Togther with the fatherent has deciped to distry" the mini industry privatising what little will remain of it. At the same time different forms of privatisation are being extended throughout the public sector. Compulsory competititive tendering (allowing private firms to bid) which has been introduced into the NHS and local government, is to be extended to virtually every area of local government In the Civil Service, departments have been broken away into 'agencies', freeing themselves from national wages and conditions of service. Under a new deal struck by the right wing leadership of the CPSA, 'pay delegation' will allow more departments to break with civil service wide bargaining. At the same time all departments are looking, at areas of work which might be contracted out, with the loss of thousands of jobs. Trust status in the NIS likewise has enabled national pay and conditions to lo broken, with the taking place in education where schools are allowed to opt out.
To these can be added the threat faced by Council Housing. Many local Councils, Labour as well as Tory, under pressure of financial strangulation by the government, are oking at selling off their entire stock of Council Houses. This will not only worsen the conditions of the poorest sectors of the community, but threatens countless jobs in the Direct Labour Organisations which maintain Council Housing stock.
This is a massive and unprecedented assault on the public sector. Il is an attempt to destroy what remains of the social gains of the working people, won in the post-war years. If successfully carried out it would mean a jobs massacre as well as the destruction of much trade union organisation. Yet the response of the trade union leadership has been pathetic. They have refused to organise a national fightback, even within the separate industries we have mentioned. In local government, for instance, there have many strikes in local areas against cuts in jobs and
services, even with some partial successes. But the destruction of local democracy (and the subsequent jobs and services massacre) by the government, cannot ultimately be defeated by local action. Only determined national action can defeat these attacks.
Faced with a dire financial crisis, the government is now lalking of the probability of a pay freeze in the public sector, as well as massive cuts in public sector spending. Now is the time for widespread strike action linking public sector resistance with the struggle to save the 31 pits. Already miners support groups are being set up all over the country, with the involvement of the public sector unions. They can play a key role in building a campaign which will build the pressure to overcome the resistance of the trade union leaders, who want to limit the movement to protest.
The key thing is to struggle to overcome the sectional isolation of the last decade and to strive to rebuild a tradition of working class solidarity which has been eroded over the past 13 years.