HARLAN COUNTY, Kentucky.—The miners of eastern Kentucky are fighting once again for the basic right to have a union. In the grim battles during the first 20 years of this century and during the 1930s, the struggles led to the establishment of the United Mine Workers of America.

But these victories were betrayed by the bureaucracy of the UMW, which allowed the coal mine operators to drive the union out of the area. While John L. Lewis’s leadership degenerated rapidly during the 1950s and then gave way to the criminally corrupt regime of Tony Boyle, the UMW was destroyed in Harlan County.

The miners who had given so much to build the UMW were left with the company-run Southern Labor Union.

Now, the miners in the Kentucky hill country are involved in a bitter struggle to rebuild the UMW in Harlan County. The Eastover Mining Company in Brookside has been shut down for three months by a strike of 150 miners.

The strike broke out in late July after the company, owned by the powerful Duke Power Corporation, refused to sign a UMW contract with the miners.

Instead, they have used state troopers, scabs, armed assailants, and the courts to crush the strike.

In the past struggles, the coal operators did not hesitate to use the most brutal forms of violence against miners who attempted to organize a union in Harlan County. Some old-timers can still remember the Harlan County general strike of 1917 and the murder of UMWA organizer Luther Shipman in the midst of it.

Some remember the Battle of Evarts in 1931, when an attempt by scabs to break a picket line led to a 15-minute gun battle which left three deputies and one miner dead. “We sure did fight in those days,” 65-year-old John Hansen told the Bulletin. “We all knew that if you did not get a union contract, you had nothing as a coal miner. “If you lived in Alcatraz, you would be just as well off as in Harlan without a union.” Violence is being used against the miners to break the strike. “A lot of lead has been flying around here,” said union organizer Houston Elmore.

However, it is the courts that have played the central role in all the strikebreaking activities.

Injunctions against picketing, issued in the kangaroo court of Byrd Hogg, has led to the arrest and jailing of miners, pensioners, women and children.

A total of 91 people face heavy fines and prison terms for picketing to stop the scabs that have been organized by Eastover and are protected by state troopers.

Mary Widener is one of the seven women arrested for picketing. She spent 30 hours in jail on October 16-17, and still faces a six-month term. “Nobody really planned to picket,” she recalled. “We just started to march outside the court on September 27 and then went down to the Brookside mines. The picketing then just took place. When it started, I never thought I would land up in jail.”

Her husband, Ray, is a miner. Like all those on strike, he the danger of a statewide blacklist unless the union wins. “I am for the UMWA 100 percent. If we cannot make them sign a contract, I will never work again.” Both Jerry Rainey and his wife Nannin were jailed in October.

They live with their seven children in a wooden shack that was built more than 50 years ago. Water leaks through the decayed roofing. “We just did not have any conditions under the Southern Labor Union. They gave us a hospital card that never would be accepted.

“They do not want us to have our own union. They do not want the poor working man to amount to anything. I want my kids to have it better than I have and I will fight to get it.”

The terms of the court injunction prohibit picketing in the area of the railroad tracks near the entrance to the Eastover Mining Company. When the mines are being worked, several million tons of bituminous coal are carried along those tracks to the centers of industry. But last Friday afternoon, the striking miners were sitting on those tracks beside a large wooden picket sign.

“We have got families and we are here, and we are here to stay,” said 29-year-old Roger Pace, who faces a two-to-twenty year prison sentence on charges of throwing rocks while picketing. When Pace was a boy, his father was laid off because he had fought for the union. “I have seen what they did to my dad. I will never forget that. When I was a senior in high school, I would have nothing more than 11 cents for lunch. The sons of the rich men would have all the money they needed.

“I quit high school because my daddy did not have enough money. I was ashamed because I did not have the clothing to graduate.

“After school, I went into the Army and now I am ashamed that I did. They send you over to Vietnam and when you get back, you have no rights.

“Whatever the judge says goes. So they say we are in the wrong and they are in the right.

“I cannot get over the way the courts are working us over. And that governor, Wendell Ford, is the one who sent in the state troopers. Before this is over, he will send in the national guard. This is the only time I have ever been in any big labor dispute. But I am not going to take the way they are treating us.

“My dad fought here. His dad too. I was born here. No one is going to tell me I got to leave.” Another miner who is a Vietnam veteran, Malcolm Pratt, was just as angry. “They said ‘Go’ and you had no choice. I never did find out what we were supposed to be fighting for. A lot of senseless killing—that is what it seemed to me. But I know what is going on here.”