Lambeth conference adopts fighting policies NOW FIGHT FOR ALL-OUT STRIKE ACTION!

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A good response this week has brought a further £143 towards our £1500 Special Fund. But with our November 15 deadline for the first £1,000 of that fund only two weeks away we still have a long way to go. £516.75 to be precise. So let's pull out all the stops and make sure that we meet that target on time. If you haven't sent a donation in yet, then send us one today to: the Tory cuts was taken at a widely representative conference on Local Government in Crisis held at Camden Town Hall last Saturday.

The conference, set up by the Lambeth Labour Group and local authority trade unionists, was attended by representatives from 40 Labour Groups, 140 Constituency Labour Parties and 500 trade union branches and trades councils.

Alternatives

They considered a wide range of alternative strategies for mass action against the cuts.

The chair of the morning session was taken by Arthur Latham, who is also chairman of the London Labour Party.

He told delegates that this was a conference of action, aiming not to discuss how bad the cuts were but to work out the policies necessary to defeat them.

Ted Knight, leader of Lambeth Council, in moving the main resolution, said that this conference should have been called by the TUC General Council and the Labour Party National Executive Committee. However the situation was too urgent to wait for them to react.

Nor, he added, was it good enough to follow the advice of the right wing Labour leaders and to wait around until they got re-elected.

By then there would be no services to save. And in any case, could we believe that on their past record they would even attempt to restore cuts which they had themselves initiated?

Knight outlined the cuts that had already taken place in local authority financing.

First there was the reduction in the rate support grant; then lower subsidies on capital spending allowances; followed by the recent moratorium on house building.

Keating Published by Registered as SSE Further cuts in the rate support grant are likely to be announced later this month.

The choices facing those Labour Councils who intended to defend their services were growing increasingly narrow.

Those who had tried to "slim down" or had increased the rates no longer had such options open to them.

Those who refuse to contemplate further cuts can only now think in terms of defiance of the government, and the organisation of strikes, occupations and other actions to mobilise the working class against the Tories.

It was the form of such actions and the response they were likely to get that was at the centre of the discussions at the conference.

Ron Keating, Assistant General Secretary of NUPE, who spoke for the only union nationally represen ted, argued Seven prisoners in the Seven prisoners in the that there was "so much fear in the land" that it was impossible to conceive of large scale action at this point-or even by next January.

All that was possible was propaganda against the cuts.

He proposed a series of amendments to the main resolution cutting out all possible calls for action.

Few other speakers supported this and after Keating had been heavily criticised by local delegates from NUPE, the amendments were heavily voted down.

However there were one or tWo important statements refiecting the same defeatist position and refusal to fight the Tories.

Thus John Lebor, right wing leader of Brent Council, argued that we must "accept reality" and wait until the political pendulum swung the other way.

David Plunkett, leader of Sheffield City Council, said he did not support the tenor of Keating's contribution but agreed with him in maintaining that it was impossible for one group to act alone.

Attacked

Other alternatives associated with this view included a policy of Labour councillors continually standing for re-election or refusing when in a majority to form administrations.

Again these views were widely attacked in the discussion.

Most speakers concentrated on attempts to develop action against the cuts. This centred in particular around amendments jointly initiated by the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement and Socialist Organiser.

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