Nursery care: vital for

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Fight for a massive expansion of education and day c * Fight to base the expansion of services on nursery centres.

Fight to provide pre-school facilities with flexible hours WHY WASTE MONEY. YES WESHOULD'NT Fight for local councils to draw up a development plan * Fight to change the law on childminding and registration.

Fight for one Government department to have responsibil In 1949 there were 900 day nurseries providing places for 43,000 children under five years old.

In 1975 there were only 540 nurseries, offering 26,000 places, despite the fact that the same period has seen a dramatic increase in the numbers of women who work.

Such figures give a hint at the chronic decline and acute crisis in the provision of state care for the under-fives.

They are included in a 127-page TUC working report The Under-Fives, published in 1978.

The report is of considerable importance in highlighting don't let them get away with it!

the plight of both the under-fives, and of the millions of women who in the traditions of the bourgeojs family are supposedly responsible for their upbringing.

This two-part review of the report will examine some of the facts and figures presented in it, and go on to look at some of its 64 recommendations in the light of the practical outside South Oxford Nursery School record of the TUC and Labour leaders in the fight for women's rights and for the extension of the social services.

off Speedwell St. Tuesday March 2st Fight for a national plan for under-fives services.

Fight for under-fives facilities to be available on demand, free of charge.

" Fight to abolish the NNEB and create an integrated training scheme for all under-fives workers.

to meet the needs of working parents.

for all under-fives services.

for under-fives services.

The onslaught on nursery education brought about by the Labour government's savage public spending cuts has led to a proliferation of privately-run play groups.

The TUC Report shows that from mere 500 such playgroups in 1965 the figure had mushroomed to over 10,000 in 1976, not including those organised by charities such as the Save the Children Fund and the NSPCC.

Parents pay an average of 35p per session for these playgroups, which attract minimal. support from social services and local authorities (66% received grants of less than £50).

The result is that "voluntary" help is expected of parents-thus creating hostility towards working mothers-in order to compensate for lack of cash.

State-run day nurseries on the other hand provide a restricted, means-tested service for priority cases only, offering no educational stimulation.

"A service for the poor becomes a poor service"

Inflexible And the state-run nursery classes offer only short, inflexible hours of education, making no allowances for working mothers, and offering no facilities for under-3s.

The Report examines the drawbacks of workplace nurseries in a section written very much from the standpoint of union bureaucrats who refuse to challenge the management's "right to manage"

Workplace nurseries, says the working party, enable the employer to offer lower rates of pay to women workers, and to threaten to withdraw facilities at times of industrial action.

The trade union movement has 'no control of standards' in Union of such nurseries, since the premies are owned and staff paid by the employer.

Workplace nurseries can be closed when women are made redundant from the workforce, or as part of cost-cutting measures in the public sector, the TUC working party bleats.

Every one of these arguments relates to the calibre of trade union leadership in the workplace.

If workplace nurseries were fought for and defended by convenors and union officials as an essential aspect of working conditions they would be no more easily taken away than tea breaks, sick leave or company overalls.

By-product And the closure of nursery facilities following mass lay-offs of women workers would be no more than an additiona by-product of the refusal of union leaders to defend jobs against speed-up and redundancy.

The Report states that there are currently 70-90 company nurseries, mainly in engineering and textiles, each providing places for 20-40 childrenthough two have closed since the Report was printed!

By far the biggest area of existing provision for the under5s is the army of registered and unofficial childminders.

In 1975 there were nearly 30,000 registered childminders, with a further 500,000 children estimated to be in the care of unregistered minders.

Cheapness

The cheapness of this system for employers and the statechildminders are paid by the individual parents-means that the government has encouraged it.

The TUC Report states:

"The inadequacies of childminding are glaring and deplorable, and therefore it is highly irresponsible to base child care programmes on an expansion of this facility."

Recommendations

Low rates of pay mean that additional children must be taken on if the childminder is to make a living wage without charging prohibitive rates.

In the light of this whole situation, the Report makes a long series of "major" and other recommendations, though it is stressed that the document is only a "consultative" document.

The introduction to the Report states that:

"They (the TUC) will give consideration to action on the Report's recommendations i ifter it has been considered and discussed throughout the m ovement...

Cutbacks

In the meantime NUPE, in a series of advertisements in Tribune and publicity posters, has already claimed to be campaigning for what it terms a "Charter for the Under Fives" summarising the main recommendations.

But what is the reality? In a period where the acute crisis of British capitalism has produced wholesale cutbacks in the public there of the gentle argument and logic of this Report having the slightest impact on government policy?

None whatever. The kind of truly socialised child care towards which the Report's recommendations aspire cannot Part Two HOTO: Laurence Sparham Fisher be provided under capitalism, which is both unable and unwilling to expand the productive forces to the point where the individual family unit is rendered obsolete.

The actual cost of the TUC's 'major' and other recommendations would be vast-though the benefits to women would also be dramatic.

So how can TUC leaders, who are even now calmly permitting the closure of existschools and nurseries, wage any serious fight for the progressive changes outlined in this Report?

The answer is, of course, that they cannot. And they are so embarassed by this contradiction that the Report itselffar from being a campaigning document-has been effectively buried by the trade union leadership, except in instances where left' bureaucrats such as Alan Fisher wish spuriously to parade themselves as champions of women's rights.

It is therefore essential that trade unionists rescue this Report from bureaucratic oblivion and launch a major fight for action both to defend the existing service and to implement its proposals.

Obstacles

In doing so they will encounter the type of obstacles put in the way of the Oxford City Nursery Campaign in its struggle last year to prevent the closure s of South Oxford Nursery, where 30 full time nursery places and the jobs of nursery teacher, assistants and dinner helper were at stake.

LET'S CLOSE SOUTH IT'S ONLY ON THE UNDER FIVES?

LOCATION CUTS (10 24)

EDUCATION COMMITTE Poster produced by the Oxford during their occupation of the . last year The Campaign centred on an occupation of the nursery by parents. and supporters. .It provoked a blaze of publicity in which union officials fell over themselves in efforts to pose as militants.

One exception was the local NUT official who attacked the fight from the outset.

NUPE officials, under the leadership of Stalinist Divisional Organiser George Anderson, were more cautious about their They reached the point of almost promising supporting action until a NUPE branch meeting actually called for immediate discussion on such a strike, and urged a district executive meeting to discuss it.

Guided by Anderson, the district committee decided that the form of action against euts should be-a branch circular!

This token protest strengthened still further the resolve of the Tory council to carry through its programme of cuts.

But such betrayals have not stopped NUPE, NUT and other bureaucrats from professing their support for nursery education.

In fighting for every union branch to immediately order copies of the TUC Report and organise discussion on it; workers should also fight for branches to invite speakers from the Oxford Nursery Campaign (which can be contacted at 7, East St., Osney, Oxford).

Union branches should not stop at merely endorsing the general recommendations of the NUPE 'Under Fives Charter' but should proceed to organise public meetings or count HAVE BABYMINDING City Nursery Campaign iouth Oxford Nursery estates and other working class areas to discuss the local requirements for nursery care, the present shortfall in facilities, and the fight against planned cutbacks.

Union officials-particularly NUPE, NUT and NALGO leaders-and Labour MPs and councillors should also be put on the spot at such meetings with demands that they take a clear stand against the cuts, and outline a programme of action to achieve the "Under Fives' Action An indispensible starting point for this is action to prevent further deterioration in existing services.

This means action to:

*Oppose all cuts and closures.

*Open all Mau nursery schools.

*Defend threatened services by occupation coupled to supporting strike action.

*Open the books of local authorities to show profiteering of private firms-which must be nationalised.

*No use by private sector of public funds, premises or equipment.

*Set up local trade union enquiries into facilities for children-with parents and workers to assess demand, and defend and fight for improvement of services.

*Effective organisation of unions involved in under. 5s provision, in particular NUPE.

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MISE Trotsky-flexible on organisational questions, rigid on programmatic principles ations that the complete inability of the International Marxist Group to offer a serious orientation to those of its members working in the trade union movement or to build a genuine workits ranks.

But even some of the more serious elements within the IMG still see the problem as simply one which could be resolved by the IMG leaders shifting ground and adopting a proletarian orientation.

Even if such a shift were to occur, however, it would simply transfer the superficial approach, adventurism and opportunism of the IMG to a new-and less congenial-territory.

methods It would do nothing to tackle the fundamental political weaknesses of the IMG leadership, which have developed historically, and which can only be resolved in the process of a thoroughgoing break with the methods and attitudes of the past.

The IMG is the British representative of the United Secretariat of the Fourth international' This group traces its origins to the tendency led by Michel Pablo which split the Fourth International in 1953.

The leaders of this tendency have consistently applied a method alien to the Trotskyist programme upon which the Fourth International was founded in 1938.

This method boils down to a perpetual search for 'unity' behind forces other than the working class led by a revolutionary Trotskyist leadership.

Over the years many new 'vanguards' behind which unity should be sought have been discovered and touted by the Pabloites-the Yugoslav, Chinese or even Kremlin Stalinists, the Castroites, black nationalists and radical students to name but a few.

'Progressive' Today even a reactionary nationalist development. of Stalinism known as 'Eurocommunism' has been hailed as representing 'progressive' trends within the working class.

A basic problem with this never-ending adaptation is that a crisis arises each time the new-found allies and 'strategies' fail to deliver the goods.

Thus the IMG and its co-thinkers have never fully recovered from the results of the USFI's adventurist guerrilla warfare line which led to a debacle in which many of the USFI's Latin American sections were annihilated.

On another level, it presents difficulties for those who have uncritically enthused over the "revolutionary' role of the Cuban military in Africa when this same force turns its guns upon the workers and peasants fighting for their freedom in 'Socialist Unity' In a different form this same process is working through in Britain, where the IMG has been pursuing 'socialist unity' through a paper especially established for the purpose-Socialist Challenge.

The main line of this orientation has been to take a sundry collection of centrist groupings -hostile to Trotskyism-present then seek unito union them. • and The immediate objects of the IMG's affections have been the semi-anarchist 'Big Flame' outfit and a discussion circle of cast-offs from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) called the "International Socialist Alliance'.

State of coma

The former grouping cannot even stomach association with the IMG's verbal 'Leninism' while the latter has long been in a state ot coma bordering upon death.

Further, the biggest organisation on the IMG's list of 'revolutionary currents'-the SWPseems as far from reach as ever.

This is a particularly sorry tale of unrequited love since Tariq Ali, John Ross and other IMG leaders have crawled on their bellies through mud to win the favours of Mr. Tony Cliff and his "rank and file" pals at the Socialist Worker offices.

'Hats Off to the SWP' cried one socialist Challenge editorial. IMG members were even obliged to participate with the SWP and act as their political attorneys in leading the infamous 'Anti-Nazi Carnival', when thousands of youth were diverted to a pop jamboree in South London while the fascist National Front was allowed to march virtually unhindered into the East End.

Hard world

It is a hard world in which such spineless sycophancy wins no reward.

With such a track record it has become increasingly hard for the IMG leaders to concoct 'theoretical' rationales for their policy.

John Ross has nevertheless persisted to churn out a steady stream of apologia-the most recent being a piece in Socialist Challenge entitled "Can only Trotskyists be revolutionaries?"

The ANL pop concert Using clipped and warped «Fan- 11 extracts from Trotsky and James P. Cannon, Ross sets out to 'prove' that his undignified antics and flabby opportunism have something in common with the revolutionary traditions established by Lenin and Trotsky.

Ross asks whether nonTrotskyist, or even non-Leninist political forces could genuinely be considered revolutionary? • . . and (naturally!) answers yes.

Distinction

Even this way of posing the question illustrates the degree to which Ross has taken flight from Trotskyism, since • Ross clearly makes a distinction between Leninism and Trotskyism, whereas in fact the continuity of Leninism runs exclusively through Trotskyism.

But such 'blunders' are small when compared to the downright dishonesty. employed. Skipping from one of Trotsky's works to another Ross attempts to use the method of isolated quotations to make Trotsky appear a thinker after his own image.

Thus we are presented with Trotsky declaring his readiness to:

"work hand in hand with other truly revolutionary factions".

But the quotation is left incomplete and thus clouds over the essential thrust of Trotsky's perspective.

Trotsky actually goes on to say:

"But they (the Trotskyists) categorically refuse to adapt their policy to the psychology of opportunist cliques and to renounce their own banner"

In fact the article from which this extract is taken is entitled 'Labels and Numbers' and is concerned with the exposure of French centrist leader Marceau Pivert who made a profession out of blurring over the sharp and decisive question of the revolutionary party and the revolutionary programme.

It was aimed against precisely the method espoused by Ross and his collaborators like Ernest Mandel, (who has declared his readiness to drop the label' of the Fourth International at some stage in the future for the sake of 'unity'.)

Despite numerous erudite references in a few hundred words to virtually every political tendency under the sun Ross shrewdly avoids mention of the actual programme of the SWP, 'Big Flame' and the rest.

He does admit in passing. however, that in the 1930s there were organisations which Trotsky castigated and exposed for their inveterate centrismorganisations which:

"supported collaboration with bourgeois parties in Popular Fronts... capitulated before imperialist wars, and displayed the real characteristics of cenirists-vacillating in the material clashes of class forces between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie."

It would be undiplomatic for Ross to mention in this context the SWP's capitulations-and those of its forerunners.

Opposes struggle

Cliff's group, of course, capitulated in the 1950s before the attacks of imperialism on the Korean masses when it refused to support either side in the Korean War.

• It has taken its course to a conclusion in subsequent years and today is ready las is the IMG) to flirt with the Stalinists, Liberal lords and bishops in the modern mini-Popular Front-the Anti Nazi League.

Today the SWP opposes outright the struggle of the Trotskyists for the demands and method of the Transitional Programme in the trade union movement. But to Ross such questions of programme are mere detail . . . a sectarian quibble.

The WL is of course ready to work hand in hand with truly revolutionary factions and seek fusion with them... but not to work with centrists on the basis of rejection of the programme upon which the Fourth International was established.

The entire practice of Trotsky in relation to the Bordigists and other tendencies cited by Ross was to test them out through a struggle on programme, methods and tacticsnever to merely declaim in favour of unity at all costs.

it was ine experience or inis 1938 that International-the Trotskyist movement-was the only revolutionary current:

"The Fourth International ... has no need of being "proclaimed'. It exists and it fights. Is it weak? Yes its ranks are not numerous because it is still young. They are as yet chiefly cadres. But these cadres are pledges for the future. Outside those cadres there does not exist a single revolutionary current on this planet really meriting the name."

(Transitional Programme) Ross attempts to explain Mandel away this explicit statement that the Fourth International alone represents the continuity of revolutionary. theory and practice by claiming that it was no more than a correct "statement of fact" at the time.

But the statement does not appear in some passing articleit is written into the Transitional Programme, which sets out to lay down general lines of approach to what is described as "a pre-revolutionary period of agitation, propaganda and organisation."

To assert that Trotsky's concluding remarks on revolutionary continuity were valid only in 1938 raises the question of the validity of the remainder of the Programme some forty years later.

Neither • distortion of Trotsky's struggle for Marxism, nor quotes from Cannon in 1963-a time when he was hellbent upon stressing 'unity' for the sake of unprincipled regroupment with the Pabloites -will however solve the problems of the IMG:

A result of this has been that a substantial section of IMG members now adhere to a tendency associated with John Strawson-at. one time a member of the WSL before his expulsion for undisciplined actions detrimental to the functioning of our movement.

Many IMG members are quite publicly critical of their leaders and of the orientation of their movement, • and naturally seek out any current within the IMG which claims to stand for a return to Trotskyism.

Stands on But Strawson is of course incapable of going to the roots of the crisis because he rejected. the struggle to understand the nature of Pabloism while he was a member of the WSL.

As a consequence, his grouping stands on the fence, making some formally correct criticisms of some of the more openly liquidationist policies of Ross and Co. without being able to draw the requisite political conclusions.

As such • it stands as an obstacle to political clarification of serious IMG members.

IMG members who seriously wish to build a genuinely Trotskyist movement in Britain and internationally should demand a full discussion of the perspectives and policies for the reconstruction of the Fourth International put forward by the WSL:

The solution cannot lie in bemoaning the IMG's lack of proletarian orientation aione, nor in waiting for a miracle at the next USFI World. "Congress, nor in continual apologies for the leadership, but only through a sharp political struggle, in which Pabloite opportunism is rejected in favour of the principles and method of the Transitional Programme.

James P. Cannor.

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NDUSTRIAL halgo nalgo NEWS

----- pull-quotes -----

* Fight for an end to low pay in the nursery service. * Fight to restore the cuts in nursery building.

sector, and in particular in the nursery sector, what chance is

ing children's hospitals, children's homes, hostels,

OXFORD NURSERY. 1061 TO THE CITY

ON THE RATES ANYWAY! St. Tue

By Mark Hyde There are growing indic-

ing class cadre is producing a crisis of perspective within