June 3, 1977
STEARNS, Ky.--"We don't aim to mine no coal until a contract is signed, and nobody else is going to either."

That statement by a picketing miner here sums up the resolve of more than 160 men on strike for ten months against the Stearns Mining Company's Justus mine.

Stearns and its parent company, the Blue Diamond Coal Company, will stop at nothing to keep the United Mine Workers of America out.

In March of this year, the company hired a private security firm--notorious for strikebreaking violence--and the shooting began. Since then it is a fact of life for Stearns residents. Every night, and sometimes during the day, there is a steady gunfire.

Although there is a court order against it, nobody denies that the fire is sometimes returned. "If they were shooting at you, what would you do?" one striker asked me.

Despite provocations, the strike remains strong and the miners claim total unity of their ranks. For them the real life-and-death question is not dodging the bullets of hired gun thugs, but the even more deadly issue of mine safety.

The Stearn miners voted to be represented by the UMWA on March 31, 1976. That was three weeks after two explosions at another Blue Diamond-owned mine--the Scotia mine in Kentucky--killed twenty-six men.

The main issue for the striking miners is safety. They want a union safety committee with the authority to remove miners from areas judged "hazardous to human life."  
 
June 2, 1952
An epoch came to an end on May 19 when the British government notified the government of New China that British concerns in China, many of which have exploited the Chinese people for an entire century, were going to wind up their affairs and leave. Losses on the so-called "investments" of these imperialist corporations will be, according to varying estimates, between 840 and 1,400 million dollars.

Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden made his excuses for the exploiting corporations, citing conditions of "acute strain and anxiety" in China as the reason for the withdrawal. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who has asserted that he did not become the King's first minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British empire, remained silent. He apparently sees that his empty boast cannot be redeemed by more grandiose rhetoric. "Preside over the liquidation of the British empire" he must; because the British are not really "withdrawing" they are being driven out.

The meaning of this loss to Britain can be seen by comparing the value of British imperialist property in China with Britain's total empire. The remainder of British foreign investments abroad do not total, by the most favorable estimates, more than 5 1/2 billion dollars. This total is only about one-quarter of British foreign investments at their height in 1914. Now with the China liquidation, total British foreign investments are again cut by possibly another 25% of all remaining British investments abroad.  
 
 
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