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Editorial: GIs Are Not Strikebreakers, Victory to the Miners

By VVAW

(As THE VETERAN is being printed, rank-and-file miners are voting on a new contract; threatened government takeover of the mines has been postponed for the moment. The UMWA Arbitration Board has accepted the latest offer from the BCOA; initial reaction from the miners is clearly against the contract which is being called another sellout.)

President Carter is caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand he has to go along with his powerful cronies in the Bituminous Coal Operators Association (BCOA) whose craving after profits has not lessened during the strike. But all the options that the BCOA wants Carter to use won't work since they come smack up against the determination of the miners to win their demands.

The Taft-Hartley Act would order the miners back to work; they won't go. Binding arbitration would impose a contract but still would not dig the coal out of the ground. More and more the government heads toward its last desparate option--bring in the military. They did it during the Ludlow strike; they did it during the Veterans Bonus March; they did it during the Black uprisings in the cities around the country; they did it at the height of the anti-war movement. After the bosses have brought off union leaders, have tried to sneak around and to threaten, finally troops are all they have left. In one state, Indiana, the National Guard has already been used to ride shotgun on convoys of scab coal.

We of VVAW have experience with the uses of the military whether it's to attempt to crush national liberation struggles as in Vietnam or to turn the guns against striking workers in the U.S. We had far more interests in common with the Vietnamese we were fighting than we did with the class that sent us to fight. Today's soldiers come, for the most part, from working families; they'll go back to work once out of the military. National guardsmen when they are not mobilized are primarily workers. In either case their interests lie with other workers--with the coal miners who are fighting for a decent life--rather than with the bosses.

Members of the U.S. military have resisted before--Vietnam was a history of GI resistance. Many of the troops will see again how their government is using them--and see who is the real enemy. For the miners, VVAW pledges its support and its admiration for their righteous struggle. Fight on, Brothers.