Tories keeping mine strike going, says Kinnock

Press, 4 October 1984, Page 10

Tories keeping mine strike going, says Kinnock

NZPA-Reuter Blackpool Britain’s Labour Party leader, Mr Neil Kinnock, accused the Government yesterday of artificially prolonging the sevenmonth strike in the coal mines. But in a sharp retort to Labour Left-wingers who have sought to blame the police for pit-head clashes, he condemned violence on both sides of the dispute. “That’s what makes me different from Margaret Thatcher. I don’t have her double-standards,” Mr Kinnock told the Party’s annual conference. He sought to reestablish his authority, after set-backs on the first day of the conference, in a keynote speech that catalogued what he outlined as Mrs Thatcher’s attacks on demo-

“Thatcherism is a personal fixation turned into a system of Government,” Mr Knnnock said. The Government spoke only the language of conflict and based its whole policy on intimidation.

The turmoil of the miners’ strike had been a product of Thatcherism — “the combination of ignorance and arrogance, of pride and prejudice, that now rules and overrules this country.”

National Coal Board plans to shut down coalfields that it considered uneconomic would prove to be a greater financial burden than keeping them open, he said.

“Mrs Thatcher has no rational, financial, technical, economic or market reason for the board and the Government to keep the dispute

going ... it is political vanity on a manic scale,” he said.

He was. as much opposed to stone-throwing by strikers as to cavalry charges by mounted police, a point he emphasised in response to a resolution on Tuesday, blaming the police for all picket line violence. He received a long ovation at the end of the speech, in which he avoided reference to his failure on Tuesday to push through a constitutional reform on the reselection of Parliamentary candidates.

He had earlier received a boost in elections to Labour’s ruling committee, when candidates described by party sources as Kinnock loyalists had made a good showing against the Leftwing. The conference was ex-pected-to endorse today its

most radical commitment yet to scrapping British nuclear weapons unilaterally and expelling American nuclear bases and cruise missiles.

Party moderates, headed by a former Prime Minister, James Callaghan, appealed yesterday to the party f to think again about a pledge that they said would rupture the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. “We are not Holland, we are hot Belgium, we are not Denmark. We are one of the main pillars of the alliance,” said Mr Callaghan,

“It is important that the alliance, which has. been maintained in Europe for 40 years ... should not be ruptured by one of the most significant members taking unilaterial action without regard to the consequences,” he said.