Nursery nurses must join fight foi chila-care facilities

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NUPE poster-what do they have to offer nurserv nurses?

A major problem facing the campaign for nurseries is the divisions and rivalries between theexisting forms of provision.

Nursery schools run by education authorities, day nurseries run by social service departments, private nurseries and workplace creches, playgroups and childminding are all financed and administered separately and differently.

The pay, conditions and training of the workers involved are also different, as are their trade unions.

One of the demands of the London Nursery Campaign, now taken up by NUPE in its Under-5's Charter is for an integrated system of training for all under-5's workers and in particular for the abolition of the Nursery Nurses Education Board.

Self appointed

This reactionary, sanctiappointed and responsible to no government department or Minister.

It runs on the money it collects • in from examination fees and it controls the syllabus from which nursery nurses, 'girls of good character but low intelligence' are trained in Further Education Colleges.

The London Nursery Campaign, and now NUPE, have severely criticised this syllabus which includes courses with such antiquated titles as 'A Study of Man and ment' Its moral overtone is expressed in such aims as to examine the rights and responsibilities of the individual in relation to the home as the basic unit of society.

There is great stress on 'normal' developments in children and on 'normal' patterns of tamily lite, although the majority of children in day nurseries are from single parent families and they come from a diversity of ethnic backgrounds.

The students study such 'problems' as 'old age, mental health, single parents and illegitimacy'.

Day nurseries provide the closest approximation to The Campaign Against the Criminal Trespass Law has issued a call to all affiliated bodies to send delegates to its next National Co-ordinating Committee on February 3 to discuss recent moves by the TUC to witchhunt the campaign.

CACTL's affiliation list includes, ACTI, AUEW (all sections), NUAAW, NUSMWCHDE, SOGAT, North West Region TUC, 150 union branches and shop stewards committees, 70 trades councils, 32 Labour Parties, the LPYS, the NUS, 63 student unions and 45 community, legal and housing organisations.

The Campaign has the full day care that working parents need for underThey take chi dren from birth, open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., provide breakfast and tea as well as lunch, make provision for afternoon sleep, include laundries and are in some boroughs a free facility.

During the war they were widespread, and an essential part of the capitalist war effort, allowing mothers of small children to work long hours producing profit for the war-mongers.

But immediately after the war, state grants were withdrawn and the vast majority of day nurseries were forced to close.

RISTORE ZI CUTS and SAVE JOBS BREAK with the SOCIAL CONTRACT NUBE recently been working for regional conferences in each area to publicise the need for occupations and the danger to the whole labour movement of recent moves against the right to picket.

Discourage

The TUC however has instructed its Regional Councils not to cooperate with CACTL as the culmination of concerted attempts to discourage unions from affiliating to the Campaign.

This 'instruction' has never been discussed by the TUC General Council nor by its relevant committee.

The arguments used vary from place to place but include such things as: that CACTL is an "unofficial" campaign and that the TUC is worried about the extent They were suddenly to become a merely residual service for the worst 'problems'.

A Department of Health circular issued in 1968 refers back to and reasserts а спешат oI 1y43, the year -final 11 the NNEB was established.

It says that day care should be restricted to 'children who, from a health point of view or because of deprived or inadequate backgrounds, have special needs that cannot otherwise be met"

It reaffirms: 'the view of medical and other authority that early and prolonged separation from the mother is detrimental to the child and that wherever possible the younger pre-school child should be at home with the mother, and that the needs of older pre-school children should be met by part-time attendance at nursery schools or classes".

The source of this 'authority' is not specified.

Clearly the view running throughout nursery training that nurseries are only a second best solution to home care, and that the children in nurseries are problem' children from 'inadequate' backgrounds reflects the state purpose in making the provision.

It permeates the way in which day nurseries are run and it explains much of the hostility to full day provision for under-5's and also the low status of nursery nurses themselves.

The London Nursery Campaign and NUPE are PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report of its support; that criminal trespass is a national issuenot a concern of the Regions; that there are a number of other issues on which Regional Conferences could be organised; and that CACTL's policies go further than those adopted by Such bureaucratic manoeuvring clearly amounts to a form of backdoor proscription and as such should be resisted bv butwho now campaigning jointly for the adoption of a new syllabus with less emphasis on the physical development of creative and linguistic develr children and opment and with a more broad-based and liberal approach to social questions of the family, parental roles and cultural influences.

They are calling for this to form the basis of an integrated training scheme for all under 5's workers under one government department.

The trouble is that the campaign is being waged exclusively through 'parliamentary' means.

NUPE is trying to get its MPs to raise the question in the House of Commons; the TUC is calling for a Royal Commission; NUPE has also held a conference of handpicked 'experts' Yet nursery nurses themselves, bored stiff by the existing course, kicking against the petty tyrannies of day nursery "matrons' afraid of failing their exams if they express independent views or 'cause trouble'. , are eager to fight.

600 turned out for a conference on the NNEB last February organised by the London Nursery Campaign.

Many left after the introductory speeches, and many more expressed their frustration at the lack of the whole labour movement.

Socialist Press has political differences with CACTL on many points but we urge our readers to oppose these reactionary steps by the TUC bureaucrats.

Regional conferences based on the labour movement would provide important platforms for raising demands for occupation counted with minnation supporting National Union of Public Employees action.

Nursery nurse participation in the nursery action groups around London is scant.

The nursery nurses themselves must be mobilised into action.

They should be directed to organise a campaign in their colleges for the adoption of the new syllabus using the tactic of occupation.

Local authority further education sub-committees, other education unions and education committees should be lobbied and also NUPE MP's to insist on action now.

Such a perspective of developing the independent organising and trade union abilities of nursery nurses and bringing them into the forefront of the campaign is the last thing wanted by such NUPE officials as Reg Race and Ron Bickerstaffe, who have so far 'lead' the campaign.

It could only be carried through in sharp conflict with the NUPE bureaucracy.

• But it would result in a rapid political education of nursery nurses and a transformation of day nurseries.

It should be linked with an active fight for the extension of nursery provision and an increase in nursery nurse studentships.

The last CACTL conference strike action against closures in industry and the public sector.

The latest outbursts against picketing by both the Tories and Callaghan also mean that this basic right must be defended from the attacks of both the employers and union leaders who seek to restrict strikers to token pickets.

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I ALIST ERESS. Mestesiss =+ Janaars, 1979 By a Socialist 1 Correspol

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