Miners' union to affiliate to Luthorian Workers' Party August 4921
FORT WILLIAM, ORANGE — Since the setback faced by the Luthorian Workers' Party (LWP) at the 4917 general election, and even before, the party has been putting hard work into making new electoral inroads as well as solidify their existing bases of support as part of a long-term electoral strategy, having decided that the party cannot simply hope for an electoral surge to give them success. But that hard work, more than any number of the prestigious electoral strategists the LWP has hired from abroad, appears to have finally paid off.
This morning, at a joint conference with top party figures, the Luthorian Federation of Miners' Associations (LFMA) announced it would be officially affiliating with the Luthorian Workers' Party. The trade union, which has a membership of almost two million across its constituent miners' associations, is primarily concentrated in the coal-rich hills of Erneshire and the Middenriding; in the other main coal mining region, the Barrows of the Northriding, where the Luthorian Workers' Party has recently been making inroads, centuries of strike-breaking activity have left unionisation there almost non-existent.
Until now the Luthorian Federation of Miners' Associations has remained aloof from national politics, with the traditional leftist parties maintaining environmentalist stances antithetical to a coal mining workers' union, instead focusing on running affiliated candidates in local elections and working to directly advance the interests of the communities it represents by building parallel power structures. These well-paid, highly-skilled miners, well-read and autodidacts with a strong intellectual tradition, face accusations - ones they do not take kindly to - from more radical unions of acting as 'labour aristocrats' with a narrow focus on their own interests. Their communities are regimented, disciplined, and masculine, the place of women within them almost reactionary.
This goes beyond just those represented by the union, of course: this is also the case in the Northriding, where the LFMA is hoping to expand, with support from their new allies in the Luthorian Workers' Party. Not that the former is the case in the Northriding. For all the similarities in community cohesion, "well-paid" is anything but the mining work found in the Barrows, where the mines are operated by companies headquartered in Winworth that have for centuries suppressed attempts to organise.
As long as companies have cracked down on efforts to unionise, the LFMA has attempted to organise there, and much blood has been spilled over it. "But until recent years there was no party willing to speak out and actually take political action against the coal barons for the Barrow miners," says the federation's president Willard Rowse, while asking questions from the press after his joint announcement with LWP leader Ernie Attridge. The accuracy of the statement itself is up for debate, but the message is clear: only the Luthorian Workers' Party has workers' interests in mind.
When Mr Attridge visited the Barrows in 4914 to campaign and register voters, his national profile and political status (as well as notably stubborn nature) shielded him from any attempted intimidation from the coal companies, and Mr Rowse is no doubt hoping that having a powerful political ally will finally be able to ensure the Federation of Miners' Associations can organise in the region - but it is unlikely that the Winworth coal companies will give up the fight so easily.