Journalists end record strike

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Demonstration through Oxford protesting at the cut in teachino staft Since the local and national leaders of the National Union of Teachers traded in strike action in return for a promise of no redundancies from Oxford County schools have been sending children home as sanctions against the cuts in staff implemented in September.

Now the NUT leadership are recommending that members accept a deal in which nothing is gainedbecause "the membership no longer wants to fight"

Vote 'No'

Here is a copy of the leaflet distributed by the Workers Socialist League in schools arguing for teachers to vote no to this shabby "Since September 1976 NUT members in Oxfordshire have been fighting the Tory Council's education cuts announced in February of that year.

As Jack Stedman, Secretary of the Oxfordshire NUT Divisional Committee, said in teachers!

There is to be no discussion of the offer by Associations or by the Divisional Committee itself to which local Associations elect delegates.

The ballot paper fraudulently omits any reference to the targets for pupil-teacher ratios or teaching force, and claims to have wrung major concessions on next year's cuts.

IGADIERE S Memhere are heina ackon to take this vital decision based on misleading adviceand the local press.

Nothing has been achieved -the concessions on redundancies were made when the Council realised that natural wastage was greater than it had hoped for.

Closures are now being planned in the first and middle schools. and the callous attacks on nursery education are going ahead.

Journalists at Darlington went back to work on Monday for the first time since June 3defeated after the longest strike in the history of the NUJ.

More than 100 journalists WANTS' What attanto no tha ad..

vial alacks un ine eaucation service will be next, once Brigadier Streatfield and his fellow Tories know they have defeated the NUT?

If the ballot result is YES and all sanctions are withdrawn, there is only one place to put the blame-not on the membership who, divided and confused, often in small isolated schools, did not alware parri nnt tha Ilminn'o sanctions to the last letterbut on the leadership, both went on strike more than seven months ago for a closed shop, without the support of the printers who continued to produce the Northern Echo and weekly papers from scab copy.

A series of mass pickets and confrontations with the printers forced the leadership local and national, of our Union.

This leadership has used every device under the sun to wear down the determination of teachers to fight the cuts.

80% vote Even when 80% of the members voted to strike last May, the leadership only called out one Association for two weeks, and then traded in future strike plans for the deal on no redundancies.

Only determined plans for of the NGA and Bill Keys, Chairman of the Printing Industries Committee of the TUC, to move in to settle the strike.

Compromise

They approached management ready to adapt to almost any compromise, and got none.

Squeezed between their membership and the employer, they were forced to pull out NGA, Slade and NATSOPA members on strike in the hope that the employers, Westminster Press, would crumble.

But WP-one of the toughest managements in newspapers-have plans for the future which are incompatible with a strong effective National Union of Journalists.

Print quickly that the won.

Secret back door dealings at the Blackpool TUC last September set up an approach to ACAS which would have involved the journalists returning to work.

Greater pressure

Its rejection by the NUJ members (almost unanimously) led Keys to publically abandon them.

The NGA and Slade, being more closely involved and under greater pressure from their membership took longer to pull out.

Eventually, with the aid of the NUJ General Secretary, Ken Ashton, in December, a management 'offer" bearing a remarkable resemblance to the ACAS offer was put to the strikers.

When it was again rejected Wade announced that it had been a joint management/ union offer and that the journalists were being 'intransigent".

He ordered his members to return to work, and Slade members followed suit.

No hope For the past journalists have strike going with winning.

The NUJ leadership had capitulated at every stage of Union leaders, became convinced strike could not be month the kept the no hope of

----- pull-quotes -----

Council last August, teachers in the county's