[Oxford nursery campaigners: their fight posed national embarassment…]

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Oxford nursery campaigners: their fight posed national embarassment for Tories service will now be made per- sector-teachers jobs, capitation, the Under Fives and their manent. school meals or transport. parents and to use this to The Campaign intends to further the fight for an expansee Oxfordshire's £400,000-plus launch a trade union enquiry sion of nurseries throughout the cuts being made in any other into the needs and provision for county.

eicester day of action In a double-edged statement in the House of Commons last week Education Secretary Mark Carlisle offered some good news and some bad news to those fighting to defend and extend nursery education.

The bad news was that a new - clause removing the statutory duty of local authorities to provide nursery education is to be pushed through with full government support.

According to Carlisle this simply "clarifies" the existing 1944 Education Act: in reality it strips away an embarassing legal barrier to education authorities who wish to abolish nursery education.

But, clearly under pressure from nursery campaigners, Carlisle went on to announce a new "safeguard" against nursery closures to be written into the new Bill.

Carliste This would provide for authorities to be required to give advance publicity • and notice of planned closures, to allow objections and appeals.

Immediately after the announcement, the ruling Tory group in Oxfordshire County Council has, apparently under pressure from central government, withdrawn its threat to close down all Oxfordshire's nurseries, and leading reactionary Hugh Farrant has said he will resign from the council next year.

The tenacious struggle waged against the closure of all 1,500 places in Oxfordshire has made the Tory council a national byword for nursery closures-a label which the government as a whole is apparently keen to escape.

Assurances

Parents and trade unionists in the Save Our Nurseries Campaign which has stood at the forefront of this fight, are cautiously welcoming the announcement.

But they are asking for assurances that both nursery schools and nursery classes are actually saved, and that all jobs in the The campaign for a mass strike throughout the public sector in Leicester on February 27 has continued to make progress against the plans of the local trade union officials.

A series of joint union meetings involving NUT, NALGO and NUPE, far from strengthening the stranglehold of the bureaucracy, left them under seige on the platform as members demanded further action.

School ancillary staffs attacked NALGO in particular for deliberately separating their members in education from the rest of the union membership.

However, the decision of TGWU and GMWU, to support the strike opens up the prospect of generalised school closures, and already - rank and file members are talking of picketing schools where staff refuse to strike:

The campaign also refuses to Parents, too, are organising throughout the city in support of the fight against the cuts.

Many junior schools have set up action campaigns, and there is a growing demand that a demonstration be organised on the 27th to provide a focus for the action.

United offensive

With the prospect of students at the local Polytechnic joining the strike, and aiso school students organised in NUSS, the crucial need now is for co-ordination of the different groups and campaigns against the cuts into a single united offensive, both against the Tories and the cuts, and against those local offocials who want to head off the struggles into lame, isolated protests while they, simply negotiate redundancy pay.

Mass action must be built around the Trades. Council's nine point programme and co### NFED day of ordinated through the newly bureaucrats call a demonstration through the town on the 27th.

That must be followed by a mass picket of county councillors at County Hall and, to prevent any dissipation of the mobilised immediate announcement of the dates for the next strikes.

It the same fime, member of NUPE and NAÍGO mus emand that their local official ome out clearly against al redundancies and stop negotiating the Tory County Council.

Necessary fight

Shop stewards in particular must begin to organise the membership for the necessary fight to remove the current treacherous right wing leadership, directing the understandable anger of rank and file union members towards the union Crucial to this is the fight for an: official instruction that NALGO and NUPE members will not cross picket lines formed by other unions in the Joint Public Sector Action Group, namely NUT, TGWU and GMWU.

Only on the basis of such inter-union soldarty, and the tight to link the struggle against the cuts to all other sections in struggle can we prepare the way for the defeat of the Tory (Socialist Press supplemen available 15p (incl. p&p from WSL Box 5277, London • WC1V 6XX axes

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