House building caught in Lib-Lab vice Right wing cling to office

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The comfortable alliance of the 'mafia supporting sitting MP Michael O'Halloran and right wing old Guard Labourites desperately fighting to retain its majority on the GMC of North Islington Labour Party.

The round of ward meetings to select candidates for the council elections in May and the AGM's electing delegates to the GMC have been attended by 6090 people.

In stark contrast several wards in Central and South Islington Labour Parties, where the fight against the Old Guard has long since been 'won' by Fabians and other middle class careerists, were unable to assemble a quorum.

These so-called 'progressives' with their modern management techniques of programme planning, their enthusiasm for 'participation' and their ambitious housing programme have lined up solidly with the Callaghan-Healey leadership in implementing cuts.

Notorious

Their failure to build a base in the Labour Party has led to a restrengthening of the Old Guard.

Bill Bayliss, an old leader of the council, notorious for his hostility to the immigrant community has climbed back to chair the key finance sub-committee of the policy and resources committee.

Normally speaking the process of elections would have been completed by the end of January. But a key tactic used by the O' Halloranites is to recall meetings which have gone against them.

The three outstanding meetings which will decide which side has the majority both among council candidates and on the GMC are all being held for the second if not third time.

Hillrise ward which initially returned nine anti-O'Halloranite GMC delegates at a meeting unspoken coalition arrangement. socialist planned economy.

national and sexual oppression. For more details on the WSL and fill in the form below.

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Address Trade Union Occapation. rade nion WSL, • Dartmouth GHT last tin dec clai wa rd no1 ticı UMP ROM challenged on these questions and replaced if necessary was only narrowly defeated, drawing support from both sides of the faction struggle.

And the banning of one councillor from the panel of candidates because of his record of trying to draw workers into the Labour Party has shown how far the "'Nan, Glard" will an ta IvE Judlu ally themselves with their "Old Guard" enemies in the face of socialist opposition.

Steve Bundred, recently elected to the Council in a by-election, had been active in supporting tenants from Blythe Mansions, an old slum estate.

Open letter

Bundred recruited 16 members of the action committee into the Labour Party but at the next GMC twelve of them were rejected on the grounds that 'a politically motivated group were out to wreck the Council's housing policy'.

When Bundred issued an open letter to Labour Party supporters on Blythe Mansions explaining the situation and arguing "The Labour Party needs to be broadly based if it is not to continue as a tool of those who bend the rules in order to further their own ambitions" , he himself was hauled up before the Local Government Committee, a body dominated by the "New Guard" and banned from the list of candidates by a vote of 25-20.

Workers in North Islington have no interest in replacing one set of anti-working class intriguers by another.

principles.

Such an attempt is being made by six councillors in Wandsworth who have drawn up 'A Socialist Strategy for Wandsworth on which to campaign for the council Their programme includes:

"'1) Accountability to and increased links with the labour movement.

2) A crash campaign works.

3) A campaign against health, education and other public spend. ing cuts.

4) A campaign against racism and fascism.

5) A campaign in support of women's rights.

6) Resistance to capitalist interests and their bullying tactics.

In practice this would mean:

Closed Council group meetings replaced by Borough Local Government Committees of the rank and file of the party. Regular consultative meetings on political strategy with frequent "report backs"

A campaign against factory closure, redundancies and unemployment. Use of the building programme along with public works to create jobs.

A ban on the use of halls by fascist or rascist organisations. Positive discrimination in favour of blacks for council jobs.

Work creche facilities and more day nurseries.

A refusal to implement the Criminal Trespass Law against squatters.

No dealings with property developers.

Expansion of direct labour. Extended municipalisation.

Use of the falling numbers in schools to improve standards rather than close schools.

Campaign against cuts and for improved abortion facilities.

Financing of these schemes by cutting off all interest repayments except to small savers. In case of penalties for such action, they aim to persuade the Labour Party that individual councillors would not be financially liable'' Although Socialist Press does not agree with every point of this programme it is clear that such a campaign would immediately bring down the wrath of central government auditors, commission -ers and financial sanctions, exposing 'local democracy' for the farce it is.

More importantly it offers workers an alternative perspective to cuts, one in which services can be planned and fought for according to need rather than the dictates of finance capital, the IMF and Labour Party upholders of capitalist interests. must take a large share of the responsibility. Its new system of cash limits and the whole climate of cuts induced many councils to adopt an overcautious approach and the inevitable result was underspending."

Not interested According to business forecasts, public sector house starts are likely to fall again to 125,000 in 1978 and 1979.

But while the homeless and poorly-housed were suffering from the one side of Healey's pro-capitalist policies, the other side was reflected in the 20,000 drop in housing starts in the private sector, to a mere 134,000.

Behind this fall is the fact that private builders are not interested in responsibly providing houses but in lining their pockets with profit extracted from selling them.

Harnessed

When this section of the employing class regards profit margins as too small or considers the "risks" too high then the supply of houses begins to dry up.

Yet the Labour leaderswho have voluntarily harnessed themselves to the small businessmen of the Liberal Party in an effort to manage British capitalismrefuse to take steps to nationalise this lucrative and crucial sector of industry.

So while thousands of working class families remain homeless, figures reveal that more than 70% of the profit seeking contractors in the construction industry are still operating at 75% capacity or less.

Unemployed

Hundreds of thousands of building workers are currently unemployed, and one third of contractors thought they would further cut their workforce this year.

Raw materials, labour power and productive forces are all being kept in enforced idleness by the requirements of crisis-ridden capitalism.

There is no answer to this in tinkering here and there with the surface workings of capitalism.

This can be proved by the fight to reveal the accounts and the wheeling and dealing of private building firms to the labour movement through the work of elected trade union committees.

What is needed is the nationalisation of the building industry, major landholdings and supply industries, without compensation to the present owners.

Vague protests

This would provide the basis for a job-creating programme of useful public works including. expanded housing construction and buildings for the hard pressed health and education services.

No such policy will be implemented while the Labour Party remains tied to the Lib-Lab coalition, and while the Callaghan-Healey leadership remains intact.

'Shelter' spokesman Neil McIntosh described the housing figures as "a disaster for those in need of homes and for those who build them". . Similar vague protests will no doubt be echoed by 'left' MPs posing as opponents of Callaghan and Healey.

Break Coalition Those that make such criticisms must be pressed by workers to turn their words into concrete action-and launch a struggle throughout the Labour and trade union movement to break the coalition, and oust its supporters.

In this way workers can learn through their experience the real political nature of these 'left wing' wafflers, who preach "socialism" to their supporters while propping up the capitalist coalition government and learn the need to build an alternative leadership to these 'lefts'

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Principles The fight against O Halloran must be waged on clear socialist