Camden councillors climb down

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The majority on Camden's Labour Group have got their reactionary package of rent increases, job and wage cuts through the Council.

The collapse of the ten rebel left wing councilors has inflicted a real setback on the cuts struggle in the borough.

Last Thursday evening an emergency rate fixing meeting of the council at last ratified proposals to fund their cuts programme with a 42% rate increase.

By stitching up a deal with the ten left councillors, who had so far stood on a principled opposition to the leadership's betrayal, the majority were able to break through the stalemate of the previous council meeting and impose this savage programme on Camden's working class.

"Unity'

The week following the abortive rate fixing meeting on March 4 had been characterised by desperate attempts by the Labour leadership to cobble together some basis of unity with the left.

Having failed to buy the Tories' votes by introducing £2.2 million cuts, Shaw, Mills and Bethal (the right wing leaders of the group) saw that any further concessions to the Tories would leave them dangerously isolated in the Group, Labour Party and wider labour movement.

As a result, on Monday evening at a special Labour Group meeting a deal was finally struck between left and right on the The left councillors agreed to support the leadership's budget proposals on three conditions:

1) The payment of the "Camden supplement" on the wages or some manual workers vill be absorbed into the new national award. But it will be restored and backdated-if the High Court rejects the District Auditor'c claim that the payments are illegal.

2) £2½ million will be procured from the sale of a prime development site in the borough. A major proportion of this will go towards providing work in the building department while voluntary redundancy goes ahead.

3) The £2½ million cuts suddenly introduced at the last Group meeting would be withdrawn. Services would be maintained by a mysterious raiding of the "balances and contingency funds" contained in the budget.

Pleased

Leading 'left winger' Neil Fletcher was quoted in the local press as saying, "We've done very well and are pleased with the outcome. The Labour Group as a whole should now be prepared to unite."

But the left councillors have sold their votes and their political credibility for nothing. They are now fully implicated in the Council's anti-working class policies.

Rent demands for increases of £3.50 and upwards have already gone out to tenants.

Ihis is to be coupled with a £2.50 increase on heating charges and a 42% rate increase in a savage tenants.

1,500 NUPE workers will still have their wages frozen for two years (and who really believes that the bourgeois High Court will allow back payment of the supplement?).

And 600 jobs will still be axed in the Direct Labour Organisation. The fact that work on two estates in the borough can now be restarted is little more than a face-saving device protecting the Council from pressure to introduce compulsory redundancy.

The only concession that the right wing leadership has made is to withdraw its last minute proposal for £2½ million cuts.

But these were only introduced in an attempt to buy the Tories vote and having failed on that score their withdrawal has bought the support of the ten left councillors.

By this disastrous climbdown these councillors have seriously undermined the possibility of a united struggle by trade unions, tenants associations and Labour Parties against the Tory government and the Council leadership.

The task of leading the fight within the Labour Party falls on the shoulders of the Camden Labour Left.

Having fought to win support for the stand of the left councillors, it must now publicly disassociate itself from their capitulation to pressure from the right wing.

Urgency

A no rate increase/no cuts position has to be raised with more urgency than ever before.

The Camden Labour Left has to support and help initiate rent strikes and industrial action which challenges the Tory policies of the Council.

The door must remain open for any left councillor who will repudiate their mistaken actions of last week, and commit themselves to a real fight.

But, with them or without them, the fight must go on.