Social service: cuts
Socialist Press1981 1981-06-25Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 1 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 1
Since he was appointed Environment Secretary, millionaire Michael Heseltine has waged war on jobs and services in local government.
He has cut and hacked hundreds of millions from local authority budgets. His latest scheme seeks to strip off a further £900 million and reduce council spending to a figure below that of three years ago (1978/9).
In Lothian in Scotland workers are preparing for strike action to resist Heseltine's ultimatum that the Tahour council chan no less LaUVul CUUlVE VIUP AU AVDD than £53 million off its budget-decimating 6,000 jobs and laying waste services in the area.
To back up his threats, Heseltine is seeking dictatorial new powers to override elected local councils and lay down maximum levels of rates-forcing Labour councils to implement his full package of cuts.
The Tories feel confident that public sector union leaders will once again retreat before such a fight without resistance.
Yet only mass action to confront and bring down the Tories can prevent the wholesale demolition of private profit.
Scan page 2
Reprinted from "Fighting Worker', paper of the Revolutionary Workers League
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local government services in the headlong pursuit of