Nursery campaign calls for action

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Ted Eames addresses an earlier nursery rally A unanimous call for the Oxford Trades Council to support policies of occupation and indefinite strike action in defence of all educational, social and health services came from a public meeting called by the Trades Council and the Oxford City Nursery Campaign last week.

The public meeting followed a lobby of the County Council and a march through the town.

Over a hundred angry parents and trade unionists chanted demands to reopen the South Oxford Nursery which was occupied for six weeks after a long fight by the Oxford City Nursery Campaign against its closure.

This fight is still going on and the lobby, march and public meeting were an important step in the fight to mobilise the Trades Council into real action against cuts as opposed to token left talk.

The meeting was chaired by Gerry Casey (UPW) who attacked the record of Trades Council on the question of the cuts.

Casey, a leading figure in the fight to defend the old Trades Council from bureaucratic attack by the TUC, and a former Trades Council President spelt out the role of the fake left bureaucrats and Stalinists who actively assist attacks on the working class at every level.

He praised the continuing fight by the Nursery Campaign and the occupation of South Oxford Nursery as a model for all such struggles.

Opposed meeting

Ted Eames spoke on behalf of the campaign, underlining Casey's point by bringing out the fact that Eric Miller of NUPE (one of the unions most directly affected by the cuts) had opposed the calling of the public meeting by the Trades This was simply the latest in the line of obstructive tactics used by him and by NUPE official, Stalinist George Anderson.

Eames also brought out the effect of the nationally significant occupation on the recent decision by Shirley Williams to save the doomed South Oxford Middle School.

A lobby of the local Area Health Authority took place the same morning and one of the delegates from that lobby against proposed health cuts, Sue Lister (ASTMS), came to the meeting to bring out the latest stage of the fight in the health service.

She pointed out that one notable absentee from both lobbies and the meeting was the Acting Secretary • of Trades Council, Pat Ward.

Ward is also chairman of the Health Service JTUC and chairman of the NUPE hospitals branch.

He had sent apologies to the AHA lobby, claiming that as Trades Council Secretary he had to go to the nursery meeting, but an extensive search failed to reveal the presence of this determined defender of the working class.

A surprise speaker from the floor was engineering worker Steve Zeltzer from California who emphasised the point about the international character of capitalism's attacks on the working class by detailing the public spending cuts now being viciously implemented US.

All speakers emphasised the role of the Lib-Lab coalition in carrying through anti-socialist policies.

The meeting passed a unanimous resolution calling on Trades Council to adopt policies of occupation linked to indefinite strike action.

The resolution also called on Trades Council to send delegates to the Nursery Campaign subcommittee which is working towards the launching of an Open the Books Committee of trade unionists and parents to expose the profiteering and mismanagement which results from state system serviced by private capital suppliers, banks and insurance companies.

WORKERS LENC committee policy.

It is this abject betrayal by the trade union leadership which explains Margolis' arrogant public face over the past two weeks.

Margolis' mouthpiece, Henderson, has explained the company's proposals for a settlement:

"The peace formula is simple. There should immediately be another ballot-to ask all „Garners' staff, and the strikers, whether or not. they want trade union recognition."

We say that the strike committee has to come out and reject such treacherous proposals as a ballot.

Such a ballot would take the running of the strike out of the strike committee hands.

It would mean accepting as good coin the votes of scabs.

The strike committee should continue its fight to mobilise the rank and file of the TGWU to win this strike.

From the Regional Committee meeting this week it must demand:

*No secret talks with the employer!

*No return to work without full reinstatement and union recognition!

*Branches, within their trade groups, to picket all of Garners Steak Houses on every night of the week.

*Full scale blacking Garners' suppliers!

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SOCIALIST