"Nobody Going Back"

"There ain't nobody going back to work if we get cut out. We'll be at the drift mouth. We'll have our guns with us and there ain't nobody going to get in that mine. My wife can shoot too, and she'll be out there with me."

In the face of such defiance, the bosses and the government looked about frantically for some means of ending the strike without capitulating to the workers. In February, they tried to bribe the workers with an offer of a one-third wage increase - in return for a limit to the right to strike. The union's negotiating team, under firm pressure from the rank and file, rejected this.