Social Councils Wield Thatcher's Axe

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rents up; sackings well the workers movement. are in one way or another pass- As Thatcher's spending cuts ing on Heseltine's cuts rather Follow Polish example!

demanding "No cuts in jobs or wages, nothing on the rents or rates", the Group took a decision which in effect hands over power in the borough to the Tory auditor.

The fact that the auditor is taking the Council to the High Court, over the 1979 NUPE wage settlement, was used by Group leader Roy Shaw not as a rallying point for resisting the Tories, but as a stick with which to beat the Labour Group into capitulation.

Alienated

Shaw, Mills and Bethal, the right wing leadership of the Group, blackmailed the centre ground into adopting a package of cuts in jobs, wages and huge rent increases in an attempt to appease Heseltine's auditor, who had threatened further surcharges on all three issues.

Labour Councillors have now alienated themselves from unions and tenants organisations in the borough.

They hope that if they keep their noses clean, the High Court will find in their favour.

The Group voted to abandon the Estates Management Programme and to slash the housing repairs budget; they voted to reduce the Direct Labour workforce by over 600 through "voluntary redundancy" in a 12-month period.

And, having thus condemned thousands of tenants to continue in sub-standard council housing, the Group rubbed salt into the wound by voting a £3.50 average rent rise.

Alongside a £2.5 .JU rIse 1 heating charges and a projected 60% rate increase, this now makes it virtually impossible for working class families to afford to live in the borough.

The final twist of the knife came with the vote by 19-9 to absorb the remaining "Camden Supplement" on council wages into the manual workers recent £4.60 pay award.

This means no pay rise in 1981 for the lowest paid workers!

Betrayed

The Tories have transformed local government in Camden into an instrument with which to savagely attack working class living standards. And this is only the first of many such attacks if there is not a political fight back.

By accepting Heseltine's terms for remaining in office and deciding to cling on at all "costs, Camden's council has betrayed working class interests.

Continued, page 7 cuts;

Do we alast Inhau. we acce Lavour councils to defend the working class or to act as servile lackeys of the Tory This question, following hot on the heels of the battle for accountability of the Labour leadership at the Wembley conference, is now a major issue marithin Polish workers have had an independent union of their own for less than a year. But their actions in recent months • have many lessons to teach the well-established British labour movement.

Despite the continued existence of a bureaucratic police state and the ever-present threat of Soviet military intervention, Polish struggles have brought the downfall of the Gierek government and a wholesale purge of local government officials and management.

For British workers seeking a way forward against the savage Thatcher administration and attacks by local councils and employers, such struggles should bite home, councis are up against a dilemma. Either they slash jobs and services and raise rents, or they must take steps to prepare for a full-scale fight against the government.

Obviously Tory councils are proceeding to foist the full be a stimulus to follow suit.

Last week for instance, a 10-day general strike by 200,000 workers in the southern town of Bielsko-Biala culminated in the removal of the provincial governor, the Communist Party secretary, the Local police chief, and a squad of local bureaucrats.

The general strike embraced some 110 factories. Strike information, speeches and negotiations with government officials were relayed live to at least 80 of these factories through telephone and tannoy systems.

Such actions have taken a heavy toll of Stalinist bureaucrats. An estimated 30,000 parasites in the state bureaucracy and local management have been booted out of their privileged positions since the than seeking mass support for a fight to defeat the Thatcher offensive.

And public sector union leaders, who have done nothing to defend jobs and services, are sitting back in silence as Labour councillors slash back their workforce.

Yet never before has there been such seething hostility to a Tory government in the unions and on the working class strike wave began last summer.

Police powers have been challenged: strikes have forced the release of political prisoners; and ten days ago a threatened general strike forced an agreement that Solidarity can now publish a weekly paper and have access to television coveragethus challenging the rigid censorship and political repres sion on which Poland's bureaucratic rulers depend to preserve their position.

course the Polish economy is substantially different from Britain. It is based not on private ownership and private profit, but upon nationalsation-albeit under the control of a reactionary and parasitic bureaucracy.

7 What frightens the Stalinists Warsaw, in Moscow and estates: never before have the issues been as sharply posed: never before has there been such an opportunity to mobilise a fight.

Last week hundreds of local authority workers in Lambeth took strike action against the Tories. Their action has been isolated by the refusal of union officials and Labour councillors to fight by their side. But it shows the way forward. Elsethroughout Eastern Europe is that Polish workers will politically overturn the bureaucracy and seize control of the economy themselves-triggering further struggles in the other deformed workers' states.

This also frightens Thatcher, the Common Market leaders and US imperialism. That is why they are looking for ways to prop up the tottering Polish leadership through economic aid and cheap food supplies.

They know that a political revolution in Poland would send shock waves of struggle throughout Western Europe.

Meanwhile they rely on the grovelling and spinelessness of the trade union, Socialist and Communist Party leaderships to keep workers in line at home.

As Polish workers square AGE SUPPLEMENT Camden council may be at the sharp end of the confrontation at present, but other Labour-controlled councils are faced by the Tories with a similar citua.

tion.

*In Southwark, tenants' leaders are talkina of a rent strike against a thumping 32% rent increase.*In Glasgow Labour councillors have rebuffed Heseltine's demands that they increase rents by 70%-but are proceeding to levy a savage 31% rent increase on their working class supporters.

*In Lothian (Scotland's "Lambeth". where councillors have maintained services at 1979 levels by increasing rates)

the council faces a demand that they cut spending by 31%£114 million-below the level needed to sustain services.

The scale of the rate increases needed to avoid cuts is now so great that they must provoke growing resistance by workers.

*In Paisley an angry crowd of over 200 tenants has twice clashed with police in attempts to prevent the Labour council imposing a 50% rent increase and an £8.6 million cut in the housing budget. The measures were approved last week by 372 in a council meeting heavily guarded by Special Unit police.

Only in Dundee has a Labour council so far taken a firm stand in rejecting any rent increase at all.

But such a stand. cannot be maintained in isolation.

Other Labour councils must be forced to stand alongside Dundee, and the trade union and tenants' movement must be put on a war-footing to resist further Tory attacks.

Such is the financial straightjacket imposed by the Tories that Labour councils have only two choices-either they must attack the services and living standards of their working class supporters, or they must fight to mobilise a mass struggle to challenge and bring down the Thatcher government.

where tenants are preparing for rent strike action-that must in turn be spread into the unions.

We say Heseltine's attacks must be fought. Force Labour councils to put down Thatcher's axe and take up the cudgels to defend the working class. And force those councillors who refuse to fight to make make way for those who will!

Gdansk strikers for renewed battles with the Kania regime-including the fight for recognition of Rural Solidarity as a peasants' union -British workers can offer more than abstract support: they can follow the Polish example and fight for the overthrow of the Thatcher government.

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Wednesday 1981

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burden of cuts onto workers. But most Labour councils, too,

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