Trades Council Meeting Fights for Clear Line on Nurseries

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Ann-Marie Sweeney and Ted Eames campaigning during the to hammer out real policies for fighting the cuts as a basis for extending nursery provision.

The conference was the outcome of the latest initiative by the Oxford City Nursery Campaign.

It had been launched as the result of a resolution to Trades Council from the Cowley Assembly TGWU 5/293 branch.

Predictably the right wing leaderships of both the Trades Council and the Oxford Labour Party chose to ignore the conference.

The conference was opened by the chairman Ted Eames (NUT) who set the fight for nurseries in the context of past and future cuts in public spending.

The TUC speaker, full-time research worker Robert Barnes, gave a basic introduction to the TUC's Charter for the Under Fives.

52 nurseries Whilst Barnes referred to the effect of the cuts (including the threatened closure . of 52 nurseries in Clwyd) he gave absolutely no indication whatsoever of any TUC plans to fight closures and job losses.

Later, when it was forcefully pointed out that the TUCS record on opposing past cuts by both Tory and Labour governments was one of treachery and collaboration, Barnes could only repeat the bureaucrats' stock answer-that it is the union nursery occupation membership to blame and that all the officials can do is "educate' them!

Ann-Marie Sweeney, speaking for the Nursery Campaign, showed clearly how fighting for nurseries is a fundamental part of the struggle against women's oppression.

She brought out the history of the occupation of the South Oxford Nursery last year, stressing the importance of a consis. tent orientation to the organisations of the working class.

She then drew out the lessons of the campaign's fight to win supporting strike action, the only tactic that, combined with occupation, reverse the cuts.

She showed how the leadership of the NUT, NUPE and NALGO had sweated to undermine the militancy of those sections of members willing to make a stand.

After workshop discussions on the needs of children, campaigning in the unions, workplace nurseries, fighting the cuts and unionisation of childcare workers, the conference heard Connie Norman (NUT and the National Campaign for Nursery Education) give a detailed account of the importance of nurseries to the development of children socially educationally.

She was followed by Vice-President of Trades Council, Gerry Casey (UPW). Casey, like Ann-Marie Sweeney, focussed on the crisis of capitalism that produced the cuts and he stressed the importance of an all out fight to build a revolutionary leadership in the working class to oust the present bureaucratic misleaders.

In moving the resolution from the Organising Committee he made special reference to the need to fight for independent elected committees to investigate local authority spending on education, to open the books of capitalism in order to expose the profiteering carried on at the expense of the public sector.

After a period of strong political discussion the following resolution was passed 'nem con':

"This Oxford Trades Council conference declared support for the following policies to defend and extend nursery education which delegates are urged to take back into their branches and other organisations:

a) that a statutory duty be placed on local authorities to provide full free nursery facilities available on demand. Central government must undertake the financing of all such projects.

b) we oppose the raising of the school entry age to six and demand the reinstatement of rising fives into first schools.

c) that all state pre-school facilities should have flexible and extended hours to meet the able.

d) nursery centres should be set up to combine education, care, health and welfare facilities for the under fives.

e) all lost nursery places should be restored and where cuts are threatened we declare full support for trade union and community action to defend the nursery places, if necessary by occupation and supporting strike action.

f) that committees of trade unionists and parents be given full access to the accounts of all aspects of education and social services spending by both central government and local authorities.

g) that local trade union branches, Labour Party wards and community groups be urged to begin discussions on the TUC Charter (the Oxford City Nursery Campaign can provide speakers).

h) that Trades Council and NUPE locally be urged to under. take a campaign to unionise childminders, nursery nurses and student nursery workers."

In addition to this resolution the conference agreed to produce a full report to circulate with the motion, to support the calling of a similar conference in Reading and to establish links with organisations in Ciwyd who will be affected by the complete shutdown of all nursery provision in that area, Socialist Press urges all its readers to fight for the above policies in other areas.

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