Notts nursery conference links struggles

Scan page 4

Since the Tories took office a large humber of nursery campaigns have sprung up all over the country to defend the threatened provision for the under fives.

The May 17 Nurseries Action Conference called through the Save Our Nurseries Campaign in Nottingham was an extremely important initiative in bringing these fighting campaigns together to discuss the nuts and bolts of how we fight the cuts in nursery provision.

The majority of the sixty delegates and observers who attended the Nottingham conference were actively involved in struggles and shared the same experience in defending their local nurseries against either closure or cuts in staffing.

There were strong delegations from the Nottingham, Leicester, Birmingham and Oxford campaigns and in particular from the Wandsworth Nightingale Lane Nursery occupation.

LESSONS Ann McKinley spoke from the Oxford City Nursery Campaign and the lessons learnt from their occupation of a nursery class over 2 years ago during the last Labour government's public spending cuts. She said that occupations were. doomed to eviction, despite strong community support, with the forces of the state (the courts, bailiffs, and police) being brought in to remove any independent organisation of the working class. The only way to protect such occupations was through supporting strike action against the moves of the state by local workers in defence of their social facilities. Ann pointed out that while not trying to put organisations today off from occupying threatened facilities, that the use of the SAS in the Iranian Embassy seige, shows how determined Thatcher's warmongering government is today.

* Helen Flack spoke from the Nursery Campaign in Leicester where a day nursery is threatened with closure and where staff are leaving without replacements, leaving a ratio of 1-30 children. NALGO had until the campaign was formed in April been waiting on the side lines to negotiate the best terms for redeployment and redundancy of 40 nursery nurses.

The first meeting of the Campaign showed NALGO officials what the members wanted and are now about to ballot them on industrial action.

Peter Hamilton outlined the occupation in Wandsworth of a day nursery which is still awaitLtd the Workers Socialist ing eviction and there was a question and answer session on how one goes about occupying which was amongst one of the most useful exchanges of ideas and experiences of the conference.

The main theme that came out however whether it was Yorkshire, Birmingham, Oxford Nottingham, Leicester or London was the role of the trade union leadership in cuts struggles. In Oxford's occupation the leadership in NUPE stated that they would bring out members on strike against the eviction but this never materialised and in Wandsworth's Nursery occupation two years later the GMWU official assured the parents occupying that gas services would not be disconnected yet when it came to it the official could not be bothered to leave his office -ten minutes away from the occupation-to speak and instruct his members not to disconnect.

Noticeably the trade union bureaucracy boycotted the conference with the exception of Nottingham NUPE official John McGuigan.

McGuigan, who had himself called on the people of Nottingham to get down on their knees and pray for the education of their children threatened by cuts, predictably defended the role of the union bureaucracy by blaming the union membership for being unwilling to fight.

It was pointed out that not one single union had organised any action against nursery cuts apart from Nottingham NUT's strikes in defence of suspended teacher Eileen Crosbie-and even they had been forced into this action by mass pressure from their membership and have spent all their time since seeking excuses for avoiding spreading the action further. Despite the fact that over 200 schools were prepared to strike before Eileen was sacked, the NUT have deliberately had 3-day strikes in selective schools which leads to demoralisation instead of an all-out strike.

RESOLUTION

A resolution was passed on the action needed to stop redundancies rundown of posts and hours of nurseries and the policy of occupying nurseries threatened with closure by occupation and supporting strike action.

An organising committee was set up to discuss the immediate production of a booklet coordinating the various campaigns and setting out the much needed information from joint experience on such questions as how to establish a campaign, plan an occupation, getting trade union support. and how to fight for strike action to defend threatened occupations.

Box 5277,