100 back Oxford nursery fight

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hv Oxfordshire meeting and put forward its conscious worked Plan: by Oxfordshire County Council to end nursery education, in the county by closing every single nursery class or school has sparked off a mass movement of opposition.

A meeting called by the Oxford City Nursery Campaign within five days of the cuts being announced drew 120 angry parents-well over 90 of them women.

Two days later one of the council's sub committees which usually deliberates in glorious isolation, found more than 100 women cramming the public seating space-most of them with children in tow. The committee nervously decided to leave all decisions to the Education Committee.

Immediate call

The fact that the women have been so quickly moved into action comes both from the dramatic scale of the proposed cuts and from the fact that the Oxford City Nursery Campaign was ready to call an immediate meeting and It was this campaign which led the occupation of South Oxford Nursery last year. It kept the nursery open for six weeks and was eventualiy evicted by force after being left isolated by the trade union leaders in the town.

Importance

The importance of that occupation was that it showed a clear method of combatting the closures.

But as Ann Marie Sweeney from the campaign told the meețing it also showed that parents could not expect to roll back the closures without an effective turn into the trade unions for support-particularly from the public sector.

The meeting has called a delegate body to be formed with representatives from all nurseries in the county-both parents and staff-and called for trade union affiliation to the campaign.

But the fact that the campaign arises with a history of struggle already established in the town means that there is a conscious worked out opposition to these policies.

The Rev. Tony Williamson, deputy senior steward at the Cowley Body Plant, Labour councillor and one of the right wing's leading schemers, denounced the leadership of the nursery campaign from the floor (although he had done nothing to respond to the cuts decision) and said that the main object must be to convince councillors of the importance of nursery education.

The meeting however took a correct decision in passing a resolution that it would not trade off nurseries for some other cut, and in being opposed to all cuts.

Mass lobby

The next steps are a mass lobby of the education committee on October 4 and a mass demonstration called by Oxford and District Trades Union Council on October 13.

A fight is already being taken up in the NUT for a one day strike on October 4 to coin. cide with the lobby and that demand must also be taken up in all the public sector unions. able to cuts.

All out fight Di Parkin said that the action by the playgroup workers showed the way that cuts could be resisted.

She argued against a piecemeal fight. The need was to fight against the trade union and Labour ‹leaders' reluctance to organise an all out struggle.

Reg Race, left' Labour MP and himself a former NUPE bureaucrat had argued on the platform that there was a need to "educate"' the Labour front bench out of its pro-cuts policies.

Di Parkin pointed out that such "education" was not possible: it is necessary to fight to remove the right wing leadership.

The Labour 'lefts' on the platform had a very different approach.

Norman Atkinson and Wedgewood Benn spoke of Britain's 'greatness' and the industrial capacity existing to make it greater again.

Ted Knight however did mention the need for industrial action against the cuts, as did Reg Race.

But Race concentrated heavily on the recall of MPs and accountability within the party.

.. What Is really neaded, of course, la a revolutionary pro. jramme to mobilize mass action to bring down thie government and the clas it represents and lead, the working class to power.

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Page 6 Socialist Press, Wednesday 19 September 1979 —OL