NUJ conterence: eft motions blocked

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Union bureaucrats back Liverpool rates retreat The annual conference of the National Union of Journalists opens in Portrush, Northern Ireland, this Friday with the fourth biggest branch in the union denied representation.

The National Executive Committee of the NUJ overturned a recommendation of a special committee it had set up and voted to bar the 2,000strong book branch for being more than 10% in arrears with its subs.

Liverpool city council have voted to increase rates in the city by 50%, instead of implementing the Tory cut-backs in services.

The Labour group, the largest party on the council but without the overall majority, succeeded in getting their budget through the council after the Liberals' abstention on Wednesday 26 March-with no opposition from any of the Labour councillors, who include Militant supporter Derek Hatton.

The meeting was a recalled meeting after the failure to reach agreement which had occurred the previous week.

Deficit

At this earlier meeting Hatton had boldly proposed a motion against the main Labour group resolution. It called for the policy of deficit budgeting; no cuts; a 13% rate-rise in line with government recommendaThe book branch has a number of left resolutions on the agenda-not least among them one calling for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from Ireland.

The NEC decision is a highly convenient one and has exposed the reactionary nature of the disenfranchising rule, which was introduced three years ago.

The Bristol branch, for example, has lost its place at conference, although virtually all staff journalists in its branch are paid up. tions to merely cover the increase in inflation; and the cancelling of interest payments on loans to the banks coupled with a campaign to mobilise the working class in support of the Wrath Only nine counciliors had the guts to back this proposal which predictably provoked the wrath of the majority of careerist time servers and created uproar for several minutes.

This courageous stand deserved the support of all workers and served to expose the thoroughly spineless and cowardly majority of the remainder of the Labour group.

The backlash from the right wing in the Labour Party came swiftly when they proposed a motion from the right wing in the Labour Party executive to expel the nine from the Party.

Threats were made by right wing district secretary Wally Edwards to withdraw official status from one candidate in Attempts were being made to get the ruling reversed before the conference began.

The agenda includes a call for the union to affiliate to the Labour Party, for the election of officials, for withdrawal from the Press Council and enforcement of the union's code of conduct, and for wage rises to match inflation.

On Ireland the Government and the BBC face attack for their censorship of the Carrickmore events and the Oxford branch has called for a labour movement conference organised by the NUJ on censorship.

coming council elections.

And leaflets for the elections opposing the rate-rises in the Labour budget were arbitrarily i and mysteriously changed on the way to the printers.

The background to these events has been a campaign by the right wing and Communist Party members in the public sector union branches to scaremonger the members with horror stories about thousands of redundancies if the policy of 'no cuts, no rate rises was adopted.

Even so, the Labour Party district executive narrowly voted in favour of this policy of deficit budgeting.

Packed

A policy conference on the issue called shortly afterwards however, was packed out by the right wing and public sector union delegates who had been whipped up into an ill-considered opposition to the deficit spending policy and reversed

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