As the miners' ballot result will be known by Tuesday, the capitalist press is trying to wind up its mourning for the dead at Lofthouse Colliery in a rush. The Lofthouse workers after all were only on the receiving end of the day to day violence of the capitalist system. Now preparations must be quickly made to deal with the men of violence' manning the pickets in a possible strike.
But the craven hypocrisy of the capitalist press is only one aspect of the Lofthouse tragedy. It was miners who died, miners who drove themselves to exhaustion in the rescue operation. An 'impartial' inquiry will serve only to cover up the real responsibility, as at Aberfan. We should demand a workers' commission into all aspects of the running of the coal board, including safety. The actions of the Coal Board should be made accountable to the workers, not the class enemies in whose interests the Coal Board is run. serious struggle to breach the Government's policies will have much more damaging effects than any number of resolutions and protest actions. That is why the press has been so full of carefully set up stories of unnecessary deaths", health risks", and so on. That is why police have been intimidating pickets not just at St Mary's, Paddington, where two were arrested, but at other hospitals like the Whittington in