Newham cuts fight off to a shaky start

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Saturday 15 December saw the first conference of Newham Against Cuts.

The campaign is a joint initiative of the Newham North East Constituency Labour Party and the West Ham Trades The conference was attended by about 50 delegates representing Labour Party branches, the local NUT. and NALGO branches, Newham _ Women's Group and North East London Polytechnic Students Union.

The Council Labour Group was not represented.

From the introductory report the central confict came out sharply.

No rate increases:

Carolyn Sikorski, .. for Newham NALGO, after outlining recent cuts made by the Labour Council, rejected a policy of rate increases to maintain services.

She correctly argued that the effects of a rate rise is simply to pass on the impact of the cuts to the workers of the area. Preserving local services in this way woule reduce the spending power of the ratepaying households.

The opposite position was taken by Tribunite Graham Lane, for the NUT.

While agreeing to a 'no cuts position, he wanted rates to rise in order to increase the education budget.

He was. in favour of something he called a high social wage. Although nobody would disagree with more money being spent on education, Lane's formulation amounts to no more than a demand on the working class to spend more.

Headed off

For West Ham Trades Council, Ray Offley tried to head off the issue.

In his view the campaign should be directed against the Tories, and not focus on the decisions made in the Council, which were completely circumscribed by central government Unfortunately the issue would not go away. Councillor John Plant, representing Kensington Ward Labour Party, argued that it was possible to build a campaign which would force the Council into conflict with government instructions to make cuts.

Although everyone recog nised that the right wing leadership of the Labour Group itself had no interest in fighting the cuts, as their recent statements about opposition within the law' made clear, many of the councillors twere honest socialists who hated the idea of reducing local living standards.

The responsibility of Newham Against Cuts was to show them that the local workers were determined to oppose the cuts by all means available to them and would not pull back from direct confrontation with the Tory government.

If this degree of confidence was to be developed there had to be a clearly defined programme of action.

The campaign had to begin from a recognition of the fact that constitutional protest against the Tory cuts was useless and that the Tories were driven by the economic crisis which they could not resist.

An equal level of determination was needed for effective resistance. The campaign should decide to oppose all cuts and rate increases.

If this led to government action such as the imposition of a Commissioner, this should be opposed by occupations and by rent and rates strikes to make the Commissiorer's work impossible.

Opposing

Despite Lane's claim; several NUT delegates spoke to oppose the rates increase policy.

There were also, several proposals for spreading the campaign into nearby areas and to achieve some more penetraton into the industrial unions in the area.

Possibly the most extraordinary contribution came from local MP Nigel Spearing, who called for local people to act as 'good neighbours' to reduce the impact of the cuts while we wait up to women to work harder to substitute for reduced services.

At the end of the meeting, much to the relief of the Tribunites, they were able to avoid voting on any policy.

This was argued as being in the interests of maintaining a unified campaign. There is to be a further conference open to all shop stewards in Newham at which policy resolutions will be considered and voted on.

The effect of this further delay is that the Tribunites have removed the campaign as a source of pressure on the Council in the period during which it begins to draw up its budget for 1980-81.

There will be efforts to call a further public meeting to keep this pressure up, backed with resolutions passed through Labour Party and trade union branches.

BLOODY SUNDAY March to commemorate murder of unarmed Irish civilians by British army.

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