Page 1, 8th February 1985
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by Jack O'Sullivan
ARCHBISHOP John Ward of Cardiff this week reiterated a thinly-veiled attack by Church leaders on the coal board for blocking new negotiations aimed at ending the eleven-month old miners' strike.
"All we are saying is that the two sides have got to get back to the negotiating table . . . We don't understand what there is really to lose if the NCB do have negotiations and they fail", the archbishop told the Catholic Herald.
lie said that new negotiations would offer the hope that "sense will prevail" and added that the National Union of Mineworkers' offer to attend talks "without precondition" was "worth at least testing".
The sticking point preventing fresh talks is the NUM's unwillingness to meet the coal board's demand that the miners give written assurance saying they will discuss "uneconomic" pits. The NCB and the Government are adament in this demand.
Last week, Archbishop Ward was co-signatory to an interchurch statement which said that although church leaders accepted that "economic policy" in the mining industry had to be discussed, "neither party should seek to impose its interpretation in advance of negotiation." .
"It is surely not the nature of the process of consultation to require decisions by any party before the process begins", said the statement, drafted by coalfield chaplains from the major Christian churches in England, Scotland and Wales.
• This week, Bishop J oho Jukes, Chairman of the Bishops' Committee for the World of Work, chaired a four-day exploratory conference on "The Church and the World of Work" in Sheffield, attended by representatives from most British Catholic dioceses.
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