Ealing teachers strike

Scan page 4

Over 2,000 teachers, school students and parents joined a protest demonstration through Ealing last Tuesday, as the NUT staged a half-day strike against the cuts.

180 teaching jobs face the axe, and education of children between 3-5 is to cease in Ealing council's £2.8 million cuts package.

Several hundred marchers supported the contingent of the Several • protests and demonstrations have taken place in London over the past two weeks against two reports containing proposals on London hospitals.

. These reports-on medical schools and acute beds-present the most serious threat so far to the already service m concon The report by the Flowers Committee proposes reduce the number of mee schools from This would include closing ster Hospital Medical 16 gig whe wesex Royal Free Medical School and the closure of the British Postgraduate Medical Research proposals alone present a serious threat to national medical Lashine cre researco.

The second report, Londonna ranningon. sortium. plans reduce hospital beds by 20-25%. If implemented this WoUl tne complete closure of the Westminster Hospital.

This report is justified by "demographic factors"'. Because decline London report claims. that demand for acute beds has fallen.

the. reason closure medical schools; as the students do not have acute patients for their praciical stúdies.

Already students and aca demics at the Westminister and Royal Free Medical Schools have staged token protests in an auțempt to prevent ine reports Ealing 3-5 Action Group, and a rally at the end of the march overflowed the Town Hall with hundreds left outside.

But for all this evident willingness to fight the Tories no direction whatever was offered by platform speakers.

NUT President Jim Murphy drew a line between "good" and "bad" Tories, and called Education Secretary Carliste a "hypocrite"

Carlisle is unlikely to be shaken from his course of Successive attacks on jobs by Labour and Tory governments have fallen most heavily on the least organised and most oppressed sections of the working class-with women the prime sufferers.

A report published for the Women's TUC reveals the stark fact that while the total number numbers of men unemployed actually went down by 16,000 in the four years 1976-80, the number of women unemployed rose by 158,000 in the same period -an increase of 62%!

A major cause of this is obviously the direct impact of government spending cuts in the public services in which women lorm a majority of the work force.

in addition falling living standards are among the factors pressing more married women into seeking jobs. Employers are seizing upon this fact and destruction by such rhetoricor by half day token strikes.

Nor will he be intimidated by bluster from Labour leaders who refuse even to commit themsieves to reverse the cuts if reelected.

NUSS speaker Neil James argued from the floor of the rally that the only way to halt the cuts is through a political fight based on occupations together with local and national strike action as part of the fight to throw the Tories out of office. increase their use of part-time labour to cover peak periods of sales or production, and to provide a loosely-organised, easily disposed of and thus "flexible" workforce. .. In 1976 one fifth of all employers were part-time, 85% of them (4.3 million) being women.

And a 1977 survey showed that 78% of all part time workers were married women.

Now it is precisely such women that are facing the most savage attacks in the form of public spending cuts and redundancies.

Cut in in many local authorities for instance the thorny question of sacking full time staff in education or social services is being evaded or minimised by cutting the hours worked by part-time staff-thus cutting their wages while nominally retaining the same numbers on the payroll.

And as the Tory offensive ea PHOTO: John Sturrock (Report)

----- pull-quotes -----

dowers lays wreath medical schools