Leicester NUT vote to occupy

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too militant and too organised.

"They know that this is the big one. They know that they are leading the working class in the most important strike of the century. "Bill Sirs is trying to play it straight. But what chance has he got against crooks? We have to fight fire with fire. There is no place for moderation in this strike: it's a place for extremis it was the workers who closed Hadfields and it will be the workers who close Sheerness.

"These strike committees are like workers' councils where decisions are taken.

"If we put our name to a no confidence vote it would be a genuine reflection of the views and estimations of the workers.

"We haven't done that yet: and as long as the executive does what it is instructed to do, then I don't suppose we'll have to.

"But we must have help from other unions. It's okay, for Scargill to march up with his army. We're grateful for their support. But they should have pickets on their own gates!

"Scargill should get the miners to stop using steel in the mines. Leyland too; they're getting steel from Holland, it's still coming in.

"And, anyway,. Leyland should be on strike right now. What are they waiting for? Christmas?

«We'll win this strike: because we can't afford to lose it."

Everybody around Mick Skelton agrees with vigour.

As I was getting ready to go, a young picket said:

"It's funny, I didn't think it would be a Tory government that brought about the revolution."

The consequences of retreat for those trade unionists who tried to duck any fight on the cuts were spelt out last week.

Schools where they voted not to strike on February 27 have become top targets for immediate loss of ancillary and lab staff as County Hall officials move in to carry out the announced 1500 sackings.

Instead of across the board redundancies, the cuts announced are in specific schools with poor union records and large staffs.

In one case, Burleigh college, virtually all non-teaching staff are earmarked for the chop.

This clearly demonstrates the lunatic complacency of NUT's policy of relying on school by school ballots to decide local action.

But more particularly, with NALGO and NUPE leaders openly talking of negotiating the redundancies, it shows exactly what these reformist bureaucrats really have to offer their members.

What is needed now is a sharp political edge to the cuts fight in Leicester.

The aim must be to compel all public sector unions to stop negotiating and publicly declare their determination to fight all redundancies by strike action.

An important step towards this, and towards providing a focus for the future development of the struggle was made at mid-Leicester NUT where they voted unanimously to support any members who occupied their workplaces in opposition to closures.

With several teachers' centres due for shut-down at Easter, and redundancy notices scheduled for issue on March 13, this can provide a sharp counter balance to the retreats of NUPE and NALGO, and a lead to groups like nursery nurses and lab technicians who want to defend their jobs.

Supporting strikes

Other union branches must now join in to support occupation, and campaign for supporting strikes.

At the same time, the spontaneous growth of parents' action groups across the cityall determined to halt the cuts in their own area —opens immediately the prospect of a labour movement inquiry into council finance and spending.

By allying parents, teachers and students, such an inquiry would create the ideal grounds for a campaign to compel councils to overspend and cancel debt charges to the already bulging banks.

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-- DSBRESS *acaces - F==m=, There are things to be said no doubt about the press coverage of the Robinson witch-hunt-but to place too much emphasis on the role of the press in the Longbridge vote would be to obscure rather than illuminate the lessons involved.

• The truth is that propaganda campaigns can be devastating when they fill a vacuum but cannot succeed against workers who have a clear political grasp of the tasks and dangers that confront them.

The sacking of Robinson and the failure of the unions at Longbridge to defend him is not a tribute to the press but a condemnation of the leadership given to the workers-including the leadership of the CP and Robinson himself.

But there can be no class conscious worker. who does not mourn the result.

It would be inhuman to see Robinson shaking the hands of his supporters and leaving the meeting with as brave a face as he could manage without being moved.

Robinson is a victim of CP policy-but he is also a victim of the class war.

From our enemies we can expect no mercy: no suspension of hostilities. They danced on Robinson's grave with the fervour of primeval savages.

The pages of Fleet Street's vultures was enough to turn the strongest stomach.

"On Your Bike Robbo... Out You Go... Rout of the Rabble Rousers ..."; the parade of exultant • headlines was matched by the death cell reporting.

Cajoled

The reporters gathered round him as he left, recording his last words. The photographers cajoled him into a better position.

The funeral was on the state and it was going to be as public a display as they could afford.

But the organisers of this Roman holiday are impressionists. They cannot understand the shock waves of the class In defeat they see no salvation-in victory nothing but the winners' laurel. They have therefore drawn the wrong conclusions from the events of the week.

At Sheerness the press hailed another victory. The scabs in the factory had been smuggled into work half way through the night.

Neil Kinnock has for some time been pinpointed by Socialist Press as one of Labour's key 'men on the make' Only two weeks ago, however, he was in the doghouse amrith thi Dartin 'loft" for ctoor. win une rartys ltie run sleaufastly refusing to pledge a Labour government to reverse Tory education cuts.

Keen not to lose such valuable supporters, he has sprung Deliveries to and from the factory were cancelled. The mass picket brought a recognition by the steel firm that neither the massed ranks of the police nor the best efforts of the witch-hunters could ensure a supply line to the factory.

The result of the voting in Wales was likewise hailed as a shop floor revolt against militancy. It was nothing of the kind.

The voting was a repudiation of partial struggles. The Welsh miners were not prepared to go to the barricades while the British TUC and the miners of Yorkshire, Kent and Scotiand were called on to take no action.

The identikit editorials which have hailed a new dawn of management-worker cooperation are wrong.

Dung spreading

In the fruits of TUC treachery they see a vindication of their own dung spreading.

But the class struggle, which erupts and subsides according to its own laws and not to the dictates of Fleet Street will prove them wrong.

After the celebrations a bitter hangover can be confidently predicted. to action with a radical-sounding speech in his Bedwellty constituency which offers all things to all men.

Out came the usual flowing anti-Tory phrases, and routine 'warnings' to Thatcher and Joseph.

• Nut ramo the menal rican- Cut land la sud van •owal of any revolutionary aspirations: "I am not talking about revolution or anything resembling such melodramatic action."

4,000 trade unionists, pensioners and students in militant mood marched through Manchester last Monday chanting "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, OUT! OUT! OUT!" and "What do we want? Tories OUT!"

Banners represented engineering industry unions, local factories and building sites, along with steel workers and miners.

But at the ensuing rally at the Free Trade Hall the marchers were offered no way forward towards their objective of removing the Tories.

The rally started with the news that Arthur Scargill sent his apologies, and that Derek Robinson hadn't arrived, but was supposedly on his way.

Brian Molyneux, the victimised ISTC steward from South Yorkshire announced that Keith Jones, the South Yorks and Humberside strike co-ordinator had obeyed a telegram from Bill Sirs instructing him not to attend the demo!

Hard time

The first speaker was Cllr. Ken Franklin, deputy council leader, «fighting" the cuts-a leader, who outlined how they speech filled out with general anti-Tory rhetoric.

But he had a hard time from the audience, the chairman having to intervene frequently to get him a hearing.

Hecklers reminded him about the cutback in teachers: this wasn't the same, he But Kinnock went one step. further - and listed his preferences of the ways in which he feels Thatcher could be stopped.

Tory revolt

The first - his favourite -was through "Tories in revolt"'. The second "public opinion in full voice" . The third was mass action by steel workers, miners and others.

The first option, Benn claimed. It was voluntary redundancy, with high payments and early retirement benefits hitherto unseen anywhere!

Brian Molyneux from the South Yorks Strike Committee followed, outlining the steel workers' case, and calling for support in picketing the private Manchester Steel plants.

He mentioned that only the South Wales miners had come out in favour of a General Strike, possibly as a result of repeated shouts from different parts of the hall for a General Strike or "Get rid of Sirs and you'll win it".

Tribunite MP and former Ireland Minister Stan Orme followed with a predictable speech telling the audience that the Tories were terrible, and ruining everything. to Kinnock, would be "short, painless, and productive"! The second would be "long, disruptive and bitter". And the third, unthinkable, option would, he feared, be "infinite, destructive, and would bring only the peace of the battlefield."

Such speeches - balancing carefully between verbal militancy and vigorous opposition to mass action in practice -are the stuff that class traitors are made of.

He, too, had a hard time from the audience, being reminded of Labour "cuts" and the question of Ireland.

The star of this show; however, was Tony Benn.

Although he too was heckled at first and given some stick for the policies of the last Labour government, he treated the audience to what was possibly his "leftest" speech ever.

He tore into the bankers, speculator: media owners and IMF; he slammed the new cold-war atmosphere and military spending; he took the part of Derek Robinson; and he declared it wasn't enough to just get rid of the Tories and return Labour, socialist policies were needed.

Industry had to be taken out of the hands of the capitalist class, he insisted.

Despite issuing a further call for the nationalist policy of import controls to protect British industry, he even went on about Labour being internationalistic, and condemned imperialism and the past imperial role of Britain, talking of the need for solidarity with the "Third World"

Benn called for not just a Labour government, but for one based on socialist policies. Yet just how all this was to be achieved was unsaid.

Indeed the only speaker to call explicitly for the Tory government to be brought down was the Manchester students' representative, who spoke graphically on the impact of Tory policies on youth, students and women.

Yet as John Tocher, local Confed. secretary, pointed out, the day's activity and the militancy in the rally showed that the support exists for taking on this government.

Benn and his fellow lefts' after years of betrayal in governments with wilson and Callaghan now parade as advocates of socialism, but refuse to campaign for united class action-a General Striketo bring down the Thatcher government and create conditions to confront and defeat the right wing leaders of the Labour and trade union move-