Labourite sues NUJ

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The rapid development of the nursery campaigns in Leicester has clearly caught both the officials at County Hall and the leaders of NALGO off balance.

After a series of large meetings organised by the West Leicester and Leicester Nursery Campaigns throughout the city, local councillors and bureaucrats have already begun ducking for cover.

At County Hall, the announced decision to close Fosse Road Day Nursery was almost immediately modified to a 'review' of its prospects in the autumn.

Adequate In addition, following a lobby by 70 supporters of the nursery campaign, of a special In the • NUT, primary teachers dismissed the official leaflet on nursery provision as 'useless and two years out of date, and proceeded to win approval for their own statement explaining their decision to strike on May 14 in oppos ition to the cuts in terms of the nursery cutbacks.

Strike Similarly in NALGO, officials have been forced to ballot members over strike action on redundancies.

With feelings running high over the recent events in Nottingham it seems likely that any NALGO action in the schools would win the active support of hundreds of local teachers.

Nor is it likely that they will settle for just a token one day.

*No cuts! No redundancies!

*Free state day care on demand with provision for children of working mothers after school and in the school holidays.

*Expand nursery education to cater for all 3-5 year olds.

*For a sliding scale of public spending tied to the real rise in the cost of living-as assessed by committees of trade unionists and housewives.

*Open the books of the local authorities to expose the profiteering by banks and private contractors.

Millionaire publisher Mr Robert Maxwell of Pergamon Press, Oxford, and a member of the Labour Party and ASTMS is taking the National Union of Journalists to court.

• Last Friday 9 May Maxwell was successful in getting a temporary injunction preventing the union repeating the content of a circular to chapel officers, sent out by the union earlier in The circular asked chapel officers to look for a job for an NUJ member sacked from Pergamon for allegedly attempting to defraud the company of £13.75 when he went sick for a day to attend another job interview. ** The injunction remains in force pending a High Court hearing this Friday.

This action by Maxwell follows a lengthy struggle with the union going back to a three day strike last summer which secured the reinstatement of two NUJ members whose contracts the company claimed had run out.

Maxwell's strategy since then has been to witch-hunt chapel and Branch officers, and now even an NUJ national organiser in the very best traditions of McCarthyism.

Unfortunately for Maxwell few people seem to share his paranoid vision of 'communist' infiltration.

Recently Maxwell was the subject of a highly critical interview in a local free sheet the Oxford Journal, though the Journal withdrew the article after Maxwell threatened to sue.

Part of the settlement involved a payment of £500 to the Labour Party.

• Moves are now afoot from Labour Party members angered by Maxwell's record, to get the £500 returned.

On the same day as the High Court hearing, A. Wheaton and Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Maxwell's will be represented in another court, where the NUJ is seeking satisfaction from an Industrial Tribunal over redundancies.

DELAY THE NEWS that this year's ISTC conference is to be postponed should surprise nooneleast of all the irate steelworkers who were longing for a chance to get their boots onto Bill Sirs' windpipe after his sell-out settlement with BSC.

ISTC leaders claim that the decision is to save money. They could be right. Bill Sirs has gone on record as warning workers fighting for his removal and for the election of officials that he would take them to court if his life-appointed General Secretary position were threatened.

Compensating him for lost salary and perks could cost the union a pretty penny. On the other hand, leaving him in office could cost ISTC members thousands more lost jobs!

LIAI

COMMITTEE SUMMER