NUT must step up strike action

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Striking teachers march with parents and children against education cuts in Oxford.

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I would like to take out a subscription to Socialist ITAIN Bues . Baues issues The first major strike action against education cuts is now being waged in Oxford where 400 teachers have closed down 29 schools. The potential stood and developed.

Alongside wage controls, the working class have had foisted on them in the guise of the Social Contract of their union leaders with the reformist Wilson-Callaghan -Healey government, massive cuts in public spending. For two years now union bureaucrats have stood by while education, health and social services were trimmed to the bone.

But in Oxfordshire the NUT bureaucracy was forced into action by pressure from its membership against vicious job-slashing cuts. In London several schools have organised unofficial strike action.

The bureaucracy in Oxfordshire have continually used as their excuse for this local action the argument that the Tories are spending less than the government guidelines and Max Morris has appealed to Shirley Williams to come in and "sort the Tories out".

This argument wears extremely thin amid this week's government announcement that next year's cut in the County must be £800,000 and education will not be exempt from this.

In the face of determined entrenchment from the County Council who have just announced that 40 nursery places will be lost by closures in two weeks time, the NUT leadership begs for conciliation and arbitration..

Meanwhile the 400 teachers the Executive have called out on strike (out of 1500 who voted to strike) are enthusiastically leafletting streets and factories, and petitioning the whole city, and strike meetings are growing in size daily.

In the County, teachers are demanding that the whole County be brought out on strike, for they see the sheer inadequacy of the sanctions on class size and meal times which they are still implementing, in the face of the intrans* new pamphlet just published, available Tom the Workers Socialist League, 31, Jartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR WORKERS I would lik Press. 1 wol WAME...

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They are also demanding that the union sets out clear plans for all-out indefinite strike action from September 1.

Parent-Teacher Associations all over the County are warmly supporting the teachers and sending in resolutions of support for the strike. One body has called on the NUT, Oxford Trades Council and the PTA's to form a delegate body to investigate the finances of the County Council and assess the educational need throughout the County.

These moves were reported to an "Open Conference of NUT members" in Birmingham on Saturday 2 July which resolved to campaign nationally to pressure the NUT executive to spread the Oxford strike countywide and nationally, and to organise a national levy of the membership for strike funds.

Unfortunately, the domination of the conference by the Rank and File and the Socialist Teachers Alliance groups meant that the central political importance of the Oxford strike was not grasped and the conference rejected a move to recall the conference in Oxford in September, when either the membership will be facing a deep betrayal from its leaders or indefinite strike action will be on the cards.

ISLINGTON 18 DEFENC COMMITTEE Public Meeting "Black Youth on Trial"

Tuesday 12 July at 7.30pm The Library Gardens, London N7 LEAGUE Strikers at the Trust Houses Forte Night Out theatre restaurant in Birmingham face the prospect of being sold out unless urgent support for the strike iS built in the Birmingham area labour movement.

The strike at the Night Out is the only dispute of the three original strikes at THF establishments remaining to be 'settled' Strikes at the Grosvenor Hotel in Sheffield and the Randolph Hotel in Oxford were both sold out a few weeks ago.

The Oxford and Sheffield strikers were told by their local TGWU officials that if they did not accept a cash settlement their strike pay and all official union support would be withdrawn.

It seems that Alan Law, ful-time boss of the huge 5/35 TGWU branch, who has taken personal charge • of the Night Out strike, is preparing the same fate for his own strikers.

He has proposed to THF that the union would consider recommending a cash settlement. This was done without any prior discussion with the strikers themselves who were only told about the proposals two weeks after they had been made.

It is now clear that, whatever his motives at the beginning of the strike, Alan Law now has no intention of winning it.

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In this he is carrying out the orders of Jack Jones and the national leadership of the TGWU.

Law knows on what side his bread is buttered. He knows that as an unelected official he owes his appointment to those above him in the TGWU bureaucracy.

He considers himself responsible to Jack Jones and the national leadership and not to the rank and file members.

So when the order comes from above to cool things down he buckles under without even consulting his own members.

It is not clear yet whether THF have made any response to Law's proposals for a cash settlement.

It, as some reports suggest, THF reject even the opportunity of buying the strikers out, presumably intending crush them completely, it shows with what cynical contempt they accepted Law's 'gesture of good faith in withdrawing the blacking.

In contrast to Alan Law the strikers are determined to continue the fight until their full demands of reinstatement of Pat McGuire, the victimised waitress, and union recognition are won.

While the strikers stick it out on the picket Law has taken himself off to Italy for a month's holiday and closed down his branch for three months at the most crucial time for the strike's future.

The strikers have asked for regional blacking of THF to be implemented to ensure the success Socialist Press Fund Drive 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR.

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They have been told by Law's minions at Transport House, who apparently have neither a mind nor a will of their own, that nothing can be done until Law returns.

If no action is taken before Law's return the strike will continue to stagnate, as the officials want It to, creating a more tavourable situation for a settlement to be imposed.

The strike can be won but only if support is built up in the Birmingham trade union and labour movement.

A total regional black on THF is urgently needed. The weekly mass pickets at the Night Out, called off at the same time as the blacking, are due to be resumed on July 23 These alone will be totally inadequate, a mere gesture of militancy.

The Night Out strikers remain determined but they urgently need the material, moral and financial support they are not getting from the officials at Transport House.

Motions of support for the Night Out strikers must be passed in TGWU branches calling on the secretary of the 5/35 branch, Alan Law, and the Regional Secretary, Brian Mathers, and all other officials in Region 5 to implement immediately a regional black of Trust Houses Forte.

Financial donations should be sent to The Night Out Strike Committee, c/o Pat MoGuire, Transport House, Broad Street, Birmingham.

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