Recall conference highlights problems ACTION NOT WORDS KEY TO CUTS FIGHT

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Government in Crisis' last week- movement behind you.. Ted Knight (left) on Lambeth anti-cuts protest "Can you build a mass movement out of retreats? Can you build out of weakness and compromise?"

This question, sharply posed by IGWU delegate Alan Thornett, summed up the central theme of discussion at the recall conference 'I.ocal 1VVLM end.

At the end of the day a majority of delegates voted for resolutions embracing the answer strongly advocated by Thornett.

"The only way to build a mass movement is to stand and fight-to give leadership. There is no other way to mobilise a "At the last conference, Ted Knight said we don't want any more defeats like Ciay Cross'. But more Clay Crosses are exactly what we do need today. That was an important stand against the Tories.

But today we don't just want one Clay Cross, we want 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Clay Crosses! But that won't happen until some one is prepared to stand and fight and give a lead."

The retreat which Thornett -and other floor speakers-were attacking was the decision by Lambeth Labour Group' (which had convened the initial conference on November 1 and been seen as the front runner in opposing the cuts) to back down from a policy of no cuts no rate increases'.

Raise rates

Instead they have raised a 20% supplementary rate and are expected to raise rates again in April-affecting thousands of council tenants in Lambeth.

Such a policy, defended by Lambeth council leader Ted Knight as a necessary means of buying time to build a movement against the Tories, was sharply criticised by many floor speakers-and eventually rejected by the recall conference.

WAR GUATEMALA Chalatenango Santa Ana EL SALVADOR As many delegates repeatedly pointed out, the strength of the 800-strong November 1 conference had been that it offered workers a fighting policy to defend jobs, services and living standards and build a mass movement against the Tory government.

Voted down

It had specifically called upon Labour councils to adopt a policy of:

"no rent rises or supplementary rate increases this financial year, and no rent or rate rises to compensate for government cuts.

And it warned that its call for united mass action "should not mean unions, CLPS OI Labour Councils using the inactivity of others to justify implementing or accepting cuts.

The November conference also voted down a series of amendments tabled by the NUPE National. Executive, and adopted instead a policy of fighting for industrial action to stop the cuts and to defend any councillors penalised for taking a stand against the government.

But the much smaller January 17 recall conference retlected many of the political and practical problems in tighting the cuts.

EL it showed first and foremost that the adoption of even correct resolutions by conferences is nowhere near enough to defeat the Tory offensive.

It was also significantly smaller and less broadly representative than the November 1 conference.

This was due in part to organisational probelms: partly also to a political retreat by Labour groups who have since November begun to implement cuts; and partly a boycott by layers of trade unionists turning their backs on any real fight against the Tories.

NUPE, for example, was conspicuous by its absence from the recall conference, after sending national officer Ron Keating to present amendments last November.

But the influence of the defeatist policies peddled by NUPE's leadership was unmistakeably present as it became clear that nowhere in the country is this 700,000-strong manual union leading the slightest fight to defend jobs or services:

Key The NUPE leadership, for all occasional left' rhetoric, is s playing a key role in perpetuating the self-fulfilling prophecy so beloved of all labour movement bureaucrats.

They call no action because, they claim, there is no mass support; but with nothing to rally around, workers see no perspective for a struggle; the longer this situation lasts the more jobs and conditions are lost without the slightest resistance-and the more demoralised workers become.

This demoralisation and the lack of struggles is then in turn quoted as the reason for calling Cont'd page HESLIN STILL OUT ALMOST two years to the day since Ted Heslin was expelled from Oxford City Labour Party for selling Socialist Press the right wing are still refusing to allow him ineven though the NEC has now twice ieinstated him!

A 90-strong GC meeting on Monday night voted by a substantial majority once again to defy the NEC instruction to reinstate Heslin-and invite an NEC speaker to the next meeting.