Nut's Passive Action Man

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In June the NUT in Oxford called a strike against education cuts.

On June 21, NUT Action Committee leader Max Morris announced to the strikers that he had sent a telegram to Shirley Williams calling on her to condemn the "irresponsibility" of Oxford's Tory Council for cutting £3½ million from its education budget.

Morris, in sending his telegram, offered Williams a fig-leaf to cover her own Tory policies, which the union bureaucracy finds so embarrassing. "responsibility" Was bear the Williams' own particular imposition of the Lib-Lab coalition's policy of swingeing cuts in education spending-cuts which Morris, by confining union action to the Oxford area and emphasising the role of the Tory Council, were tacitly accepting.

But Williams has turned down Morris' offer.

Last week she announced that:

"The Oxford authority is not in breach of any government policy on staffing standards."

She added piously that sacking:

"Is the last means of reducing education expenditure." but omitted to say that she had given Oxford's Tories little choice.

LIMITED Morris is calling a half day strike in Oxfordshire on September 5 and following it with some more limited action.

But he cannot now deny that the strikes are against the Lib-Lab Oxford, of course, is not the only town hit by the cuts. But it is the only town where the NUT is leading any action. The national, not a local issue.

The government will not be shaken by token, half hearted (let alone hall-day) action.

Teachers nationally must demand all Oxfordshire teachers be called to indefinite strike action, with a national levy of NUT members in their support.

And if necessary the whole union must be forced into strike action demanding the government provide adequate finance for education nationally and guarantee it against inflation.

If the Oxford cuts are defeated, cuts can aiso be defeated elsewhere.

At the same time the Council cannot be bypassed.

FUND

The NUT based its initial campaign on a demand that the Council spend its £6 million contingency fund to save teachers' jobs.

The Council claimed to have spent the fund to cover inflation and the NUT obligingly destroyed all its leaflets which mentioned the fund!

All sections of the labour movement must take up the resolution, passed by the Oxford District NUT, for a committee of delegates from union branches, trades councils and PTA's to investigate the accounts of the Council and report on:

*The financial needs of Oxfordshire Social Services.

*The ability or inability of the Council to cover this need.

*The finance which central government will have to p rovide to cover any shortfall.

NHS