[Dundee has become the focus of two major…]

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Dundee has become the focus of two major political battles.

One is the issue of support for the PLO (see above). The other is over the refusal of the local Labour Council to sell off any of the city's housing stock.

Alone among the major authorities in Scotland, Dundee has defied the government and refused to proceed with the sale of council houses as demanded under the terms of Tory legislation.

Secretary of State George Younger has now issued an ultimatum'-comply, or be dragged through the courts. He has given them 14 days to surrender or face substantial fines imposed by the Court of Session.

The principled stand taken by the Council obviously requires the fullest backing of A successful meeting to protest about cuts in the social services was held last Monday in the Springburn Area of Glasgow, with over 60 in attendance.

The meeting, organised by the Springburn Committee Against Cuts, was addressed by speakers from the EIS, the main Scottish teachers' union, the Scottish Tenants' Organisation and Glasgow Campaign Against the Cuts.

An enthusiastic debate ensued as to how to pursue the struggle to defend social services.

One of the most encouraging aspects of the meeting was the participation of groups engaged in ongoing campaigns. Alec Stirling, TGWU shop steward at Foresthall Home and Hospital, which is threatened with stion of the work for to resist. not only the trade union movement throughout Tayside but also the support of the trade union and labour movement throughout Scotland, especially the Labour-controlled regional and district councils in Strathclyde and Lothian.

At the centre of the rows is George Galloway, organiser of the Labour Party in Dundee and now chairman of the Labour Party in Scotland.

Galloway., a leading figure in the Labour Coordinating Committee, epitomises the break from the corrupt politics which disfigured Labourism, in Dundee until fairly recently.

Insofar as he and his comrades in the local Labour Party and the Council remain firm to their principles on these two major issues they deserve the wholehearted support of every socialist. and his sentiments were echoed behalf of the staff at Gilshochill Assessment Centre also threatened with shutdown.

Their bitterness concerning the uncaring attitude of the Labour controlled Regional Council was shared by a speaker from PANIC, the campaign to prevent the closure of nursery facilities in the Gorbals district.

Not did she have much faith in her local Labour MP Frank McElhone who, she said, "opened his mouth, forgot to shut it and wished he had."

: The main focus for the meeting was the impact of education cuts in the city and how they can be resisted.

Nigel Gardner, speaking on behalf of the EIS Local Association, emphasised how these cuts, although not always dramatic, were bringing about a progressive and serious deterioration of the service, with Amnesty International has a reputation for ambiguous but perceptible progressiveness.

Its international reports are after all often the only detailed factual accounts of who is being imprisoned or killed around the world.

Because that work decreasing amounts of cash available for basic items such as books, pencils, etc.

He emphasised the need to safeguard standards which had been achieved and to allow no erosion of these by central or local authorities.

This theme was taken up by John Wilde, speaking on behalf of Glasgow Cuts Campaign, when he pointed to the fact that the services workers can draw upon have been established over decades of struggle and could only be defended by a united fight by all those varied campaign bodies now springing up.

The presence of representatives of the local tenants' association and the LPYS, alöngside the many trade unionists and housewives present, added strength to a meeting which must be seen as the springboard for a more active campaigning Cuts Committee in the Area. valuable, and because it is done by nobody else, and because it is widely publicised, the trade unions have trundied aiong humbly in its wake, espousing gratitude while some Trotskyists have vented criticisms.

Does not after all Amnesty International epitomise those layers of the petty bourgeoisie who are capabie of being pulled along by the working class?

The answer is that the current temperature of that petty bourgeois section is one of virulent antagonism to the international working class.

Amnesty International therefore stands as an open and avowed obstacle to genuine internationalism.

Examples of this constantly break through the facade-the most flagrant being the refusal of Amnesty to accept H Block hunger strikers as prisoners of conscience"!

Indeed only policies Socialist Press pamphlet outlining programme of action against the Tory offensive.

Price from WSL, London WCIN 3XX. not used or advocated violence' can be considered by Amnesty for official martyr status.' In El Salvador for example, someone who greets the junta's execution squads with a mild chastisement and a friendly smile can have their name posthumously enblazoned on the letters of several tens of thousand Amnesty supporters.

Beyond the pale

But anyone who fights for his/her life or who calls for the working class to be armed is beyond the pale.

Add to this the Amnesty rule which forbids national sections to accuse their own. government-and you have the opposite of internationalism.

The Biritsh section of Amnesty International met in disarray in Nottingham two weeks ago.

Out of a two day conference the whole of the first day was consumed with internal politics.

The exécutive elections were voted null and void, and the conference narrowly upheld the sacking. of its director Cosmas Desmond. \ Desmond-supposedly one of the progressives and a former prisoner of conscience-declared that he had felt more hostility from Amnesty's volunteers than in 14 years of harassment by the South African police (a hyperbole that probably cost him the vote).

The rest of the conference proceeded with barely suppressed hisses every time a speaker admitted being a member of a trade union.

The leader of the trade union committee told a committee session that he persuaded his union to back trade union rights overseas by explaining it would make imports more expensive. ' Trade union rights' was deleted from a resolution because it is covered by human rights'.

«Neutral"

Most of all the words impartial' or 'neutral' smattered the text of every statement like confetti.

The working class of course cannot afford this luxury and Amnesty International by adopting this stance can only offer increasing aid and comfort to its enemies.

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Wednesday April, Part 2 By Colin Morrow • The response of the labour movement to the mass unemployment of the 1930s is probably known

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