Birmingham Trades Council commemorates Battle of Saltley Gates

15 February Laurence Humphries, a member of the Shrewsbury Pickets campaign and a the NSSN steering committee reports from the meeting.

Steve Ballard and I attended the anniversary of the historic Saltley Gate Picket at the height of the Miners’ Strike in 1972. We attended representing the Shrewsbury 24 Building workers arrested at the height of their strike in 1975.
This Event was organised by the Birmingham Trades Council and it is to the credit of Mary Pearson, Vice President and other members of the Birmingham Trades Council that the event was called.

The coking plant at Saltley is long gone. This picket in 1972 was a great historic victory for the working class and proved that industrial action could change Governments. Heath who was the Tory Prime Minister resigned and Harold Wilson was elected in the General Election that followed. The Rally was held where Saltley Gate was. There were a number of speakers and the importance of the period has great lessons for the Trade Union movement and working class today. This period represented great class battles. The Miners’ strike of 1972-1974, the national dock strike of 1972 in which 5 Dockers were arrested including Bernie Steer and Vic Williams. The Dockers action led to a powerful General strike and they were eventually released. There was also the National Building workers strike of 1975 and the resulting arrest of 24 Building workers on Conspiracy charges.

There were a number of speakers at the rally. There were speeches from Engineers members of the AUEW District Committee and TGWU stewards who were very much involved in the picket at Saltley Gate. They explained how the support of the Engineers and workers at the coking plant were instrumental in stopping production and a victory for the NUM in 1972.

Arthur Scargill, a participant at the time, gave praise and support. He said without their support the Miners would not have been successful in blockading Saltley and preventing the movement of coal. Arthur also explained that the nature of the labour leadership today is totally opposed to actions of the Working Class and tend to Line up with the capitalist class.

This is how Arthur Scargill described his experiences at the time:

"The time was about 10 o’clock and there was a hush over the Saltley Area. 3000 miner’s altogether. Welsh miners singing, Yorkshire miners, Nottinghamshire miners, Midland miners, and yet nothing happened. You could see apprehension on the faces of the police. Here we had a situation where miners were tired; physically and mentally, desperately weary. They had gone through nearly six weeks strike action, they had gone through a three months overtime ban, they had gone through the worst battling encountered in strike action in any time in recent years.

Their Comrades had been arrested, one of them had been kicked to bits and yet they were still battling on. I readily concede that some of the lads were feeling the effects and were a bit dispirited that no reinforcements were coming. And then over this hill came a banner and I’ve never seen in my life as many people following a banner.

As far as the eye could see it was just a mass of people marching towards Saltley. There was a huge roar and from the other side of the hill they were coming the other way. They were coming from five directions, there were five approaches to Saltley; it was in a hollow, they were arriving from every direction. And our lads were just jumping in the air with emotion-a fantastic situation.

I heard the police talking, Sir Derek Capper was one, Donaldson his deputy- the tactic was simple: get the pickets coming from east to go through to the west and get the pickets from the west- the striking engineers-to go through to the east. East to west, west to east, past each other. I got this megaphone and I’m yelling like hell: “when you get to the picket line, Stop! Stop! They were trying to tell me to shut up and I said “You try today, no bloody shutting up today. These boys are coming to our picket line” And they were piling up like sandwich cake, as far as the eye could see they were just pouring in. Saltley, the area of Saltley was now just a mass of human beings, arriving from all over, with banners.

The only time this crowd opened was when a delegation of girls from a women’s factory came along all dressed in bright white dresses. They plunged through and one of the lads shouts: ‘Go on officer, tell them they can’t come. Try and hold them. “And no police officer moved, you know. Who’d have dared to try and stop these girls coming into that square? Nobody. The crowd was absolutely dense by this time. We were in the centre of it and everybody was chanting something different; some were chanting “Heath out”, “Tories out”, “Support the Miners”, “General strike”, a hundred slogans were being chanted. I got hold of the megaphone and I started to chant through it: “Close the gates! “Close the Gates! And it was taken up, just like a football crowd. It was booming through Saltley: “Close the gates! It reverberated right across this hollow and each time they shouted this slogan they moved and the police, who were four deep, couldn’t help it, they were getting in. And Capper the Chief Constable of Birmingham took a swift decision. He said “Close the Gates! And they swung them to. Hats were in the air, you’ve never seen anything like it in your life. Absolute delirium on the part of the people who were there. Because the Birmingham working class had become involved- not as observers but as participants."

Bob Crow from the RMT also spoke explaining the historic lesson of how working class action can lead to victory. Paul Macknie from the Coalition of Resistance also spoke. Steve Ballard representing the Shrewsbury Building workers stressed that the national Building workers Strike of 1975 which led to arrests and accusations was nothing of the sort. The battle of building workers carries on up to this present date and one of the most important issues is the cancellation of the debt.