Drain Leads Hecklers

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GIVE OPENING! IN MIDLANDS REAT JCRA' TO I 'ASCI The unity of last Saturday's Oxford demonstration against the cuts in the public services was split by the right-wing and the Communist Party who refused to allow the Oxford and District Trades Council a platform position at the public meeting afterwards.

The Stalinists and the right-wing had previously boycotted the anti-cuts demonstration organised by the Trades Council on March 13th.

They called instead, last Saturday's demonstration under the auspices of the Joint Trade Union Committee in the hospitals.

Having an appalling record and no real base in the hospitals they hoped that they could attract workers to them by parading the names of a panel of four national speakers - Geoffrey Drain, General Secretary of NALGO; Reg Bird, National Officer ASTMS; Ron Keatling, National Officer NUPE Officer from COHSE. 5:

In the event, the names of the bureaucrats drew only a handful onto the 400-strong demonstration with the main force being mobilTrades Council which fully the of the Trades sup ported the march. 300 of the 400 marchers rallied behind the Trades Council banner.

It was this size of mobilisation by the Trades Council which An irate Drain OT prompted a request from the floor of the meeting for a Trades Counci speaker on the piatform. The rightwing chairman Chris Luker refused;

Demands from all sides of the meeting got no better response and calls for a vote on the matter were turned down.

Tempers became frayed as one bureaucrat after another explained how he was doing nothing to defend the social services except talk while the majority were excluded from the platform.

After the last speaker, Geoffrey Drain, had failed in the whole of right-wing contribution explain why he had voted in favour of the wage-cutting 4½% pay deal at the TUC General Council a week OT 50 earlier, the meeting promptly closed by the chairman.' The great majority of the meeting, however, remained whilst the platform was taken by Trades Council chairman Gerry Casey who said that the Trades Council saw the fight against the cuts as crucial to the working class.

The Trades Council would continue the fight, he said. But it was clear that the bureaucracy intended to do nothing.

"We will be sitting here for 2,000 years if we wait for them to move" he told the meeting.

By this time a group of rightwing and Stalinist hecklers had gathered at the back of the hall, led by Geoffrey Drain, whoshouteg various insults at the platform.

The majority of this group, with all but their arms around the Stalinists, then began chanting "reds out!" - with the Stalinists looking embarrassed in the middle of the group.

Drain left the hall muttering that he would "take this back to the TUC" which means that the attacks of the bureaucracy on those in Oxford who are determined to defend the standard of living of the working class are not over.