The tremendous solidarity between students and miners in the occupation of Essex University, and at the Chiff Quay picket lines in Ipswich, has shown beyond any doubt that students as a mass will never again play the role of scabs as they did in the 1926 General Strike, and that all the segregation and brainwashing that this society uses to divide students and workers cannot forever prevent them from coming together in struggle. Nor has Essex been just one local incident: students at Kent University in Canterbury have picketed the docks along with miners at Dover, and students have engaged in various kinds of solidarity action in Oxford, Norwich, Hull and many other places (see The Red Mole special broadsheets). These were all linked -up when a large contingent on the NUS demonstration showed their support for the miners by marching to the Coal Board Offices. But the recent activity at Essex University has surpassed these others in all respects. In terms of the university struggle, it has meant. the extension of the limited "mass-confrontation politics to the development of the concept of the Red Base in practice: Essex University has been turned into the political and organisational centre for activity in the areait is being used for proletarian ends in a major working class struggle. And this has had important implications for the nature of the struggle itself. Not only have students been able to answer politically the government attacks on their autonomy, but the character of the response has changed. For what has characterised the traditional mass-mobilisations of students against university administrations has been their spontaneity, and thus their tendency to peter out as the issue became stale. With the presence of the miners, the 120 or so members of the Colchester events in brief Friday, 14 January: The first major attempt to break the strike in the Essex area: a Dutch collier, the Ismanie, unloads 700 tons of anthracite from stocks of U.S. and Australian coal at Rotterdam. They use the quayside at Rowhedge, a small non-unionised dock on the Colne, just down-river from Colchester.
Saturday, 15 January: Socialists in the area respond by coming together to form the Colchester United Front for the Defence of the Miners' Strike, involving members of IMG, the Spartacus League, Colchester Women's Liberation Group, I.S., Colchester Claimants and Unemployed Workers Union, LPYS; they contact the NUM, and report the coal movements.
Sunday, 16 January: Four NUM representatives and one member of the United Front scout the area for signs of coal movements.
Most important "find' is a reported 80,000 tons at Chiff Quay power station at Ipswich, which serves Ipswich itself and Little Barford, ust outside Cambridge.
Monday, 17 January: First United Front meeting at the University in attempt to mobilise students be Red Mole 7th Feb. 1972 Page 12 United Front have worked consistently for two weeks, and with no visible sign of any downturn in committment even after the ending of the occupation But the unity in struggle has had important implications for the miners as well. The unique position of students has pushed polities to the fore, and not in any abstract sense. With daily rank-and-file meetings (about 150 strong) of miners and students to discuss strategy and tactics, questions of trade union democracy are immediately posed; all the more Tuesday, 18 January: 50 miners arrive and are put up outside the University by members of CUFDMS.
Wednesday, 19 January: Picketing begins at Cliff Quay, but few lorries are stopped. Dockers give assurances not to handle coal. Large picket at Rowhedge, where 300 miners and students achieve first major success in turning away collier loaded with 550 tons of anthracite after scuffles with police. One miner arrested. Occupation of university begins.
Thursday, 20 January: Pickets at Ipswich manage to stop much of the coal after many scuffles with police. Two miners and one student arrested but released with no charge. University issues first threat of legal action against miners and students in occupation. Mass meeting of miners overwhelmingly reject instructions by NUM bureaucracy.
Friday, 21 January: Pickets manage to stop all coal at Cliff Quay with the cooperation of TGWU and EPTU members. Arthur Scargill speaks at University, and £500 donated by Students Union to miners' strike fund.
Monday, 24 January: Occupation ends as miners leave University under blankets instructions from the NUM bureaucracy. so in view of the positions of the NUM bureaucracy. And this extended further still to the development of rank-and-file defence organisations, so that the security committee established by the United Front to run the occupation -and responsible to it— was composed of eight miners and eight students.
Finally what has become important is the projection of the strike into the town. Already, Colchester Claimants and Unemployed Workers Union has raised the question of the miners* strike amongst the ranks of claimants and unPickets at Ipswich turn onto questions of oil lorries for power station. University maintains red base function as political and organisational centre of local activity. Meetings of United Front and Miners around strategy and tactics continue to be held everyday, with miners coming on to campus from the town.
Wednesday, 26 January: First picket of Little Barford power station uneventful. Discussion begins to centre on how to shut Ipswich power station.
Friday, 28 January: Miners return to Barnsley under instructions from the Strike Committee, but with no concrete perspectives on the future of picketing. Labour Party, Trades Council and local trade union officials follow Tories in making public attacks on students and the United Front.
Saturday, 29 January: 800 students, workers and only miners remaining in East Anglia demonstrate in Gt. Yarmouth. Afterwards, remaining miners return to Barnsley Sunday, 30 January: Three coach-loads of miners return to East Anglia to mount token, round-the-clock picket of Cliff Quay power station, but the NUM leadership show their true interests in the student/miner solidarity by directing the employed, and the United Front has successfully held factory gate meetings at which miners have spoken about the strike to locai trade unionists.
In effect we have witnessed a transformation Students and miners have come to know and understand one another's struggles and develop bonds of comradeship through active participation in a common fight. They have become aware, as never before, of the extent to which they confront a common enemy, the capitalist state, as represented by its lackeys in the National Coal Board, the University Administration the Press and TV, and the police. There has been a common front of all these forces to break the solidarity of the students and workers and to defeat each of their struggles separately. In the face of our unity, such attempts have met with continpal failure. And it is this above all which encapsulates the political significance of what has been taking place at Colchester.
Report by Colchester IMG miners to Yarmouth, some 1½ hours away from Ipswich!
Monday, 31 January: Picketing of Cliff Quay recommences but with only 50 miners present, oil lorries pass through the gate unimpeded.
Tuesday, 1 February: Essex University provides benefit concert for the miners' strike which is expected to raise £1000 plus for the strike fund and £300 for local political activity. T&GWU members of CUFDMS stage protest against remarks of district official.
Wednesday, 2 February: CUFDMS continues its policy of projecting the miners' strike in the town by staging meetings at the gates of the four largest factories in the area with talks by rank-and-file miners and members of the United Front.
Thursday, 3 February: Colchester Trades Council after public attacks on the activities of the United Front (publicly criticising the NUM for not having contacted them before!) demonstrate what real support of the miners strike is by holding a meeting in the Labour Party Hall (seating capacity-100). CUFDMS begins to mobilise for Sunday's national demonstration in London: to date, the Trades Council and Labour Party have done precisely nothing