early November. For slaughtered before the decade is out.
The latest copy of the NUM sections of the Confidential* document prepared Board in March 1982 for the Monopolies table headed This deals with a vcry sensitive area and is for publication' reveals 75 nits to be cloced within the next eight years on alleged grounds of coal exhaustion.
These include 16 of the 59 Yorkshire pits; 15 of the Midland pits tingham, Derbyshire); five of the 14 Scottish pits and half the South Wales Coal field, with 17 or the of pisse so:
of these pits have already been closed.
In addition to these 75 at least 20 pits are marked for closure cut CUSES. All all this amounts to a one third cut in workforce and half the coal field being shut down.
This confirms the claim of miner's president Arthur scargill that the NCB have had a hit list for government intends to government intends smash the miner's unior by decimating the coal intionalisation Through and technology the number of pits will be cut back and cach made more producTHE SECRET SCRIPT for the latest Coal Board production was leaked to the miners union in months the NCB have denied that a massacre of jobs is part of the plot But at the meeting with the NUM on 23 November, Coal Board boss Norman Siddal admitted that another 60 pits are being considered for closure in the next eight years, with up to 30 more to follow. 70,000 jobs could be tive. Meanwhile nuclear POWER will replace coal hired power stations.
This Department of Energy gave its evidence to the in quiry into the Sizewell nuclear power station. government revealed its intention by between and Per century the resent century. At present SOWERS CORSETTE quarters of Britain's coal and the Government wants to cut this by a third as rapidly as possible The 81,000 miners who earlier this month for action to save jobs have been licatec They now firm evidence of the Coal Board's intentions throw miner's jobs the scrap heap and gives firm to why people in coal mining communities should for a fight.
The 60 pits specified as 'short-life* on grounds of exhaustion have plenty of theoming seams and open up vast untapped resources.
On a picket during last week's talks with the Coal Board, Tom Bowden. lodge secretary of the threatened Britannia pit in South Wales explained, *The pit has plenty of SOURCES left. We hava just opened another face and need developments now to work on the next. We will resist this closure to the end and will sit-in if necessary* This defiant mood is now spreading throughout the the British coal fields.
Scottish miners
already decided delegate conference on 16 In November that the Scottish 69 per cent vote for action in the recent national ballot gives them a mandate to resist.
All the signs are that the National Union Miners preparing rewrite the plot prepared by the Coal Board and its Tory masters.
VIn have to