This is a stirring report from the Superdrug strike in Barnsley where 25 years ago miners waged a civil war against 18,000 cops sent there to crush them by Thatcher.It was sent in by Terry Pierce from the UK who is involved with the National Shop Stewards Network. (ed)
At 5.30am on Tuesday 24 November Superdrug strikers assembled by the Barnsley Oak pub in South Elmsall to march back to work at the Superdrug depot. The day before they had voted by 185 votes to 59 to accept the deal thrashed out after eight hours of talks at ACAS the previous Friday.
Twenty days before the 261 union members, after an 86% vote in favour of strike action, walked out on indefinite strike at exactly the same time, 5.30am, following months of futile negotiation with management.
Management wanted to drive through changes in shift pay and overtime payments which would have left some workers out of pocket by more than £2000. They wanted the power to change and schedule shifts with only seven days’ notice and the workforce to opt out of the 48-hour European Working Time Directive. They also wanted to cut sick pay and change pension entitlements.
Management by diktat.
Superdrug, the UK’s second largest health and beauty retailer with 1,000 stores and 16,000 staff is part of a worldwide conglomerate, Hutchison Whampoa of Hong Kong, which has an annual turnover in excess of £10 billion. The changes they sought to impose may have seemed small beer to top management, but for the workers in South Elmsall, a former pit village, it was the difference between a living wage and living on benefits.
What happened next was inspirational. Teams of strikers fanned out all over the country giving out 110,000 leaflets outside 150 Superdrug shops informing shoppers of the management assault on their wages and working conditions.
Outside the Superdrug depot the strikers dug in for a long strike, mounting a lively twenty-four hour, seven day a week picket. A local butcher, Voddens, supplied meat for the picket barbecue, and workers from the other depots on the industrial estate supplied wood for the picket line fires.
Support for the strikers poured in from other areas of the trade union movement. My own National Union of Journalists branch, Leeds, sent a cheque for £100 and a bucket collection at out national conference in Southport raised £545.60 and €0.90 cents (our membership covers all of Ireland).
The workforce included 30 Polish workers who also were out on strike, and 20 former miners from the 1984-85 strike. The senior steward, Stephen Benn, was at Frickley Colliery. He commented, ‘We’ve done well. We got them to the table in three weeks. I thought it would take longer.’ Another former miner said to me on the picket line, ‘I didn’t think we would be out again twenty-five years later.’ But he also said they had put into practice lessons learned during the strike - regular mass meetings, and the active involvement of strikers so that people did not sit at home moping.
The return to work was also a poignant reminder of the different end to the1984-85 miners’ strike when the Frickley miners marched back behind their banner. But even after a year on strike, when the Kent miners in a desperate last action mounted a picket outside the colliery, the miners refused to cross it and turned back. This time as the strikers marched through the gate into the depot celebratory rockets were fired off.
Granville Williams
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