Coal peace
Page 6
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THE END of the miners' strike on Tuesday meant that the Gloucestershire hauliers, George and Richard Read, had to delay their bid to end the South Wales miners' blacking of their lorries for another month.
The Reads were ready to obtain a High Court injunction on Tuesday, but Mr Justice Warner adjourned the case after he was told that the ending of the pit strike had prevented union witnesses from preparing their defence evidence in the case.
The Reads have been blacked since last summer by National Union of Mineworkers members at the Maxiheat smokeless fuel plant at Llantrisant.
The NUM members there are using a blacklist of hauliers which have crossed NUM picket lines.
This is the Reads' third bout of legal action during the strike. They have already taken out injunctions against the South Wales NUM and the Transport and General Workers' Union because of blacking of their vehicles in South Wales.
Traditional coal hauliers, who have seen their tippers lying dormant for the past year, must wait several weeks to return to normal traffic levels.
This week, hauliers who have survived the lack of National Coal Board work are finding themselves in demand again, and expect to be back to normal at the end of this month.
While it will be two or three months before they will be paid, many hauliers expect huge financial pressure as they attempt to insure and tax their lorries.
Lorries sold to keep the company afloat during the dispute must be replaced, too.
One such haulier, Alan Price of Ebbw Vale in South Wales, told CM that it had already been contacted by the NCB about a contract.
Before the strike, Mr Price had been moving coal from the pits to the docks and the coal yards for blending, but since then it had sold eight tippers and sacked all but nine of its drivers to stay afloat.
Company secretary Mary Rudge said that she did not know how the business had survived. "It'll be two months before we get any money in, but we still need to find the money to pay the wages. But we have got to hang on now, after all we've been through", she said.