unable to reach agreement, told reporters that the T.U.C. had repeated its pledge that an extra cash offer to the miners would 1 not result in a spate of wage demands outside the Government’s limits from other sections of industry. The Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity (Mr William Whitelaw) has asked to see the president of the National Union of Mineworkers, Mr .foe Gormley, today for further discussions, but it is expected that the union’s executive meeting will call a strike, to begin, as threatened, this week-end. As the chances of halting a shut-down of the nation’s 270 collieries diminish, most political observers believe that Mr Heath will take the issue to the electorate: members of the Government are known to feel that a new mandate from the polls would give the Government the power to make a new offer to the miners which the Prime Minister now feels unable to do without--“sell-ing out” to the union. The Government wanted to keep the miners’ wage settlement within the restraints of its anti-inflation policy, but when the threat of a strike mounted, a proposal was made to consider the claims as a special case because of the importance, and social conditions, of the miners’ work; but this special study of the claim would take time, and the miners want more money now. A strike, expanding the men s 12-week-old ban on overtime, would deepen Brit-

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, February 5. A probable strike call today by the union leaders of Britain’s 270,000 miners has rekindled speculation about a snap General Election fought on the platform: “Who runs the country, the unions or the Government?”

ain’s economic crisis drastically. The Government is under heavy pressure from industry to find a solution to jthe dispute, and end the jthree-day working week or--1 dered last month to save [electric power.