Link Nursery Struggles!

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THAT'S IT! THE TORIES HAVE GONE R THIS TIME!)

Since the Tories took office a large number of nursery campaigns have sprung up all over the country to defend the threatened provision for the Many of these drew from the experience of the Oxford City Nursery Campaign and its occupation of the South Oxford Nursery Class, closed through the cuts of the last Labour • The May • 17 Nurseries Action Conference called through the Save Our Nurseries Campaign in Nottingham was an extremely important initiative in bringing these fighting campaigns together to discuss the nuts and bolts of how we fight the cuts in nursery provision.

In this it was completely opposite to conferences called by, for example, SE. Region TUC on provision for the under fives and also to the TUC Report on the under fives.

Both of these, like so many similar discussions on nurseries concentrated on why we need nurseries, the benefits to children and why we must educate 'the community' etc. on these needs.

They both totally ignored the question of how we are to fight to achieve the expansion of this grossly inadequate state service and the central question of how we now defend it from annihilation.

Same experience

The majority of the sixty delegates and observers who attended the Nottingham conference were actively involved in struggles and shared the same experience in defending their local nurseries against either closure or cuts in staffing.

There were strong delegations from the Nottingham, Leicester, Birmingham and Oxford campaigns and in particular • from the Wandsworth Nightingale Lane Nursery occupation.

The conference felt that this was a very real basis for the start of a national nursery campaign that focussed on the necessary action and policies to defend facilities and demand expansion.

An organising committee was set up to discuss the immediate production of a booklet, coordinating the various campaigns, and setting out much needed information culled from joint experience on such questions as how to establish a campaign, how to plan an occupation, getting trade union support for these plans, how to fight for strike action to defend threatened occupations and how to use community action to bring pressure to bear on the labour movement.

Other important questions which would be covered would include avoiding demoralisation if and when numbers of campaigners fall.

On the question of where the money for nurseries is to come from, all the campaigns stated their absolute opposition to saving nurseries at the expense of other services being cut instead.

All were agreed that the money must not be found by cutting services, increasing rates or rents but by investigating council spending and seeing what was going in profit to private suppliers and to the banks as interest rates are •AFTER ALL, IF THE TORIES WONT TALK TO US, WE OFFICIALS COULD WIND UP ON THE SCRAPHEAP!

THE PRESS HAVE CERTAINLY GOT IT IN FOR OLD LEN.. allowed to soar, The most bitter common experience that the campaigners shared was in the role of the trade union leaders.

Time and again it was pointed out how they had let campaigns down, given paper resolutions of support but refused to follow it up with anything other than more speeches or deals cooked up with local authorities selling out campaigns and dressed up as realistic compromises' Noticeably the trade union bureaucracy boycotted the conference-with the exception of Nottingham NUPE official John McGuigan.

McGuigan, who had himself called on the people of Nottingham to get down on their knees and pray for the education of their children threatened by cuts, predictably defended the role of the union bureaucracy by blaming the union membership for being unwilling to fight.

It was pointed out that not one single union had organised any action against nursery cuts apart from Nottingham NUT's strikes in defence of suspended teacher Eileen Crosbie-and •SLASHING THE ENTIRE WELFARE' STATE... SHACKLING THE UNIONS...

ENDING SECONDARY PICKETING!. WHAT A SCANDAL-"LENIN MURRAY"IN DEED.

-TER ALL HE'S DONE FOR BRITAIN!

OH IDONT KNOW, OLD LENIN WASNT ALL WRONG, WAS HE ?.. even they had been forced into this action by mass pressure from their membership and have spent all their time since seeking excuses for avoiding spreading the action further.

An emergency resolution was passed by the conference in support of victimised NUT member Eileen Crosbie and calling on the NUT to organise all-out strike action against cuts and victimisations.

The NUT's line on the • light is to say it is a parents' battle.

That seems to be the line of all the public sector unions who are determined to stand back and leave the fight up to parents and community campaigns, who are all too bitterly aware of the limitations of their protest campaigns and even their direct action.

For without the widespread mobilisation of trade union strike action, staff making a stand against redundancies are sacked and parents become demoralised from battling on on their own for these most vitally needed services.

For further details of the national co-ordinating committee, contact Anne McKinley, 33 Norreys Ave., Oxford.

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