Camden rebels' letter

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19.73 march on rents through Camden: now Camden Labour Left must prevent a similar sell-out in 1981 de lett n left fights on Graham 1215 AISIT MSG panicked into calling an emergency group meeting on March 2, in the hopes of cobbling together a deal before the rate fixing meeting of March 4. This will be resisted by sections of the left.

Neil Fletcher, chairman of the Building Works and Services Committee has taken a correct stand on resisting rate increases in such circumstances:

"I am not prepared to vote for a rate which has been constructed in total opposition to the policies of the Group and the Labour Party ... what is being proposed is a complete abandonment of any principle at all, and a complete capitulation to the District Auditor:.. It is not a socialist budget-and it's just not acceptable."

Although this is not the same as the confrontation policy that Socialist Press supporters nave been arguing for in the labour movement, it is a principled stand that has to be supported by all socialists.

We, the undersigned Camden Labour Councillors were elected, with twentydards of the people of this Borough, and in particular those who are most in need of such protection-the poor, the sick and the otherwise disadvantaged.

We make no apology for the fact that, to meet this objective, Camden has been and is a highspending local authority: it provides the best services in the country and opinion polls and election results have shown that the people of Camden are proud of the achievements that this public spending has brought.

But since the advent of the Tory government, local authorities-and Camden in particular, precisely because of those high standards of provision-are facing an unprecedented onslaught on their programmes, whereby not only are services threatened but the whole concept of local democracy is being called into question.

While thousands of Camden residents wait desperately for Council housing, the government has, by heavily reducing the housing subsidy, cut our housing programme to ribbons, so that not only are we unable to build new homes and modernise our older ones, as we were elected to do, but we cannot even properly maintain any of our existing housing.

Thus, if the government has its way, we shall be forced to gradually decaying into slums.

At the same time, our rate support grant is being reduced, so that to maintain services to.

Such a fight has to be coupled with a struggle to remove the discredited leaders of the group and to unite with those unions and tenants associations who are moving into conflict with the council.

The focus will now turn to the unions' over the next few weeks. The NUPE membership took a major decision at a mass meeting on Tuesday to fight the council's betrayals.

A resolution was passed that called, among other things for opposition to increases in rents and rates, union support for rent and rate strikes, a one-day strike on March 4, a 50p weekly levy on members to preparé for future action and a mandate to the JSSC to coordinate future industrial action.

But the campaign suffered a setback last Wednesday when a NALGO mass meeting voted by 700 votes to 400 to accept a right wing resolution from National Officer Mike Blick rejecting the call for strike the people of Camden, we are being forced to raise rates to a quite unreasonable extent in order that the cost of services to the disadvantaged may be shared by the fortunate.

As if this were not enough, we and our colleagues, Councillors democratically accountable to our electors, are now threatened with surcharge and disqualification if we do not obey the dictates of the District Auditor, himself merely appointed by the Department of the Environment and publicly accountable to no-one.

The District Auditor is now asking the High Court to surcharge and disqualify us for seeking in 1979 to give our lowest-paid workers decent wages and conditions (£60 a week-two-thirds of the then national average wage which has now risen to nearly twice their minimum take-home pay).

Besides this, he has effectively told us that, unless we raise rents by at least £3.25 a week and cut our direct labour staff by 600, he will seek a further surcharge.

Thus we are attacked on two fronts, and it is no surprise that, in the face of such threats, many of our colleagues in the Labour Group find themselves unable to resist the pressure. It is not that they believe our policies to have been wrong: it is that they can see no alternative to giving way.

We, the undersigned; on the other hand, wish to make it clear to the people who elected us that we will not surrender. We were not elected to carry out Tory attacks on the living standards of the people we represent.

We respect the people's democratic right to throw us out of office at the next elecaction on March 4 and instructing Camden NALGO Executive to negotiate redeployment, early retirement and voluntary redundancy on the council's terms.

Blick had cancelled a meeting in the North of England in order to carry through this move to split the unity of the unions in Camden.

But the sabotage is not so straightforward as it might seem.

UCATT, for instance, has so far refused to participate in resistance to the cuts-but negotiators are rumoured to have been outraged by the paltry sums offered by the council in redundancy payments at Town Hall meeting last week.

Socialist Press understands a mass meeting has now been convened for March 3 which may well be called upon to take indefinite strike action from 4 March.

This fight must be followed

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two colleagues, to protect and enhance the living stan-

watch Camden's housing, its people's chief capital asset,