THE MESSAGE from demonstrators against the cuts across the country is clear: "We have to make a stand."
The same call was taken up by parents and school governors who met last weekend. They called for a national demonstration against education cuts in London on Saturday 25 March.
Everyone should build every local protest in the weeks ahead. And everywhere we need to build for a national protest.
The cuts and this government must be stopped.
The Tories want to destroy our schools and council services. They want to keep our pay down while stuffing their own pockets.
But the government is divided and scared of revolt. We can win.
Every day the movement in defence of our schools gathers new momentum. Governors are standing firm, refusing to act as the Tories' executioners by axing staff.
Parents up and down the country are organising protests against the massive cuts that will wreck education.
Up to 10,000 teachers face the sack. Class sizes will rise and in some cases children will be forced onto short time schooling.
Headteacher Seamus Crowe, chairing last Saturday's meeting, remarked that "the sleeping giant is waking". He listed up to 20 new areas that had contacted FACE--the Fight Against Education Cuts campaign--in just the last seven days.
Speakers at Saturday's meeting stressed that the anger has to go beyond local protests.
What is needed is a national movement that can force the Tories to cough up more money.
Oxford parent David Long told the meeting, "Central government is not making available enough money--we know who is to blame. I want the money from central government."
Speakers were determined that they did not want education to be funded at the expense of other council services.
Parents were also clear that the money is there. The meeting started with parents giving examples of the millions of pounds the Tories have squandered.
The department of education spent #8.7 million just on publicising itself up to April last year.
A south London teacher won wide applause when she said parents should be asked, "Do you want a test or do you want a teacher?"
"I care about education," said Sue Lister, a governor from Oxford. I think we should stop being quite so polite and say we care so much we are going to fight to the bitter end.
" We have got to make a stand."
"MOST PEOPLE had not thought of governors as a militant bunch of people," Pat Petch, the chair of the National Governors Council, told Saturday's meeting.
When the Tories introduced the 1988 Education Reform Act they gave school governors new powers and responsibilities.
Pat explained how the council was welcomed by the government when it was set up.
A Tory minister at the launch stressed the need for this new body to be both "reactive and proactive--bringing to their notice issues of concern," explained Pat.
The National Governors Council is as good as its word. It is tearing apart the government's lies that the schools do not need more funding.
THE Tories blame local authorities for the cuts. But councils are dependent on central government money for about 80 percent of their funds.
THIS IS the third year the teachers' pay rise has not been funded by the government.
THE TORIES say schools have reserves which could be used to avoid sacking teachers.
But many schools already have deficit budgets. Some 9 percent of schools plunged into deficit in their first year of local management of schools.
Some schools are holding back money for essential maintenance work. But many have already been forced to spend the cash because of last year's cuts.
It is grant maintained schools that have the most spare money. They collected #45.5 million of Tory bribes to get them to opt out of local authority control.
OXFORDSHIRE:Around 5,000 parents, school children, striking school teachers, council workers and other anti-cuts campaigners besieged Oxfordshire County Hall on Tuesday as councillors met to vote on ramming through millions of pounds of cuts.
Teachers in the NUT and NASUWT struck for half a day to join the demonstration. Protesters invaded the building, demanding their right to be heard. Disruption forced the meeting to be abandoned for several hours.
Oxfordshire, where each of the major parties has a broadly equal number of councillors, faces government demands for cuts of over #20 million.
A meeting of 120 school governors from the Vale of White Horse area of Oxfordshire agreed that 60 schools will set a budget taking account of the cuts and an alternative "illegal" budget.
They will then ask parents which they want implemented and stick by the decision.
DERBYSHIRE: Some 1,200 workers, mostly firefighters, marched through Derby on Tuesday in a protest backed by teaching unions and the council workers' UNISON union.
The firefighters are to ballot for a series of one hour strikes if Derbyshire council doesn't back down.
A lobby is due next Tuesday and teachers are to ballot for a half day strike next month.
Local Tory MP Phillip Oppenheim got an angry reception from parents, governors and teachers at a Chesterfield meeting last Friday.
Up to 500 people also attended a meeting called by school governors in Bolsover. Some governors are now prepared to set illegal budgets.
LEICESTERSHIRE:Teachers across Leicestershire were set to strike on Wednesday, to lobby the council. Local secondary headteachers have backed the teachers' action and sent an open letter to parents, governors, councillors, MPs and teachers. They argue, "Each year for the past three years we have faced cutbacks. Schools are working harder and more effectively, but with fewer resources." School governors and parents' organisations are also backing Wednesday's strike.
SOMERSET: Somerset anti-cuts campaigners were hoping for a big turnout for a protest on Thursday against #20 million of cuts which the government wants the Liberal Democrat council to impose.
Protesters are demanding councillors set a no cuts budget or resign. One hundred local heads and governors met last week.
Glen Burrows of the anti-cuts campaign committee told Socialist Worker, "At the meeting we put a motion which attacked the cuts and the government but it was denounced as feeble and wishy washy.
"With just one vote against they passed a motion calling for resistance by every possible means including, if necessary, refusing to set legal budgets."
The motion will now go to the Somerset Association of Governors. Members of public services union, UNISON, and the teachers' NUT and NASUWT are all balloting for strikes.
STRATHCLYDE: Council workers in Britain's biggest council, Glasgow centred Strathclyde, are to ballot on a one day strike over cuts.
The move follows a mass meeting of shop stewards representing the council's 20,000 UNISON members.
The Labour council faces a demand for #107 million of cuts in jobs and services from the Scottish Office.
A lobby of the Labour Group meeting is planned for next Wednesday.
SHEFFIELD AND ROTHERHAM: Secondary headteachers in Sheffield have agreed to refuse to set budgets that mean increased class sizes or job losses.
Over 300 teachers and 600 support staff face the sack in the city.
A 200 strong governors' meeting on Monday decided to back the March 25 FACE demonstration.
LABOUR run Rotherham borough council plans to axe #5 million from the education budget.
A meeting of 120 members of the NUT teachers' union demanded a ballot for a one day local strike and called for national action and a national demonstration.
The meeting also decided to link up with local public sector UNISON branches under the slogan, "Not one redundancy".
In one local school over three quarters of the staff have signed a petition asking the governors to set an illegal no cuts budget.
LANCASHIRE: "This has got to snowball," said Liz, a parent who organised a 250 strong protest meeting against school cuts in Heysham, Lancashire, last Friday.
Governors in some local schools have threatened to resign if any teacher is sacked and a lobby of the council is set for next Thursday.
end
GLOUCESTER: About 200 demonstrators, including over 100 firefighters, lobbied a key committee meeting of Gloucester county council last Wednesday.
The pressure saw the committee defer making any cuts for two weeks when another lobby will be held.
MERTON: Angry teenagers stormed a council education committee meeting in Merton, south London, last Monday.
The young people are furious at the Labour council's plans to halve youth service spending, part of a #4.5 million cuts package that could also axe 150 teaching jobs.
Parents, teachers and other council workers occupied the council lobby in protest.
The education committee still voted through the cuts.
Another demonstration is planned when the cuts come to full council next month.>
LAMBETH: Angry parents and nursery workers led a march through Brixton, south London, last Wednesday night to join a 350 strong lobby of Lambeth council's education committee.
PROTESTS AGAINST cuts in council spending could be turning into the biggest revolt since the Tories announced wholesale pit closures in 1992. Certainly in many counties the anger is on a par with the revolt against the poll tax.
In scores of places there are meetings, marches, and lobbies. The protests are swelling and will continue through the next month.
They come as the Tories again try to impose a pay limit which had nurses and teachers in uproar last week and will bite hard on millions.
They come when the Tories are more desperate and divided than ever. The chancellor and the employment secretary were at each other's throats last week, and another minister jumped ship at the weekend.
Even hard right winger Jonathan Aitken was calling on Major to give more money to the councils to fund the teachers' pay deal.
We can win over cuts and pay. Protest, defiance and action get results. The Tories were humbled by the signal workers' strike last summer and autumn.
They were forced to drop plans to double VAT on fuel. They had to back off from Post Office privatisation. There is no reason why we cannot win extra cash for education, council services and pay. There is no reason why this revolt cannot sweep Major out.
WHAT EACH of us does over the next few days and weeks will make a big difference.
We need national action to make the Tories cough up more money to stop all the cuts. Nobody can be satisfied if cuts are just moved from one service or area to another.
The launch meeting of the group Fight Against Cuts in Education (FACE) has given a focus by calling a national demonstration in London on Saturday 25 March.
We need to make this demonstration HUGE.
The call for it has not come from the TUC trade union leaders and disgracefully the Labour Party refuses to back school governors' initiative in setting "illegal" budgets.
Some councils talk about budgets beyond the government limit, but still with millions of pounds of cuts and big council tax rises.
We need real defiance, real protest and that has to come from below, from ordinary people. There are only five weeks to build the national demonstration.
Back every local protest, lobby and strike.
Build for the national demonstration.
Back FACE's call for a protest bonfire outside every school on the evening before the demo.
Parents should hold meetings in their schools and approach other parents, teachers and governors to do the same.
Teachers should pass resolutions congratulating schools which are refusing to set cuts budgets. They should demand governors at their school do the same and push for the maximum possible action against the cuts.
AROUND 1,000 protesters were outside Shrewsbury town hall last Friday morning (see picture above) to demand no cuts.
They applauded the decision of the Labour and Liberal council to break the government "cap" on its budget and reduce the cuts, and they shouted down the Tory who tried to speak.
But every demonstrator was clear they wanted no cuts at all "The council's strategy would leave people sacked and paying an increase in council tax," complained a youth worker. "It's not good enough."
Trade unions have called a demonstration and lobby of the council on Friday 24 February.
For the past few years the main bosses' paper, the Financial Times, had largely given up covering industrial relations. It seemed to have swallowed Tory propaganda that the unions are finished.
On Friday last week the paper carried a page long feature headed, "Major on collision course with irate workers."
The main reason for this anxious burst of coverage was the fury provoked by the public sector pay awards announced at the end of last week.
One factor in this anger is the gross unfairness involved. Nurses are awarded a 1 percent national increase, while ambassadors and permanent secretaries get a rise of up to 40 percent.
But more fundamental than this are the longer term strains in the Tories' public sector pay policy.
The Tories first imposed a 1.5 percent limit on public sector pay increases back in November 1992. Almost a year later, in September 1993, Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke introduced what was widely seen as a total pay freeze.
By November there was more talk of "flexibility". The overall pay bill for the public sector was frozen, but it was left to individual managements to decide whether or not to negotiate wage rises.
Any increase, however, would have to be paid for by "savings"--higher productivity, job losses and reduced services.
According to the research company Incomes Data Services (IDS), "By the summer [of 1994] it was clear that there was an informal limit, enforced behind the scenes by the Treasury, restricting pay rises to around the rate of inflation."
It was in line with this policy that the government intervened in June last year to block the 5.7 percent pay increase offered by Railtrack to the signal workers.
The Tories, gung-ho after all the defeats they had inflicted on unions in the 1980s, thought the signal workers would be easy meat.
In the event the signal workers stood firm throughout the summer and won a pay increase which IDS calculates at around 8.7 percent, way above the Treasury's informal limit.
This setback was one factor in the rebellion of government backbenchers which stopped the privatisation of the Post Office.
Nevertheless, the government pressed ahead with its pay policy. In his budget last November Clarke even extended the pay bill freeze for another year till March 1998.
This overconfidence is likely to cost the Tories dear.
The patchy economic recovery is pushing up pay settlements in the private sector to between 3 and 4 percent. Many public sector workers will expect the same.
This is particularly so if the rate of inflation starts to edge up. IDS comments, "Arguably, the policy has continued without serious difficulties through 1993 and 1994 only because inflation remained very low."
Another potential flash point is the Tories' decision to instruct hospital management to negotiate anything between 0.5 percent and 2 percent locally, on top of the national pay increase.
At the same time, the doctors were excluded from local bargaining after the British Medical Association threatened disruptive action. And, as Christine Hancock of the Royal College of Nursing points out, "There is enough money to award chief executives up to 19 percent in some cases taking their salary to 12 times that of a staff nurse."
Past pay policies have broken down when accumulated injustices cause an explosion of anger. This one looks like being no different.
And this time the anger is not just over pay, but over cuts in jobs and services as well, all going to stoke a larger revolt.
by Alex Callinicos
"I'M very frightened. People have been calling all times of the day and night saying they will get me." BNP supporter MATHEW SIMMONS, who evoked Eric Cantona's wrath
"IF I were asked what class I was I think I would avoid answering." DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE, Britain's richest man
"INSTEAD of giving the teachers more pay, the government should think of bringing God and prayer back into schools." DAME BARBARA CARTLAND
"SOCIAL justice is a politically correct way of describing a process which taxes me to provide Jill Phipps with the wherewithal to demonstrate to death." BERNARD INGHAM
"MY principal reading each day is the Sun. I find it universally uplifting." Education minister ERIC FORTH
IF ANYTHING is likely to cost the Tories the next election it is the unofficial policy that there is one rule for them who are in the money and sweet FA for the rest." SUN
WHY ARE police protecting the interests of Phoenix Aviation, the firm flying calves out of Coventry airport?
Why are the press unquestioningly reporting claims by Phoenix owner Christopher Barrett-Jolley that he lives in fear of animal rights protesters?
Consider Barrett-Jolley's record: March 1993: Crosby Otobo, a pilot on a Phoenix Aviation plane, was jailed after smuggling heroin and cocaine into Coventry airport.
June 1994: Phoenix flew arms to South Yemen during the vicious civil war. When challenged over "irregularities in the paper work", Barrett-Jolly told the Birmingham Post, "I believe these weapons will save a lot of lives. I have no regrets."
July 1994: Barrett-Jolley flew arms to Angola where right wing UNITA rebels have restarted the ten year old civil war which claimed one million lives.
August 1994: Barret-Jolley was sued for removing fixtures and fittings worth thousands of pounds from Packington Hall which he had rented.
October 1994: Barrett-Jolley was in court again where he agreed to pay #7,000 costs and #1,500 compensation.
Around this time Barrett-Jolley was convicted of assault causing actual bodily harm after attacking a protester at Coventry airport with a crowbar.
December 1994: A plane chartered to Phoenix Aviation crashes outside Coventry airport killing its crew and narrowly averting a major Lockerbie type disaster.
The plane had outdated equipment and could not use the airport's navigational aids. The day before the disaster the same plane had been involved in a near miss with a passenger jumbo jet flying from Brussels to New York.
According to the Department of Transport the plane was flying without an official permit.
January 1995: Phoenix resumes its flights but Civil Aviation Authority inspectors ban one of its planes on safety grounds.
February 1995: Warwickshire police mount a huge operation to protect the "legitimate" business of Mr Barrett-Jolly. Some 100 officers confront 33 demonstrators in the incident when Jill Phipps is crushed by a lorry.
THE "BIG business can trust me" Blair bandwagon got a double boost last week when Pearson, the media and entertainment giant, and food giant Safeway both climbed on board. Pearson gave #25,000 to Labour Party funds.
The company owns Penguin books, the Financial Times, Alton Towers, Madam Tussauds and other vast concerns.
A Labour Party representative declared, "This will send a clear message to other companies that their interests can be served by the Labour Party."
Up to his death at the end of January the president of Pearson PLC was Lord Cowdray.
Cowdray was not your average Labour sympathiser. In fact he was a fabulously rich businessman and landowner.
He owned an 805,000 acre ranch in Texas--the second biggest ranch in the US. He also owned land in Sussex, Aberdeenshire and southern Africa. His family business controlled North Sea oil concerns and power stations in Greece amongst other things.
Supermarket chain Safeway got in on the act by sponsoring the programme of the recent Young Labour conference.
A representative of the USDAW shop workers' union told Inside the System, "We have not got a full agreement with Safeway. Things are considerably worse than with other supermarket chains".
BOSSES ARE condemning workers to a painful, lingering death while the Tories steal their compensation.
That is what the Clydeside Action on Asbestos campaign told the House of Commons social security committee last week.
It claimed up to #100 million a year is being clawed back from victims of killer asbestosis alone.
One sufferer awarded #50,000 compensation was left with just #2,500 after the recovery unit claimed benefit back.
Victims say if the Tories want to recover benefit they should take it from the bosses, not the victims.
SIR COLIN Southgate, boss of Thorn EMI, earns six figures for sacking 3,000 Rumbelows workers.
He also coined another #150,000 as chairman of privatised power generator PowerGen.
Sir Colin sits on PowerGen's pay committee. It boosted chief executive Ed Wallis's pay from #70,000 a year before privatisation to #350,000 last year with another #1.2 million in share options.
THE WORLD'S richest countries slashed official development aid by almost 10 percent between 1992 and 1993, the latest date for which figures are available.
So says a new report from the rich Nations club, the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development.
THE NOLAN Inquiry into "standards in public life" has proved a pathetic affair so far.
Nevertheless the government sent cabinet minister David Hunt to the inquiry last week to tell Nolan that it would not listen to any proposals limiting the jobs former ministers could take on leaving office.
"You are completely free to tender whatever advice you want," said Hunt. "But on business appointments of former ministers, I believe and the government believes that it is right to leave these matters to the judgement of individuals."
TORY MPs have whitewashed former minister Neil Hamilton, who is accused of breaching parliamentary rules by failing to declare a holiday taken at the Ritz Hotel, Paris.
Tory members of the commmons privileges committee pushed the vote through after first refusing to call Hamilton as a witness.
If Tony Benn was still a member of the committee, the details of this scandal would have been in the press last week.
Unfortunately Tony Blair backed the Tories when they removed Benn for not promising to keep committee business secret.
THE TORIES' public sector pay awards announced last week are an outrage--and tens of millions of people know it.
They mean pay cuts for workers, many of them already very low paid, and soaring rises for the rich.
Nurses and other health workers are getting just 1 percent with up to 2 percent extra from local negotiations.
That means just #1.40 a week extra for a nursing assistant and #2.17 for a staff nurse.
Ordinary civil servants will get nothing apart from "performance" related pay, which means yet more redundancies and speed ups.
School teachers get a below inflation rise of 2.7 percent, with the government refusing to stump up the cash needed to meet even this miserable sum.
At the same time top civil servants, judges, admirals, generals and diplomats are getting a rise of #600 a week, taking their pay to a maximum of #150,000 a year.
The aim, says the government, is to bring their pay up to private industry levels--where directors continue their frenzied looting spree.
Across the country millions of people are saying enough is enough. Socialist Worker talks to public sector workers about their fury and the sort of fightback they want.
A Tory voter rushed up to me the minute I walked on the ward, saying "When do we go on strike? Where do I join the union?"
We can see the anger round the schools. We need it round the NHS too. People are saying, "We need a general strike."
The last time I felt that sort of mood was over the pit closures in 1992.
We want decent pay, and not at the expense of fellow workers getting the sack or by making patients suffer.
We have got to make sure our union leaders call action, but we have got to fight anyway.| London NURSE
'PEOPLE WHO have never been on strike before want to fight and they expect the union to call them out.
Some of my colleagues say we must have national action, and I want the union leaders to call it.
But I remember 1988 when Manchester nurses showed what a bit of guts can do. They didn't wait for the national union. Around 30 nurses simply started picketing and protesting outside their hospital and they caught the mood.
They got massive support and sparked action across the country. The result was many nurses got their best pay rise ever. My pay went up 34 percent.
We need a bit of that initiative again. NURSE, Mancunian Community Trust
'ONE PERCENT is not a pay rise, it's a bloody insult. How will we will cope next year? We can't pay the bills as it is.
Local pay bargaining is a sick joke.
There is no excess money to make up our pay rise. Anything we get will come from cutting patient care. There are already jokes going round about not using unnecessary swabs, so the money we save can go on pay.
Management and the Tories want us to impose second class care on the patients for them, but we are not going to do it.| NURSE, Central London
'IT'S AN insult. The government give top civil servants a massive rise and then won't even fund our pathetic pay rise.
What we are getting is not enough for the hours we have to work. Everyone talks about price rises at work. At this time of the month, when we are just about to get paid, everyone is broke.| South London TEACHER
"OUR PAY rise is pathetic. It's outrageous.
The government tells us the only way we can get a pay rise is if people lose their jobs. Already the cuts mean teachers are getting the sack. "That means bigger classes which puts more pressure on the teachers who are left. It will affect every child.| North London TEACHER
'THE UNION has called us out over our jobs. It's about time we also had a strike over pay.
"Not only does the value of our pay go down every year, but now we no longer have any job security.
The government has never been so weak. We need to act together to stop them.| West London TEACHER
PEOPLE LIKE cabinet secretary Sir Robin Butler, the man paid to cover up sleaze among Major's ministers, will soon be on #3,000 a week.
But ordinary civil servants will get nothing at all unless it is linked to "performance", and then only a pittance.
"It's outrageous", says an Employment Service worker in London.
"They get these wkacking great rises and we'll get sod all if it's left to our union leaders."
What is more, the top people's rise will be paid for by job cuts among ordinary civil servants--that's on top of the 50,000 jobs already going.
"Everybody is outraged and disgusted," says a CPSA civil servants' union rep in Sheffield.
"Our managers want to bring in complete performance pay, so many of us won't get a rise at all. "I've had people ringing up threatening to leave the union because it's not doing anything."
"Absolutely outrageous," was the verdict of a Toxteth CPSA member. "We've been battered for so long and the bastards at the top get this.
"The top pay in my office is under #11,000, but there are many on less than that. The casuals are on #8,000. Everyone's saying, `When are we going on strike?'."
An Inland Revenue worker in Middlesbrough agreed. "There will be fury about this. But what the hell are the unions doing?"
I AM black, of Afro-Caribbean descent and a single parent with three children. I have two child minders who charge #190 for a full time nursery place. My other outgoings include #50 for food, clothes, nappies for my children, #23 part rent, #21.60 per month for insurance. It all adds up to over #315.
I work for 20 hours a week but the government says I cannot get extra help with childcare charges.
I think they assess things all wrong. I want to keep my job but it is difficult without money for child care.
The Tories are attacking the poor and the disabled by shutting down centres and homes--that just makes unemployment worse.
It is about time working class people got together to fight back. If we stand together we can win.
I am going to join the socialists, as a working class person, to end poverty, injustice, exploitation and oppression.
We are people--we deserve the right to state our opinions. S EDWARDS, Birmingham
THE COURT'S decision to fine the postal workers' union #7,500, plus 90 percent of legal costs estimated at #100,000, is a disgrace.
Why should we be penalised for standing up for basic rights against a provocative and uncaring employer?
In his summing up the judge showed all the bias of his class by favouring the evidence of one manager against the testimony of two union officials. The fine is a vindictive penalty aimed at revenge for a brilliant strike by 15,000 London workers which saw Royal Mail shaken to its roots.
But it also shows that the law can be beaten. The CWU union could be facing a much bigger penalty, but the courts and the bosses are frightened of our power.
If the fine had been really devastating there might have been walkouts and the prospect of spreading strikes again. It is significant that the bosses did not dare to take out a case directly against individuals.
The whole tone of the Post Office's case was not that it wanted to smash the union but that it wanted the national union officials to clamp down on local action.
Every CWU activist should curse the management and the judge and then take heart from the size of the fine. It works out at 50p a striker.
At my sorting office we have our 50 pences ready whenever the moment is right! We must not let our union be shackled by these laws or allow the national union leaders to stop us acting. POSTAL WORKER, London
But they are sentenced to only a small fine and community service. You would expect home secretary Michael Howard to be screaming about the court's leniency. But because the guilty men come from the Parachute Regiment they get off.
Having lived in Aldershot most of my life I know how these thugs--often violent, frequently racist, always threatening--act. At weekends areas of the town are no go areas for normal people because of the Paras' rampages.
The fact that not many of them get arrested is because the police are often frightened to get involved and much of the fighting is between soldiers.
Yet incredibly these are the people Howard wants to run "boot camps" for young offenders. What will they be teaching, how to follow up a left hook with a right cross? DIANA HANSTEAD, Aldershot
TONY BlAIR sends his child to a Catholic, grant maintained school. So at work I got a deluge of remarks about how these Labour people say one thing and do another.
Then the school refuses to negotiate with the unions! It does not seem to cross Blair's mind that this means he can no longer have anything to do with such a place. So at work I get more flack.
I am not a member of the Socialist Workers Party and I expect to remain a member of the Labour Party in the future. But I am sick of my party leader acting in this way.
I honestly do not believe that John Smith would have been like this. ANN HIGGS, Watford
AS SOMEONE who has just taken out a subscription to Socialist Worker I would like to say what an excellent paper it is and express regret that I have not been able to read it regularly before because it is not available in newsagents.
Isn't it time for a law similar to the one in France which says newsagents must display all newspapers and magazines? Many periodicals are available only on subscription and this is effectively a form of censorship.
We are supposed to live in a democracy. We need more freedom to read what we want. PAUL O'HANLON, Runcorn
I AM disappointed by letters in recent issues of Socialist Worker suggesting that animal rights and socialist politics are in contradiction.
Most long term animal rights activists are anti-capitalist. The vast majority of arrests under the CJA have been hunt sabs.
Animal rights activists and socialists are both fighting the rich and powerful. A hunt sab is class struggle at its most intense. Today in Britain the working class fightback is becoming more diverse and no longer centred exclusively on the workplace.
Socialists should welcome this diversification. STEVE BRYAN, Croydon
A PARTING gift from the exiting Tory council to the people of Barnet in north London was to give the go ahead for a retail park to be built on the site of the former Friern Barnet Hospital.
Undeterred, a crowd of angry people packed the hall for the public inquiry. Opposition centred around increased traffic congestion, pollution, the lack of "care in the community" after the closure and the threat to shops caused by the retail park.
The current Labour council were not to be seen, but the opposition campaign will continue. CAMPAIGNER, Barnet
THE NAZIS have failed in their attempts to become electorally acceptable and campaigning can also make sure they will fail in their attempt to control the streets.
An example of what can be done occurred in Halifax where four people were petitioning and selling Socialist Worker. Two Nazis came and stood near them with a camcorder, taping everyone who was signing or speaking to the sellers.
One woman paper seller then walked towards them--and they turned and ran away. She ran after them and they shuffled and lied, saying they had been filming the buildings behind.
The Nazis may be good at night time terror attacks, but little else. We can win all the arguments and as we grow and get more confident they will be the ones who are frightened of us. ANDREW CROWTHER, Halifax
AS A teacher and parent I am incensed at the latest attacks on us by the government's chief inspector of schools.
The whole process of inspection and publicly failing schools is horrendous. It leaves the staff drained and hammers their morale whatever the result for the school. The rate of sickness among teachers following an inspection is appalling, even in a school that has done well.
A local education authority inspector visited and passed the PE department in a school near me in County Durham. A few weeks later he went back as a privatised Ofsted inspector and failed the same department.
The local Crook Primary School was failed. Yet the comprehensive it feeds was commended for its excellence.
What happened? Were the children it takes from Crook transformed in a six week summer holiday?
I am appalled that Labour authorities are going along with Ofsted. A TEACHER, County Durham
Birt thinks the way Jeremy Paxman sneers at Tories telling lies diminishes our respect for politicians.
It wasn't Jeremy Paxman who brought the Tories to their current glorious level in the polls.
The Tories sent Birt to the BBC to turn it into a propaganda unit for Conservative Central Office and he is determined to finish the job. Now he wants to turn every "interview" into a party political broadcast.
The BBC's problem--and the rest of the media aren't far behind--is not aggressive journalists. It is that most journalists behave like PR agents for the powerful. They never systematically challenge the government, rarely investigate and expose corruption and have a definition of news that excludes everything outside a cosy Major-Blair consensus. JEAN McGINTY, West London
HUGE DEMONSTRATIONS against cuts in education have knocked back the Tory government in France and show we can do the same.
Teachers, nursery workers and lecturers struck for the day last week to demand more money for education and join a student revolt in the technical colleges.
Around 100,000 people took to the streets across the country, with 20,000 on a demonstration in Paris and thousands more in each of a score of provincial cities.
The students were up in arms at a government plan to limit the chance of those at technical college to go to university.
They declared strikes and boycotts of lectures, and joined last Tuesday's day of action to defend education.
The students followed up with more protests on Friday of last week. Over 5,000 demonstrated against prime minister Edouard Balladur when he visited Nantes in the west of the country.
Over 2,000 marched in Clermont Ferrand, 4,000 in Grenoble and thousands more in towns from Aix-en-Provence to Toulouse. It was enough to raise the spectre of a rerun of last year's revolt over youth wages, when over 500,000 joined the biggest student revolt since 1968.
A frightened Balladur announced on Friday that he was dropping the plan for the technical colleges and would negotiate with student leaders.
He was scared the growing revolt might scupper his hopes of becoming president in elections in the spring.
At the moment he is the clear front runner to take over from president Franois Mitterrand of the Socialist Party. Official politics is already dominated by the presidential campaign, hates the government.
The Zapatista rebels, many of them dispossessed peasants, began their revolt a year ago in protest at poverty and lack of land.
The government sought to negotiate with them until recently, but has changed tack since the economy was plunged into crisis by the collapse of the peso (the Mexican currency) just before Christmas.
Total financial collapse was only prevented by a multi billion dollar rescue package put together by US president Clinton. But the price is a savage new programme of cuts.
Zedillo is gambling on a quick success against the Zapatistas to boost his authority and help push through the austerity measures.
The growing opposition means his plan could blow up in his face.
OVER HALF a million German engineering workers have staged walk-outs over pay in the past month.
Hundreds of thousands more were to join brief "warning strikes" this week and next, as leaders of the giant IG Metall union threatened all out strikes by the end of February.
They were to announce the timetable for ballots on Tuesday if the bosses had still made no pay offer.
Germany's engineers form potentially the most powerful union in Europe, with more than three million members at the heart of the European Union's biggest economy.
Fear of job losses has seen them accept wage rises below inflation in the past few years.
But now the government openly talks of an economic upturn--indeed, this was the basis of chancellor Kohl's campaign to win re-election last year. Company order books are full and the employers are making big profits.
At the same time Kohl's government has imposed costly new taxes.
There was a 7.5 percent increase in income tax in January, imposed for a year as a "solidarity tax" to cover government spending in east Germany.
IG Metall leaders are claiming a 6 percent rise.
The bosses insist the union concede on benefits and drop a planned hour's cut in the working week in October to pay for any increase.
They threaten lockouts if the warning strikes continue, and will be backed by a law which denies social security benefits to workers laid off during a dispute. But Germany's engineers can beat these threats if they really use their muscle.
PROTESTS WERE planned around the world on Wednesday as the trial of socialist Choi Il-bung resumed in South Korea.
Choi is one of 32 socialists charged under South Korea's National Security Law, used to silence left wing opposition. Seventeen of them are in prison.
The trial of another, socialist publisher Nam Su-kyong, has also begun.
The evidence against Choi is that he was photographed selling a socialist paper on a demonstration, that he spoke at a socialist meeting and wrote letters to other socialists from prison.
He faces three years or more in jail.
Choi has already served time on a previous charge of publishing socialist books. Three hundred police raided the office of a South Korean defence campaign--the Society for Supporting Imprisoned Workers--at the end of January.
Abroad, the Committee to Defend South Korean Socialists has raised sponsorship for a page advertisement--a defence statement--to appear in the prestigious New York Review of Books.
It includes the signatures of more than 200 MPs, trade union leaders, writers and academics from a dozen countries.
They include US professors Noam Chomsky, Manning Marable and Frederic Jameson.
The Fire Brigades Union, CPSA civil servants' CPSA general secretary Barry Reamsbottom and bakers' union leader Joe Marino in Britain have sponsored it. In France the CGT-- equivalent of the TUC--and the main teaching union, FEN, have signed.
Contact the Committee to Defend South Korean Socialists, c/o Bookmarks, 265 Seven Sisters Road, London N4 2DE, or telephone 071 538 5821.
Write to Choi Il-bung in prison: No 136 Il-bung Choi, An-yang Post Office Sasco-ham 35, Gyong gi do Eui wang-si, Republic of Korea 430-600.
RUGBY PUBLIC SCHOOL
ONE TEACHER for every eight pupils.
A CHOICE of 23 different sports.
EIGHT SQUASH courts, 12 grass tennis courts, nine hard tennis courts, a gymnasium, swimming pool and playing fields covering 86 acres.
SEPARATE studios for painting and drawing, for pottery and sculpture, a photographic darkroom and a craft workshop.
BOASTS OF the "most modern language lab in Europe".
OWN TV studio, with three cameras and editing facilities for pupils.
PURPOSE BUILT school theatre putting on over 20 pupil productions a year.
HALF THE pupils study a musical instrument, with 25 rooms for practicing, two Steinway concert grand pianos and three organs.
COSTS #4,090 a term. But parents pay extra for the uniform, sports clothes, books, stationery, and music lessons.
ANY SCHOOL, ANY TOWN
ONE QUARTER of primary children now taught in classes of more than 30.
BRITAIN HAS the biggest class sizes in state schools in all of Europe.
CLASS SIZES over 40 will be common after the latest cuts.
PLAYING FIELDS sold off. Other sports facilities non-existent.
BUILDINGS crumbling, roofs leaking.
MUSIC LESSONS axed because of cuts.
LANGUAGES slashed or dropped thanks to cuts.
NOT ENOUGH books to go round.
FUNDS AVERAGE less than a tenth of what public schools get per pupil.
TEACHERS underpaid and thousands facing the sack.
ALL THE Tories' lies on education are exposed by a glance at the schools they send their kids to and those they insist our kids have to accept.
They even laughingly call their schools "public schools", though only the rich can enter. The average cost for an education is #130,000.
In "public" schools class sizes are kept down, money is no object, sports, music, culture and science are all taught with the best imaginable facilities.
It's not just about class sizes and facilities. For our kids the Tories insist their national curriculum and tests for seven, 11 and 14 year olds are essential.
Yet they also insist the schools their kids go to do NOT do either the curriculum or the tests.
To add insult to injury we have to pay taxes to subsidise these public schools.
The Tories' Assisted Places Scheme is a #94 million government handout to public schools.
Charities to most people are supposed to help the poor or suffering. Yet, incredibly, public schools, catering for the richest people in Britain, are classed as charities.
That handout is worth #42.5 million. And public schools are also exempt from VAT, worth another #100 million.
Yet Labour has no plans to end charity status or impose VAT on public schools. When Labour's education spokesman David Blunkett did suggest charging VAT on public school fees last month, Tony Blair immediately forced him to drop the idea.
Its mining industry supplies iron, manganese and bauxite to Japan and the West and together with tourism makes up 20 percent of India's foreign earnings.
The multinationals are attracted by low wages and the lack of regulation which puts workers' safety at risk.
This is why Du Pont, the chemicals giant, has been fighting for six years to open a "Nylon 6,6" plant near Ponda in central Goa, in the teeth of determined opposition from local villagers.
The protesters are concerned about the inevitable pollution that would accompany it.
Following the Bhopal disaster few Indians believe the reassurances about the safety of such plants.
When I was there the battle reached a climax when the police killed one demonstrator and injured others during a demonstration of mainly women villagers.
The following day a general strike was declared over the whole of the Ponda taluka (county).
Police were taken hostage. Some were stripped and humiliated in revenge for similar treatment meted out to activists' leaders. Police and company vehicles were set on fire and company offices were ransacked and burned.
All roads into the taluka were blocked. Hundreds of buses and trucks were placed across roads and their tyres deflated.
On the third day the protesters "arrested" the private security guards and reiterated their demands that the state government completely refuse Du Pont permission to build the plant.
Thousands attended the funeral of Nilesh Naik, the first martyr of the protest. These are not just isolated events.
In the same area a strike of 600 workers at a Ciba Geigy factory is now over a year old.
Workers in the factory were attempting to negotiate a pay increase when Ciba management broke off talks and declared an illegal lockout.
After ten years service a Ciba worker earns between 3,500 and 3,680 Rupees per month-- approximately #70 gross.
Following the lockout Ciba management bribed a member of Goa's legislative assembly to organise 200 paid goons to harass the strikers.
The picket hut was firebombed and strikers were beaten up.
The full force of the law is being used by Ciba bosses, who also pay huge sums for additional police protection.
The lockout was lifted at the end of October but the company still refuses to settle. Despite all this the workers are determined to fight on.
When we arrived at the picket line there were 200 workers present and an effigy of Heinz Lehmann, the boss of Ciba, strung up near the gate.
Julio Fernandes, executive member of the All India Catholic Union and a worker at the site, is appealing to Ciba workers in Britain to put pressure on the company to meet the workers' claim.
The Goan economy is not unique in the world. The so called Third World no longer really exists as multinational companies sit side by side with traditional rural economies.
More and more workers are recruited into low wage and dangerous jobs whilst the ruling class get rich at their expense.
Corruption is rife throughout India and conventional politics offers nothing to the average worker.
The power of Indian workers is enormous, however, and there are signs in the strikes in Goa that they know how to use it. Workers wishing to support the Ciba Geigy strike should send messages of support to Julio Fernandes, c/o Ms R Dalgado, 914 Porvorim, Bardez, Goa 403501.
WITH EVERY week that has passed since the IRA ceasefire one thing has become clearer and clearer.
It is that the main obstacle to the development of the peace process in Northern Ireland is the attitude of the Unionists.
By the Unionists, I do not mean thon built into the Northern Ireland state--perpetrated by the Unionists and backed by Britain.
It shows that the sectarian divisions between Protestants and Catholics do not arise spontaneously from the religious fanaticism of ordinary people.
Rather they have been deliberately fostered and stirred up from above as a political weapon of divide and rule.
It shows that the Unionist politicians have a deep vested interest in the continuation of sectarianism.
People like Paisley and Molyneaux have built their political careers on a foundation of anti-Catholic bigotry. Without it they would be redundant.
Above all it shows that a lasting peace in Northern Ireland can only be achieved by overriding the Unionist bosses.
In this context the historical links between the Tories and the Unionists, and the strong Unionist sympathies of a section of Tory MPs are a major factor holding back the progress of the peace process.
A further problem is the fact that Labour Party policy under Blair has shifted significantly in the direction of Unionism.
Kevin McNamara has been replaced by Mo Mowlam as spokesperson on Northern Ireland.
Mowlam has been visibly courting the Unionists. All of this means that the road to lasting peace in Northern Ireland is far from straightforward. However, there has also been an important positive development.
This is the gap that has opened up between the Unionist politicians and the Protestant working class whom they have misled for so long.
The difference in the response of the politicians and the paramilitaries (who are undoubtedly closer to the workers) is one symptom of this.
Another is the fact that the Unionist leaders can huff and puff at Westminster and try to exploit Major's small majority, but have not yet been able to mobilise any mass support on the streets of Belfast as they could in the past.
At the moment this gap is still small but it can widen. In this situation the role of socialist politics is key.
Socialists make not the slightest concession to Unionism but seek to relate to the real concerns of Protestant workers--with the aim of forging working class unity.
Socialist politics in Northern Ireland are more important than ever.
POPLAR--A LESSON LABOUR SHOULD REMEMBER
COUNCILS ACROSS the country are implementing cuts demanded by the Tory government.
Labour councillors say they dislike pushing cuts through, but have no choice because it is the law. Some argue that even if they did defy the government they could not win.
It is not true, as the lessons of a Labour council in Poplar, east London, 75 years ago show.
THE COUNCIL meeting in Poplar on 10 November 1919 was not like any before it. Local people packed the public gallery and cheered as the newly elected council took office. Over 500 people marched around the borough in celebration as the meeting closed.
The new mayor was George Lansbury, who called himself an "out and out socialist" and edited a socialist paper, the Daily Herald.
Before the First World War local politics in Britain, like national politics, was dominated by Tories and Liberals.
But in 1919 Labour started to win control of local councils for the first time. Poplar was then, as now, among the poorest areas in Britain.
In 1919 the docks, with their casual labour, and the railways and other industries linked to the docks, dominated the area and people's lives.
The new Labour councillors were almost all socialists of some kind, ranging from people like George Lansbury who were pacifists and Christians, to revolutionaries like his son Edgar.
What united them was a commitment that running the council should "make a difference" to "their people".
And when the councillors spoke of "our people", it was not rhetoric in the manner of some overpaid modern day union leaders whose lives are far removed from those of their members.
The Poplar councillors lived and worked alongside the people they represented. They shared the same slums. They worried about paying the rent, about finding work.
The councillors were dockers, rail workers and postal workers, and most continued to work for a living throughout their period of office.
Many had played key roles in building up trade union organisation as shop stewards or secretaries of local union branches.
When they took control of the council they immediately set about "making a difference".
They took seriously Labour Party policy on a minimum wage and equal pay for women.
One of their first acts was to increase the wage for all council workers to #4 a week. This infuriated bosses everywhere, but was hugely popular with workers. It was a 25 percent rise for men, but a 70 percent rise for women.
The new council also pushed through a series of basic reforms. ew public baths were opened and public housing was built. Schemes were launched to deal with the killer disease tuberculosis while free and cheap milk for expectant mothers and babies was introduced.
It vastly improved parks, expanded local libraries and even ran public dances on Saturday nights.
These measures were popular and made small but real differences to the lives of ordinary people. aturally, the council soon found that standing by the people who had elected it brought it into direct confrontation with the government and law.
THE CRUNCH came over a complicated issue surrounding the distribution of rate revenue between the London boroughs.
After a dispute with the London County Council the Poplar councillors refused to collect or pay over the part of local rates [the equivalent of today's council tax] due to the LCC or other London bodies like the Metropolitan Police.
This was denounced by the Tories and their press. It was blatantly illegal. The press warned it would end with the councillors bankrupt or even in jail. "So be it," replied George Lansbury. They could not win, was the reaction of even sympathetic observers. "Poplar will show you how to fight", replied councillor Charlie Sumner.
Poplar's defiance of the law was attacked by Labour leaders too.
The key Labour figure who opposed Poplar was Herbert Morrison, mayor of nearby Hackney and the leader of the London Labour Party.
Like today's Labour "modernisers", Morrison talked of Labour proving itself "fit to govern", winning over the middle classes, and at all costs staying within "the law".
He insisted, "I am very determined to uphold only constitutional action and action within the law".
Poplar councillor Sam March replied simply to Morrison's attacks, "The master class has made the laws".
And George Lansbury added, "If we have to choose between contempt of the poor and contempt of the Court it will be contempt of the Court."
The lord chief justice attacked "the lunatics of Poplar" as in September 1921 30
Poplar councillors, including five women, were hauled off to jail. George Lansbury wrote, "The courts may send us to prison but we shall not give way."
EACH ARREST of a councillor was accompanied by demonstrations and there were protests every day outside the jails where they were held.
These were backed up by public meetings, rallies and union meetings across the borough.
This response was not simply because of the councillors' popularity. It was also backed up by meticulous organisation.
Lansbury's Daily Herald argued Poplar's case day in and day out.
And in Poplar itself the Labour Party, which at that time had revolutionary socialists in its ranks, had a mass membership which organised to back the fight.
In the relatively small area of South Poplar alone there were 2,600 members each paying a penny a week--about 50p in today's money.
Active members would have a list of 20 people they had to visit each week to collect money from, inform about activities and mobilise for protests.
Even the very decision to defy the law had only been taken after a conference of local union branches had discussed and debated the issue.
Amazingly the protest and growing support for Poplar even forced the government and jail governors to allow them to hold council meetings inside the jail. And despite the opposition of Labour leaders, Poplar's stance was beginning to win support in other Labour councils.
First Bethnal Green in east London joined the revolt and withheld rates money from the London County Council and other central bodies.
Then Poplar's neighbouring council Stepney followed suit. The revolt terrified the government. It considered sending in commissioners to collect the rates in Poplar.
But the jailed Poplar councillors had organised to ensure that any such attempt by the government would be met by an all out rent strike across the borough. Cabinet minutes available today reveal the government concluded that "it would be unwise" to proceed as "the inhabitants of Poplar, even the more prosperous classes, were inclined to sympathise with the Borough Council and resistance was therefore not unlikely."
Instead the government panicked-- "A settlement is extremely desirable in view of the fact that the Councils of other poor boroughs are threatening to follow the example of Poplar".
The Tories and the courts simply surrendered.
After six weeks the Poplar councillors were released from jail. That weekend a "monster demonstration" welcomed them home in east London's Victoria Park.
Poplar had secured a massive victory for the poorer London boroughs. The wealthier boroughs now had to pay more into a central London fund which was then redistributed to the poorer areas.
More importantly, payment of "outdoor relief"--unemployment benefit--was now to be borne by the central London fund instead of by each borough. "I know we are not going to end capitalism by Poplar methods", Lansbury wrote.
But he insisted Labour councils must behave differently from Tories and "in a nutshell this means diverting wealth from the wealthy to the poor".
Today any Labour council which chose not to do the Tories' dirty work, but instead to make a stand, refuse to carry out cuts and organise among local workers and people, could win a victory like that won by Poplar.
At school I found science so dull
that I learned absolutely nothing, except that the reaction
obtained from turning all the gas taps on for a laugh is
equal to an hour's detention.
Now I know that as a result
of paying no attention whatsoever I'm considerably better
informed than Dr Gregory Carey of the Institute of
Behavioural Genetics.
He claims to have discovered the gene that makes some of us
aggressive, and therefore "translates into theft, robbery
and violence".
Indeed this gene can even be located in a foetus, so that
parents can be forewarned and advised about abortion.
This is the major announcement made so far by scientists
gathered in London for a conference on genetics and
criminality. o doubt at next year's conference they'll
announce, "It has now been discovered that the crime gene
can be subdivided into a burglary gene, a mugging gene and a
driving without due care and attention gene.
"Parents forewarned that their children carry the credit
card fraud gene are keen to know whether it's a get away
with it and live in the West Indies gene or a get nicked and
do five years gene.
"Research is also under way to link the insider dealing gene
with the writing third rate novels gene."
The modern "gene" fad is reminiscent of Aristotle who wrote
over 2,000 years ago, "It is nature's intention to
distinguish even the bodies of freemen and slaves. The
latter are endowed with strength to suit their employment
while the upright carriage of the former renders them unfit
for servile work."
So Ancient Greece was full of masters bursting to spend the
day labouring but just not up to it with that upright
carriage.
The modern version is even more ridiculous. Every piece of
evidence available shows that crime rises in line with
deprivation.
It's surely obvious that spending the evening thieving car
radios and flogging them in a dodgy pub for a tenner is
less appealing to someone with a secure job with decent pay
than to someone who hasn't got a tenner.
Scientist Steven Rose described the stupidity of the
genetics conference, saying, "chimpanzees and humans share
upwards of 98 percent of their genes yet no one would
question the profound differences between them."
It is possible these people don't even really believe it
themselves. When a prisoner on death row convicted of
murder claimed mitigating circumstances because he was
"born with a gene to kill" the genetics lobby weren't so
keen on the logic of their theory.
And I doubt if they'd be happy if demonstrators argued in
court, "Sorry, your honour, but I was helpless. It was my
throwing rubble at the police gene playing up again."
These scientists' crackpot theories are heavily funded and
listened to with reverence only because our rulers would
love them to be true.
Ever since the beginning of class society those doing well
out of it have tried to convince those doing not so well
that we're all where we are because nature has said it must
be so.
The first bourgeois economist, Adam Smith, said in the 18th
century, "It is in the nature of every man to truck, barter
and trade."
At least Aristotle and Adam Smith were geniuses of their
time, whereas modern capitalism has only Dr Carey to try
and convince us that the appalling inequalities of the
planet are inevitable, indeed natural--that some are born to
rule, others to starve.
Maybe they even have to convince themselves, or they'd never sleep at night.
by SAM ASHMAN
THERE SHOULD be more women in parliament.
Only 10 percent of MPs are women and the place is dominated
by a very sexist atmosphere.
But what sort of women should they be?
The press carried reports last week of a fundraising dinner
organised by Emily's List UK. Emily's List was set up to
get more women Labour MPs. It funds and "trains" women to
get them into parliament.
But last week's bash says a lot about the sort of women it
wants elected. It was a #125 a head dinner at the exclusive
Cafe Royal in London.
Its founder member is Barbara Follett, an "image consultant"
to the Labour Party.
She is one of the people responsible for bringing "power
dressing" into the Labour Party. ote the bob hairdos, the
skirt suits and the won't go anywhere without my shoulder
pads approach to life.
Labour's leading women MPs--like Harriet Harman, Mo Mowlam,
Margaret Beckett and Ann Taylor--all look this way.
They think you have to look like some god awful business
woman to be presentable.
Follett's family home--she is married to novelist Ken
Follett--is worth #2 million.
She spends one week every month on the Cote d'Azur and
employs people to do the housework.
Emily's List is one thing only--a machine for the promotion
of career women politicians who are utterly divorced from
ordinary working class women.
What would they do if they succeeded in getting more women
in parliament? Emily's List has been attacked for its
pro-choice policy on abortion. Itmight fight to get
through legislation giving more provision for abortion
rights. But there is precious little else.
When a Blair government says "there is no money" is it going
to stand up for nursery places, or will it watch the dole
queues rise and preside over more cuts?
The truth is women are divided by class.
The women of Emily's List don't know what it is like to
struggle on a bus with a toddler, two bags of shopping from
Tesco and a buggy. or do they know what it is like to
struggle to pay the bills.
Working class women need a bit more to win their liberation
than more women in parliament.
We need to fight against sexist ideas in the here and now,
but we also need to fight the system that creates them.
We need to challenge the employers and the governments that
won't provide nurseries, that attack abortion rights, cut
back benefits and pay women less than men.
In the course of such a fight male workers can come to see
how sexism divides us, and women can see a different vision
of how their lives could be.
Liberation means a fight outside parliament that unites men
and women workers--and that fight will seize power from all
the rotten parliamentarians.
by HASSAN MAHAMDALLIE
"YOU DON'T have to put up with dreadful human beings sitting
alongside you."
Last week's snobbish utterance from public transport
minister Steven Norris, on why he prefers to travel in his
Jaguar Sovereign, sums up Tory attitudes.
They want more roads and less public transport.
Television documentary The Road--shown last Sunday on BBC
1--examined one road building project.
Thirty thousand lorries a day sprint through the village of
Batheaston on the A36. Meanwhile an infrequent rail
service runs absolutely parallel to the road route.
The government has contracted for a series of bypasses to
relieve the congestion. In The Road anti-roads protesters
fought it out with the contractors and their thuggish
security guards.
The Road showed very well how protesters
and local villagers were pitted against one another. The
protesters opposed the road, while the locals were begging
for it.
In one sense the programme is not typical. It has chosen a
finely balanced case, whereas most roads projects--like the
M11 link--obviously make people's lives worse by destroying
perfectly usable houses and increasing pollution.
In this case you had to have some sympathy for the
beleaguered villagers. It is terrible that the countryside
is being ripped up. It is ironic to see villagers--led by a
right wing bunch of parish councillors--embracing the Tory
roads programme, when it is the Tories who put freight
through their narrow streets in the first place.
But you could hardly say that the new road was going to
lower their quality of life.
One villager called the anti-roads protests "anarchy". But
the real anarchy on show was Tory policies.
by MOIRA NOLAN
WHEN ASKED to comment on Alan Parker's new film about its
founder, Dr John Harvey Kellogg, the Kellogg corporation
denied any connection with him.
Having just seen The Road To Wellville I'm not surprised!
In part a biopic of Kellogg's life and work, the film deals
with his obsession with health and the various quack
remedies he prescribed at the sanatorium he ran in the late
19th century.
Declaring, "Clean bowels make for clean living," Kellogg
subjects his gullible patients to a daily routine of five
enemas, no sex and a variety of painful looking
contraptions.
This is a film which has great potential, some good points
to make but ultimately disappointing. The film jumps from
satire to farce and even descends into bottom jokes.
Despite this, not many films declare so boldly that "an
erection is a flagpole on your grave".
On workplace sales, 11 copies of Socialist Worker were sold
at Bendix in Bristol, three at Lucas and five at Greycoat
House council office in Birmingham. In the Post Office 18
papers were sold at NWDO, seven at Tooting office and five
at Sydenham.
In Hackney in London eight papers were sold last week at
Stoke Newington School, six at the TGWU offices in Green
Lanes and four at Finsbury Park Post Office.
Fifty seven papers were sold on the march through Bethnal
Green in east London against the closure of the Chest
Hospital. On the council lobby in Shrewsbury 58 papers were
sold.
On the Birmingham demonstration against the Criminal Justice
Act 96 people joined the Socialist Workers Party. At a
Socialist Worker Student Society school in London 23 people
joined. In Hounslow 15 joined on a march against racism
plus five people on a CJA demonstration. Elsewhere four
people joined in south London, three in north London and
Hackney College, two in Leamington and Warwick University
and one in Manor House, Woodberry Down and Midsomer Norton.
by CHARLIE KIMBER
INTEREST AND support are growing around the Socialist Worker
trade union conference which will take place on 18 March in
Manchester.
The school is open to all trade unionists and over 150
people are already registered. They include activists from
every major union.
The conference will discuss how trade unionists can
encourage and spread the mood of resistance in the working
class.
It will exchange experiences of building union organisation
at the base in workplaces. And it will argue the role of
Socialist Worker in making sure the fightback involves
socialist politics.
Sheffield council's UNISON Number Two branch is sending 20
delegates. Brendan Wood from the branch says, "Thousands of
people can see why they need a trade union.
"We need to make sure that rank and file members step up the
pressure on their leaders to make them fight effectively
and, if they do not, that we have enough of an activists'
network to push the fight forward ourselves.
"The revolt in the councils, for example, shows the
potential for explosive struggles which bring whole new
layers of people into action."
A postal worker says she is looking forward to the
discussion about taking on the Tory anti-union laws.
"In the Post Office there has been lots of unofficial action
that has defied the Tory laws. We need a serious discussion
about how to win such strikes and the problems people face
when they are up against the employers, the courts and
their own union leaders.
"How can we make sure that there is enough support to give
strength to "illegal" struggles and make sure they are not
isolated?"
Bob Arnett, secretary of the strike committee at Eastern
National buses in Chelmsford where 105 drivers were sacked
after a legal strike in November, says, "The conference is a
chance for us to win support for our dispute among
activists inside the rank and file of the movement.
"More generally, I see it as a chance to discuss how we go
about rebuilding union strength. "We need to win the idea
that the strength of unions lies with the strength of the
rank and file.
"Union leaders need to recognise where ordinary members want
the unions to go.
If the rank and file move then they can begin to move people
at the top as well."
A delegation will be coming from Chelmsford in one of the
minibuses that has been providing an alternative service.
A council worker adds, "The revival in the rank and file
around active fighting trade unionism is crucial, but we
cannot neglect the role of politics and the role of
Socialist Worker.
"If we are just `narrow' trade unionists who do not argue
about racism, the
Criminal Justice Act and every other issue then we will open
ourselves up to being divided.
"Tony Blair and the Labour Party are not going to deliver
for workers. We need real socialist propaganda and
organisation rooted in the workplaces whatever happens
after the next election."
CLAUSE FOUR of Labour's constitution, which commits the
party to public ownership, is being debated at meetings up
and down the country.
In central London last week speakers showed how weak the
arguments are from those who support Labour leader Tony
Blair's wish to get rid of the clause. Labour's shadow home
secretary Jack Straw, arguing to scrap the clause, spent
much of his time showing that the clause had been pushed
through by middle class Labour members who were not
particularly left wing.
Diane Abbott, a member of Labour's national executive who
supports the clause, replied that Straw was missing the
whole point. "What pushed the clause through was the
recognition that ownership matters.
"Go to the cleaners in the hospitals who have been
privatised and seen their pay and conditions destroyed by
contractors. Tell them that ownership does not matter."
Straw also claimed that nobody seriously believed Labour
would implement the clause and that public ownership of
large parts of the economy was discredited after the
collapse of the Berlin Wall.
Alan Simpson MP, secretary of the left wing Campaign Group,
countered that this was really a debate about the
relationship between capital and labour, between employers
and workers.
"It is an outline, a framework of what distinguishes us from
the Tories," he said.
"The `modernisers' who believe in the `dynamic market' are
the same people who have left us in the situation where our
only tax commitment is not to put VAT on public school
fees," he said.
Jack Straw accused Clause Four supporters of being
undemocratic because they do not support Blair's call for
postal ballots to decide the issue.
But from the floor of the meeting a constituency member from
east London countered, "Look at the press. Every Tory
newspaper says Labour should get rid of the clause. I
wonder why that is!" Other speakers denounced the
undemocratic way Blair and his supporters are acting. "Why
didn't Blair mention this in his manifesto for leader?"
asked a south London Labour Party member.
Speaker after speaker questioned why no amendments would be
allowed to the new clause at the special conference on 29
April.
Others attacked the way huge amounts of central funds have
been lavished on Blair's tour and glossy propaganda.
At every meeting to discuss the clause, activists should ask
two simple questions: How can there be any sort of social
equality without economic equality? How can there be
economic equality when industry and services are owned by a
tiny minority?
Those on the left, who rightly defend Clause Four, should
ask themselves what they are doing in a party whose leaders
have given up any pretence of fighting for real socialism.
THE NATIONAL executive of the RMT rail workers' union has
decided to back Clause Four, although it also wants an
additional form of words to cover returning privatised
industries such as the railways to public ownership.
Fellow rail union ASLEF is also pledged--in line with its
constitution--to vote to keep the clause.
The Scottish GPMU print workers' union executive has voted
in favour of the clause and many union members expect the
whole of the GPMU vote to be cast against Blair's plans in
April.
Herts and West Essex GPMU branch committee, representing
4,000 members, passed a resolution backing Clause Four by 14
votes to nil with two abstentions last week.
The North West region of the TGWU is also for retaining the
clause. A meeting of the Bristol and south west area
committee of the new CWU communication workers' union saw
43 reps, representing 4,000, discuss the clause--and a clear
vote to keep it.
Meanwhile there is more evidence that the big vote to
support Tony Blair and ditch Clause Four at the recent
Young Labour conference saw some distinctively old
fashioned methods at work.
A delegation member from the shop workers' union USDAW
reveals in the Tribune newspaper, "We were told that if we
voted in support of Clause Four our futures in the union
would be in jeopardy."
This is despite the clause forming part of the union's
constitution!
Mark Steel It's all in our genes
READING THE latest "scientists have discovered" story
made me feel quite smug.
TV films and Books
Women MPs
Bobs, Blair and career success
Tory roads bypass the railway
Stick to Corn Flakes
Going door to door
Socialist Worker sellers went back to Silvertown in east
London following their campaign against the Nazis in the
recent council by-election and sold 14 door to door.
Eighteen papers were sold on Sunday campaigning against the
Nazis in the forthcoming council election in Weavers ward,
Tower Hamlets.
Manchester 18 March
CLAUSE FOUR DEBATE
Ownership matters
Not Backing Blair
news & reports/politics/industry/the unions
ESSEX: Firefighters and control staff answered emergency calls only for two 24 hour periods last week in protest against the council's decision to cut the fire service budget by #142,000.
Originally the council had intended cuts of up to #5.4 million in the fire service budget. But a 400 strong firefighters' demonstration scared it off.
The council meeting also imposed massive education cuts. "They might have reduced the cut in the fire service but we've got to show them we are not going to sit back and let them destroy local schools," an Essex firefighter told Socialist Worker.
TOWER HAMLETS: Council workers have called a series of lobbies against the Labour council's #17.5 million cuts. Proposals include a 16 percent rent increase, shutting pensioners' lunch clubs, charging for home helps, slashing community education, cutting down housing refurbishment and shutting day centres for the elderly and children.
Labour was elected last May on a huge wave of support against years of a rotten Liberal rule.
It also won office on the back of a wave of anti-racism which saw the Nazi BNP kicked out from the council seat it had won in an earlier by-election on the east London borough's Isle of Dogs.
Lobby, Wednesday 22 February, 6.30pm, Town Hall, Mulberry Place, Tower Hamlets. Lobby of full council, Wendesday 1 March, 6.30pm, Town Hall, Mulberry Place, Tower Hamlets. LIVERPOOL: A UNISON social services mass meeting unanimously called for a ballot for a one day strike on 22 March against #40 million cuts.
The motion is a real advance on one passed earlier which called for talks to find "humane cuts". A further mass meeting is planned for 28 February.
HAVERING: Over 100 local council workers, parents and children lobbied Havering council in Essex over #17 million cuts.
Havering UNISON is balloting for action next month. Lobby Havering council, every Wednesday until 1 March. Assemble 7.30pm, Havering Town Hall.
BRIGHTON: The UNISON branch expects authorisation for a strike ballot this week, after two mass meetings voted for action. Workers face compulsory redundancies under the Labour council's cuts package.
CAMBRIDGE: Firefighters, teachers and councillors joined an 80 strong lobby of Cambridgeshire County Council last week.
Cambridgeshire Against the Cuts plans a demonstration on Saturday 4 March.
SUFFOLK: Around 100 firefighters lobbied Suffolk County Council last Tuesday when #400,000 cuts in the fire service were announced.
Lobby full council meeting Thursday 23 February, 2pm, County Hall, Ipswich.
BEDFORDSHIRE: Up to 80 firefighters lobbied Bedfordshire County Council last week.
The firefighters' FBU union is now holding branch meetings to discuss its response to the #474,000 cuts in the run up to the next council meeting. Lobby, Thursday 23 February, 9am, County Hall, Bedford.
SUNDERLAND: Around 140 council workers and service users lobbied the council's social services committee last week. Advice workers presented a petition with 2,500 signatures collected in three days.
The protesters were disgusted to see Sunderland's Labour councillors vote for the #11 million cuts without a word of opposition.
A lobby of the education committee was planned for this week and activists have forced an emergency UNISON meeting for 21 February.
OTTS: Teachers and council workers will lobby the council against #27 million cuts. Lobby, Thursday 23 February, 1pm, County Hall, West Bridgford.
LAMBETH: There were angry lobbies of the council's social services, environmental and education committees last week.
Two Labour councillors have resigned in disgust at the cuts.
UNISON white collar workers are balloting for strikes on 28 February, and Lambeth NUT may join the action.
Meanwhile, four workers facing the sack for union activities had their morale boosted last Tuesday when 100 people joined a lobby of their disciplinary hearing.
There were delegations from UNISON branches across London and the FBU.
ORTHANTS: Teachers, members of the NUT teaching union, are voting on strike action on Tuesday 28 February against education cuts which would mean 250 teacher redundancies.
HARINGEY: Up to 60 teachers held a lively lobby of the local council last Thursday. Teachers at selected schools in Haringey are currently taking strike action over councillors' and school governors' refusal to pay the #822 London allowance.
DEVON: The county UNISON executive hasagreed to ballot for a one day strike in March and industrial action against cuts. Leaders of Devon UNISON were being forced by pressure from below to build for a lobby of the full council on Thursday 16 February and to support inter-union initiatives. Devon UNISON has now agreed to sponsor Plymouth Fightback Against the Cuts. Devon wide demonstration against the cuts, Saturday 25 February, 1pm, at Plymouth Hoe.
BROMLEY: Bromley UNISON and anti-cuts campaigners have called a demonstration. Rally, Wednesday 15 February, 6.45pm, Bromley Civic Centre, Rochester Avenue entrance.
BUCKS: Cuts threaten hundreds of teachers' jobs and the closure of fire stations. Lobby, Thursday 23 Feb, 10am, Old Council Offices, Market Square, Aylesbury.
TEACHERS AND parents from many schools are still campaigning against the Tory tests.
Work for the tests in primary schools is due to start after half term. Parents need to act now to withdraw their children.
Teachers should follow the lead of a primary school in Islington, north London, where parents and teachers called a local meeting last Tuesday. Around 25 different schools were represented. There was a unanimous mood to keep the boycott. The meeting agreed to seek support from governors and encourage parents to withdraw children from the tests. In Waltham Forest, east London, governors at George Mitchell School are backing the teachers' campaign against the tests. A borough wide meeting is planned for next month.
A SPECIAL meeting of the national council of UCAC (the National Association of the Teachers of Wales) last Saturday unanimously reaffirmed its decision to boycott this year's SATs tests.
Since the NUT union's decision to drop the boycott, UCAC county officials have received requests from schools for a continuation of the boycott.
As a result even areas that had originally opposed the boycott now support it.
A small number of teachers have left the NUT and NASUWT unions and joined UCAC in the last two weeks, while there are reports of others thinking of doing the same.
With teachers' anger mounting over the underfunded poor pay increase and the job cuts, the boycott is likely to become an increasingly popular protest against government education policies.
THE NUT teachers' union plans a day of action on 30 March in defence of Section 11 teachers, who teach children for whom English is a second language.
The national union says it will ballot for strikes in areas facing cuts or job losses as a result of Section 11 funding cuts.
Wherever teachers face cuts in Section 11 funding, they should be putting in a request for action now.
The deadline for requests for action is Tuesday 21 February.
ISLINGTON NUT in north London is balloting for action over a possible 36 redundancies of Section 11 teachers and advisory teachers.
The job losses arise from government cuts and Islington's decision to centralise the Section 11 service, meaning that schools and teachers will have to reapply for a reduced number of posts.
Parents and teachers have been leafleting against the cuts and a public meeting was planned for this week.
Thirty seven jobs have already been saved by the campaign, which included unofficial strike action at two big secondary schools before Christmas. The NUT looks set to ballot members for strike action on 30 March.
TRAVELLER education services face a 28.6 percent funding cut. Traveller children's education is currently funded by Section 210. Until April 1995 this service is funded 25 percent from the local education authority, topped up by 75 percent from the Department of Education.
After April the weighting will change to 36 percent LEA funded and the rest from the Department of Education.
Some councils will only allocate the same funding--which could mean the services slashed and children going without schooling.
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UNISON leaders have threatened industrial action over pay and the union's health committee meeting may sanction a ballot over the offer.
Activists are demanding the union sticks to its full 8 percent pay claim with no local bargaining.
Health workers are determined there will not be a repeat of last year's appalling betrayal of hospital clerical and admin workers, who balloted for strikes only to find the UNISON leaders accepted a rotten deal regardless.
The lobby will be followed by a trip to health secretary Virginia Bottomley's home.
Lobby UNISON health committee, 10-11am, Tuesday 21 Feb, UNISON HQ, Mabledon Place, off Euston Road, London NW1. Free transport from the lobby to Bottomley's home.
THE CAMPAIGN to stop the closure of Chase Farm Casualty Unit in Enfield, north London, has won a great victory.
At a public meeting last week the financial director of New River Health Authority said the closure would not now take place.
It is a fantastic victory for the thousands of local people and trade unionists who signed petitions and came on November's demonstration.
The merger proposals would mean the closure of accident and emergency facilities at Guy's.
After marching from Guy's to Downing Street, demonstrators handed in a petition.
Campaigners need to put pressure on health union UNISON to call for protests, occupations and a mass demonstration against the merger.
SOME 600 housing workers employed by the Clydeside Federation of Housing Associations have been offered a pay rise of 1 percent above the rate of inflation for each of the two years, two extra days holiday plus increased increments for the lower paid.
The offer is seen as a victory by union members and a result of the TGWU union branch's willingness over the last two years to take action to win decent wage rises.
THE NATIONAL Union of Mineworkers is to ballot for action against a three year wage freeze imposed by new private owner RJB Mining.
RJB boss Richard Budge is offering miners shares worth 5 percent of profits instead of a pay rise. Budgans to impose proposals for working in the hours of darkness.
The union says the plans, which could mean people working alone and up ladders at night, are unsafe.
Some branches of the union have told members to walk off the job if requested to work or climb alone in the dark, action which workers are legally entitled to take under health and safety legislation if they consider it unsafe.
BRIGHTON: Students at the university were to meet this week to step up the campaign for union president Pancho Ndebele, who was thrown out of the country by immigration officials. ational Union of Students president Jim Murphy said last week, "This is a sad example of the immigration authorities' attitude towards overseas students."
He did not, however, call for any action other than writing letters. It will take action to secure Pancho's return.
SHEFFIELD: Leaders of Sheffield University students' union have reacted outrageously to criticism.
They have banned the Socialist Worker Student Society after it published a leaflet criticising the union for high prices, of the removal of a ten minute break for bar staff and for spending profits estimated at around #600,000 this year on buying pubs.
Hundreds of students have already signed petitions denouncing the ban and the way the union is acting.
OTTINGHAM: The threat of a rent strike produced a #2 a week rent cut at some Nottingham University halls of residence.
HUNDREDS OF disabled protesters lobbied parliament and staged a protest which halted traffic last week. The action was in support of the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Private Member's Bill being proposed by Labour MP Harry Barnes.
The bill is modelled on the proposed Disabled Rights Bill the government killed last year.
SOME 500 GPMU print union members at Harrisons, High Wycombe, are voting on an overtime ban in response to changes in conditions imposed by the company.
Harrisons has introduced bell to bell working and will only recognise a single bargaining unit for GPMU members. This means derecognising the six different chapels (union shops) in the factory.
The changes are part of the package which the company pushed a year ago. It was decisively rejected by the workforce. Harrisons announced 98 redundancies, but has only been able to carry out 60 of them.
On 10 February Harrisons got an injunction to stop the NGA machine minders' chapel from holding a meeting in the factory. But an off site meeting of all Harrisons' union members was held the next day.
THE 105 Chelmsford bus workers sacked from Eastern National before Christmas for going on strike face a crucial meeting this week.
Union delegates from across the Badgerline bus group--of which Eastern National is a subsidiary--were to meet on Wednesday to discuss resistance to Badgerline's union busting operation.
The Chelmsford workers hope the meeting will call for strike action across Badgerline. It is the only way to ensure victory.
WORKERS AT a warehouse in Hayes, west of London, scored a brilliant victory last week. Members of the TGWU walked out against the sacking of the supervisor.
"He had been picked out as a scapegoat for some orders getting messed up," said one striker.
"Some people thought the sacking was because he was black--the place is 70 percent white and 30 percent Asian.
"Virtually everyone came out and we set up a picket line. Management were preparing to do the work but when drivers refused to cross our picket they agreed to take the supervisor back."
STREET CLEANERS in Hackney, all members of public sector union UNISON, voted by 259 to nine to take industrial action at an angry union meeting last week.
The workers are angry that Hackney Labour council wants to increase their working week by 5 hours--but without any extra pay.
School cleaners, also members of UNISON, also held an angry meeting which voted against the council's proposals to increase their hours.
"THE EMPLOYERS have shown us the colour of their money." That is the response of one further education college lecturer to the news that talks between the lecturers' union NATFHE and the employers CEF broke down last week.
The talks were an insult. The employers were prepared to give nothing. All they talked about was the "staged transfer" of lecturers on existing conditions--the Silver Book--to the new CEF contracts.
They refused to even discuss new contracts for all lecturers.
They proposed:
to increase the annual teaching load from 756 hours to 826 from this September.
to increase it to 950 next September.
to increase teaching to "unlimited" levels the September after.
It means the employers stepping up their attacks and can only stiffen the resolve of lecturers to carry on fighting.
The leaders of NATHFE might have been happy to do a deal that sold their members out.
But the employers would not let them.
During last week's day of talks NATHFE's national negotiators offered talks on the basis of a contract just for those lecturers on the Silver Book, leaving those already on the CEF contract to rot.
Two negotiators, Jefney Ashcroft and Barry Lovejoy, rejected this move.
But it shows what national negotiators are prepared to accept.
The union's NEC is to now discuss taking the dispute to the arbitration service ACAS. ACAS is no solution. Instead there is now a chance to push for the kind of national action that can knock the employers back. ational leaders know they are under pressure from their members.
The union's FEIRC has already issued the call for action in the week begining 6 March, with colleges to strike on 8 March at a minimum.
Every NATFHE activist must try to get their college to strike on this day. If your college is in local negotiations, force your employers' hand, get the talks called off and ballot to strike.
The employers know they have not yet broken the will of most NATFHE members. The majority of maingrade lecturers are still on the Silver Book.
There are only a small number of colleges where resistance has collapsed altogether.
There is still the mood on the ground to resist. Coleg Glahafren in Cardiff struck for two days last week and there were big pickets outside the college gates.
Barry College, also in Wales, struck for two days last week.
Ipswich College also struck and lecturers at Sheffield College, the biggest in the country, voted by 70 percent for strike action over pay if national and local talks fail.
Across the country lecturers are also facintions to ACAS.
FIGHT THE CONTRACTS, NATIONAL ACTIVISTS CONFERENCE Feb, 2pm, School of Oriental and African Studies, central London. Registration #5.
Conference supported by Jefney Ashcroft, BaLovejoy and Pat Walsh--all NEC members, all personal capacity. for more details contact Mike Gallagher, c/o Tower Hamlets College, Poplar High Street, London E14 OAF, phone 071 538 5888 x382.
WORKERS AT the Glasgow based Clydesdale Bank in Scotland were set to strike on Friday after voting by more than two to one for action over pay.
The strike was to be the first in the history of the bank. "Feeling is running very high," says a Clydesdale worker.
Members of the bank workers' union BIFU voted in a ballot by 1,721 to 746 for a series of one day strikes.
Management at the Clydesdale want to impose a 3 percent performance related pay deal.
BIFU is claiming a 6.75 percent rise across the board. "Staff shortages are unreal because management have cut back s
LEADERS OF the biggest civil service unions, the CPSA and NUCPS, have called a day of action in protest at the Job Seeker's Allowance.
Their "JSA Day" on Thursday 16 March will coincide with the last discussion in parliament of this attack on the unemployed.
The Jobseeker's Allowance will cut entitlement to dole money from a year to six months.
It will also cut the jobs of thousands of civil servants.
The union leaders' plan for the day of action is to call a press conference and ask members to give out leaflets.
We have to turn it into a nationwide day of protests and walkouts.
IN AN outrageous move, right wing leaders of the biggest civil service union--the CPSA--have rejected the 8 percent pay claim submitted by the union's Benefits Agency section.
They have taken the pay negotiations out of the hands of elected officers and given them to full time officials.
Branches should pass motions condemning the union leaders' intervention.
WORKERS IN the repair and service section of the Rolls Royce plant at East Kilbride are balloting for industrial action over a massive attack on their conditions.
The company is pushing to introduce "annualised hours" and do away with shift and overtime premiums in the "agency" (department) it now calls RRAES (Rolls Royce Aero Engine Services).
Workers could be ordered to work consecutive 12 hour shifts one week and be sent home the next.
There will be no bonus for weekend working.
The furious reaction--two mass meetings at East Kilbride rejected the proposals--have seen the company retreat from demanding a seven day shift system.
But it still wants to include Saturday in the "normal" working week.
Workers at the Coventry and Bristol plants are also affected, and a ballot is due at Coventry next week.
Shop stewards throughout Rolls need to fight for a company wide policy and should organise to support any action.
OVER 200 workers at Dowty Aerospace in Wolverhampton have signed a letter demanding that their union be reinstated.
The workers, members of the AEEU, have a works' council set up instead of union negotiations.
AROUND 50 pupils from Mowlem Primary School in Tower Hamlets, east London, held a lively "picket" of the Home Office last Friday.
They demanded that Christina Ogunjinmi and her family are allowed to stay in Britain permanently. Parents and supporters, Tower Hamlets UNISON, delegations of local teachers and an NUT national executive member also demonstrated.
Since stopping Christina's deportation last November the campaign now has backing from UNISON and NUT branches across London.
Messages of support and donations: Ogunjinmi Family Campaign, c/o UNISON, York Hall, Old Ford Road, London E2. Fax: 0181 983 3163.
HEMLATA PATEL, an Asian woman threatened with deportation, has won her right to stay in this country.
Hemlata--a member of the USDAW shop workers' union--was threatened with deportation after she left her violent husband in 1987.
MARK SYMONDS, the first person to face the courts under the CJA in Leicestershire, had his case adjourned at Loughborough Magistrates Court on Monday.
He is charged with aggravated trespass.
A picket at the court is planned for his full trial in April.
gLA
TWO EARTH-First activists were imprisoned last week after refusing to accept bail conditions which would have barred them from taking part in any further protest against the building of the M77 motorway in Glasgow.
The mounting protest against the road, which cuts through the Pollok Housing Estate, resulted last week in the resignation of Alan Stewart, Tory MP for Eastwood, from the Scottish Office team.
PROBATION workers, members of NAPO, in Nottingham refused to deal with a member of the Nazi Combat 18 organisation last week.
The Nazi was convicted over an attack on the city's Mushroom Bookshop last year. Workers reacted angrily and some threatened to walk out. Management were forced to allow the afternoon off to anyone who wanted it and had to escort the Nazi on and off the premises.
houn
ABOUT 500 people marched through Hounslow in west London last Saturday to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and to say "Never Again" to the Nazi BNP which is trying to organise in the area.
The march was called by Hounslow Trades council. Banners included ones from the London region MSF, Airport Workers against the Nazis, Houslow NUT, Hounslow UNISON and the Sacred Hearts School.
harw
ANL MEMBERS had a stall and petition in the centre of Great Harwood, near Blackburn, last Saturday.
We were petitioning against the vicious racist killing of 49 year old Mushtaq Husain on 28 January.
The manager of the local supermarket let us set up in the foyer because of the rain. We got a fantastic response from shoppers, collecting over 200 signatures condemning the killing.
anl
ANTI NAZI League campaigners have been out in the Weavers Ward in Tower Hamlets, east London, making sure that the Nazi BNP continues its downward trend in by-elections.
Weavers Ward goes to the polls in a council byelection on Thursday 23 February. Local ANL members have been getting a good response to their Don't Vote Nazi campaign.
WORKERS AT Peugeot Talbot cars in Coventry have voted against strike action over pay--by a slender 66 votes.
Members of the biggest union, the TGWU, voted to strike by 887 votes to 846. But AEEU members voted against action by 379 to 480, as did the handful of MSF members involved in the ballot.
The news was met with a frustrated response by Peugeot workers, who voted the deal out before Christmas.
One TGWU member says, "If the senior stewards had put their hearts into this ballot there would have been a yes vote. They should have been putting over our case like the company was all the way through. We should have had more mass meetings."
And one AEEU member says, "It's the officials' fault for sitting on this for so long. If we'd balloted before Christmas when there was a walkout demanding a mass meeting, there would have been a strike vote.
"But there was no campaign to win the vote. There was no leadership. All the anger was coming from the bottom."
The deal is worth 3.5 percent in the first year and 4 percent or inflation in the second, but workers are losing money with the abolition of shift payments.
ALMOST 1,000 Cardiff postal workers walked out on Monday night after management broke an agreement over staff contracts.
The workers' CWU union wanted a number of temporary jobs made permanent--as had been settled previously. But Royal Mail bosses wanted to introduce more casual workers.
The strike was solid and ended after 24 hours--although a third of the ols designed to keep immigrants out of Western Europe. These controls are becoming tighter all the time.
Immigration will not be discussed at the 1996 EU Intergovernmental Conference because the secret "Schengen Agreement" already ensures EU borders are "watertight".
The 16 million non-EU citizens lawfully resident in Europe have no right to settle where they wish. They are merely allowed three month holiday visas, with no right to claim benefits.
Countries which border Eastern Europe and North Africa have special measures such as detention centres and mass expulsions to deter immigration.
It is simply not true, as Winston Churchill claims, that immigrants are "pouring into Britain".
In 1993 some 56,000 people were allowed to settle in this country. Over the same period 134,000 left to live abroad.
In 1993 the population of England DROPPED by 9,000.
Who would choose to settle in Britain? Living standards here rank eleventh out of the 15 European Union countries.
Between 1988 and 1992 more Australians, New Zealanders and white South Africans came to Britain than the total from the rest of Africa, the Indian subcontinent and the Caribbean put together.
People from Eastern and Central Europe make up around one tenth of one percent of the British population.
Most people coming into Britain are EU citizens or from the United States. The Tory immigration scare is built on lies. But whenever the Tories whip up racism, the Nazi BNP is waiting in the wings to take racist violence onto the streets.
The use of immigration by one faction of the Tory party against another also shows the danger of Labour's strategy of sitting back and waiting for the government to destroy itself.
We have to fight--black and white together--to get all the Tories out now.
THE RICH are getting richer on the backs of the poor. This is the conclusion of a damning new report just published by the independent Rowntree Foundation.
The report paints a picture of a class ridden society that has seen inequality rocket under Tory rule to levels not experienced since before World War Two.
"In many areas of the UK the living standards and life opportunities of the poorest are simply unacceptably low in a society as rich as ours", says the report.
It found:
Inequality in Britain has risen faster than in any other industrialised country except New Zealand. The richest 10 percent own half of all wealth.
There is no evidence that increased wealth at the top of society has "trickled down" to benefit ordinary people.
Since 1977 the proportion of the population with less than half the average income has trebled.
Between 1979 and 1992 the poorest 20 to 30 percent in the UK failed to benefit at all from economic growth.
After 1978 hourly wages for the lowest paid men hardly changed in real terms and by 1992 low wages had fallen to pre-1975 levels.
The Tories have shifted the burden of taxation from higher and onto lower and middle income groups.
The differences between "deprived and affluent" neighbourhoods grew over the 1980s.
Institutionalised racism has seen black people pushed further into poverty. The report then goes on to warn of the social and political consequences of the class divide in Tory Britain.
The committee that drew up the report contained TUC leader John Monks and representatives of big business like Howard Davies, head of the bosses' club the CBI, deputy chair of British Telecom Michael arge of immigration when Jamaican Joy Gardner was arrested, and bound and gagged by immigration officers as her five year old son looked on. She collapsed and died.