Tories Step up Onslaught More Cuts

Scan page 4

"A manpower fall of 1 aM 1. 1 - 11 ^• 1.8, although an all-time record, is simply not enough" • With these arrogant words, millionaire Tory Environment Secretary Michael Heseltine last week unveiled a new, savage £200 million package of cuts in local government spending.

In the last 12 months 35,000 local authority jobs have been slashed: but Heseltine wants still more workers on the dole.

Education, social services and council house building have been devastated by the cutsbut Heseltine wants still more cutbacks.

So he has announced new penalties against 14 "highspending" councils, plus a unilateral £200 million cut in payments to councils in England and Wales for 1980-81-to be shared out between all local authorities.

Dear Editor, Much as I agreed with your general analysis of the "Beyond the Fragments" conference held recently,! think you dismissed the participants too lightly.

I, like many people, do not belong to any left group because of the history of intense sectarianism.

I've just left the Labour Party and have become a regular reader of Socialist Press (amongst others).

Despite some political differences, I am open to the politics of the WSL, who like the IMG seem to have turned away from the pedantic diatribe of groups like the sectarian "Spartacist League": whose rantings are divisive in the class!

It is because of groups like the SL/B thạt many militants remain isolated from the "organised" left.

Socialist Challenge opens its columns for serious debate; will Socialist Press follow suit?

I hope so because 1 believe the WSL (along with the IMG and others) have a great contribution to creating the elusive formulae for the united party that will lead the class struggle!

I was not able to attend the "Fragments" conference but from what I hear, the organisations of the left cannot ignore what happened, and how these people (and others, myself included) can be brought out of the wilderness and organised into a unified revolutionary organisation!

However this must include a critical self assessment by the left of its practises and dogmas, including perhaps a re-think of how "democratic centralism" is put into practice.

Only this way can the catastrophe of Stalinism be avoided!

Yours fraternally, HJF Peckham *The columns of Socialist Press are certainly open for debate and for readers' contributions. Letters should preferably be no more than 400 words in length.

Heseltine Three Labour councilsHackney, Islington and Lambeth-are to share a further £3 million cut in government aid for community projects.

But, scandalously, Heseltine Thousands more workers were informed last week of their employers' plans to make them shoulder the cost of the economic crisis.

Figures revealed that manufacturing output has now sunk below 1975 levels and that investment in manufacturing industry dropped by 5% in the first half of this year compared to the second half of last year.

Redundancies

And the meaning of these statistics was shown in the steady stream of redundancies and closures that : were announced by firms including British Leyland, GKN, United Glass, Tootal and Reed.

Among the more dramatic examples was Reed's announcehas been able to single out seven Labour councils-Southwark, Haringey, Swansea, Newham, Manchester, Doncaster and Merthyr Tydfil-as model exponents of Tory spending cuts, and reprieve them from special penalties.

In other words, Labour councillors in these areas have gone further than most in implementing Thatcher's savage anti-working class policies.

Pressure

Meanwhile Heseltine has made it clear that his de ecision on these cuts has been s haped , pressure from private employers-and in particu ilar by the giant building firm s and suppliers.

Private employers have begun • complaining • that Heseltine's draconian €700 million cuts programme hi ad not been fully implemented-leaving misery. private firms carrying the main burden of Tory policy.

And construction firms had pressed Heseltine to cut basic council spending and not to carry through the alternative line of attack-a moratorium on council building programmes.

Half of the building industry's workload-and therefore probably more than half its massive profits-are dependent upon public expenditure.

LAVOVALLIIV 1LGLO LIGO VIOLINU Heceltine has thus ensured that the builders and bankerswho will now be able to lend additional sums to local authorities strapped for cash-continue to cream off profits, while the old, the young, the sick and the unemployed face increased That is the acme of Tory While some Tory leaders are bleating at Heseltine's "injustice" in cutting payments to all councils, none can be expected to mount any serious fight on the issue.

But workers must demand that union leaders and Labour councillors coordinate an all-out struggle including strikes and occupations to defeat the cuts, roient anu aolin of uninina mitra reject any pouty or raising rales and rents and confront Heseltine and the bosses government that seeks only to impoverish workers to line their own pockets. 107.188 138811 s your Firm n the List?

As Thatcher's : government sags in the opinion