Newsline Backs Heseltine

Scan page 11

Council and its leader Ted Knight are at present in the forefront of the movement to mount a fight against the Tory cuts, the Council has at the same time complied with Heseltine's instruction to sell-off council houses.

Knight and others argue that this was because they knew that the sales would be blocked by the local NALGO branch. Indeed Lambeth NALGO is correctly blacking any work on the sale of council houses-as are NALGO members in other cities.

But they now do so at the risk of their jobs. Socialist Press has argued that Lambeth Council is wrong to decide to sell: and that they should give a lead to other Labour councils by rejecting Heseltine's ultimatum.

very different stand has been taken by the Workers, Revolutionary Party and its opportunist daily Newsline.

A Newsline editorial actually attacks the Socialist Workers Party for fighting to prevent Lambeth Council selling council houses!

•SWP members and supporters have played a key role in mobilising resistance in NALGO -which resulted in a mass meeting vote by 1,750 NALGO members to oppose all cuts and maintain the blacking.

And Socialist Worker has correctly called on the Lambeth Council to reverse its decision to sell. For the WRP this smacks too strongly, of a real fight against the Tories. Newsline rushes in to attack the SWP:

"They want the Lambeth Councillors to 'do a Clay Cross' and oppose Heseltine's Act to permit (sic!) the sale of municipal housing., This would land them right into the High Court and thence to more drastic penalties, even jail. Yet in a letter advocating this suicidal course, the SWP says: What is much less clear is whether there is any possibility of fighting back and winning' In other words, the SWP is barracking from the side lines, trying to force the Lambeth Councillors into a confrontation with the government and the courts which they admit in advance will fail!

This is the height of political irresponsibility. It reflects the minds of middle class political desperados.

In building the mass movement there will be tactical retreats since Labour Councils such as Lambeth are not always able to choose the ground upon which to wage a fight."

In taking this stand the WRP emerge far to the right of Ted Knight and the Lambeth councillors themselves-and produce an argument custombuilt for any and every Labour traitor wishing to excuse his or herself for carrying out cuts!

We should remember that the Clay Cross struggle-strongly and correctly supported by the WRP at the time-focussed on defiance of the Heath government's massive rent increases.

£3 rent increase So where will the WRP now stand on the imposition by Labour councils of Heseltine's latest £3 rent increase? Will they recommend yet another "tactical retreat"?

We say that the demand should be for Labour councillors to refuse to implement any Tory cuts.

Every worker faces the sack or imprisonment if they fight the Tories. Why is Newsline so anxious to let Labour councillors off the hook?

Why do they wish to avoid another Clay Cross-which at a time of growing militancy against this government could provide the much-needed focus for national solidarity action and mass struggles to bring down the Tories?

Is it because the WRP, beneath its left wing bluster, shares the pessimism of the SWP?

Or is it not rather because in swinging from its previous sectarian positions to search for supporters in the present anti-Tory, movement, the WRP is now politically adapting to bureaucratic elements in the trade unions and the Labour Party who, while ready to utter "left' words from time to time, are completely opposed to any genuine action. December 6. There are likely to be heavy fines imposed on them -one has been charged with biting a policeman's thumb.

It is vitally important that the trade union movement rallies to the defence of these people.

The present climate of growing unemployment and mass frustration amongst youth is a fertile breeding ground for fascism-as witness the recent British Movement march.

As the recession deepens, these fascists will come out of the woodwork and try to reach disillusioned youth and workers with their racist and nationalist ideology.

What is needed is a consistent and vigorous workers movement to drive the fascist scum off the streets.

This fight against fascism is inseparably linked to the fight against the Tories and capitalism and the traitors in the Labour and trade union movement who do nothing to lead the working class forward.

Socialist Press readers are urged to fight for donations, and sent money and messages of support to NCARF, 26 Westmorland Avenue, Nuneaton.

Scan page 12

PRESS ELLAMBETH OLD KENT RD FIR 20:

10R As we go to press, firemen are preparing for the first of the planned one-day stoppages in support of their pay agreement.

Unlike their previous struggle, they have this time ST Firemen on the march 1977 at national level with the Home Secretary and the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council, not with local management. And the FBU EC is already committed to a campaign against the proposals.

The Green Paper stands as a Like any other strikers, they are insulted and reviled each day in the pages of the Tory press.

Like any other strikers, their grievances and demands are distorted or ignored by the media.

Like any other strikers, they face vicious attacks not only from the Tory government but also from reactionary Labour MPs and other bureaucrats within the workers' movement.

But unlike other strikers the struggle of the Irish republican hunger strikers is literally one involving life and death. Either they succeed in their demand for the restoration of privileges attached to recognition of their status as political prisoners, or they will be dead within weeks. And unlike many other strikers, the hunger strikers can feel no confidence that their struggle will receive broad solidarity from the rank and file of the British working class.

The seven Long Kesh hunger strikers-John Nixon, Tom Feeley, Brendan Hughes, Tommy McKearney, Sean medical treatment.

Yet the British labour movement-misled by the mass media and by its own bureaucratic leaders-has been agonisingly slow to respond to the demands of the Irish prisoners for solidarity and support.

The prisoners are the victims of British military repression in the six counties of Northern Ireland. Their "crime" is to struggle to drive out a foreign army of occupation from their homeland and fight for the democratic right of the Irish people to determine their own political future.

Political courts

They have been seized by political police, subjectea to, political torture and interrogation; tried by political, no-jury courts; and sentenced to confinement in the Long Kesh concentration camp for political prisoners.

Tory 'torture chief Atkins, like his savage Labour predecessor Mason, claims that they are no more than common criminals. And in this way they

----- pull-quotes -----

PICKET BREAD