Strikes Key to Cuts Fight!

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NUPE.

The Executive of that branch met to consider a resolution from the Blackbird Leys section of NUPE schools staff that strike action be called to force the County Council to reopen the South Oxford nursery class-the class which was occupied by parents and children for 6 weeks before being evicted by bailiffs and police at the end of April.

The meeting agreed to ask stewards across the county to call meetings of their members to discuss the cuts and take decisions on strike action.

Secretary

These meetings are to be addressed by either branch secretary Eric Millar or AnneMarie Sweeney of the Nursery Campaign who is standing as Vice Chairman of the branch in the current elections.

This is a big step forward for the fight against the cuts in Oxfordshire, since previously many of these members were never informed even of their quarterly branch meetings.

WS L members of the Oxford City Nursery Campaign took their perspective of strike action by the public sector unions into the Fightback workshop on hospital closures held in Birmingham on Saturday.

This workshop was attended by some hospital workers, coming from several Birmingham hospitals, brought together by the BACHCCS cuts campaign, from Hull, Sheffield and South Wales, as well as the London hospital campaigns, and There was a reluctance by the meeting to clearly root the attacks on the health service in the crisis of the capitalist system and to pin responsibility clearly on the Lib-Lab government.

This resulted in many campaigns in a lack of class perspective and lack of policies such as strike action which will clear away the dominance of bourgeois forces such as hospital consultants and local dignatories.

The speakers from Cardiff Trades Council who said that whilst they had fought off 2 closures they were pessimistic about keeping the workers interested to fight the third, had an ideal opportunity to raise the political nature of the cuts and the betrayal of the Labour government with those workers -since the local MP is Callaghan himself!

Cathy Ambrose of the Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham described the correct orientation of their campaign towards Trades Council support and reported her confidence that the industrial unions can be counted on protest action.

The problem, she claimed, was the hospital workers themselves, who "would not strike" • But she admitted that since the BACHSS campaign was set up some 18 months ago, no resolution for strike action had been put through the branches.

As she correctly pointed out, since the 80,000 demonstration in November 1976, union officials, particularly in NUPE, have been let off the hook.

The BACHSS campaign has certainly played a key role in this in Birmingham and this position must be reversed.

Candy Unwin from the EGA campaign reported on last Tuesday's decisions by the 4 unions concerned.

The meeting agreed to support their calls for action on July 19th and their conference on July Ist.

The meeting also supported the stand taken by members of the Emergency Bed Service who have been suspended for referring patients to the EGA, and will raise it in organisations and particularly in branches of COHSE, the union to which the EGA workers belong.

A motion proposed by a Communist Party member from the, Birmingham Accident Hosp Hospital NUPE branch suggested that Fightback should THE CUTS JOBS