"North and South of the border, inside and outside Parliament, nationally and locally, our campaigning efforts have already been successful.*
LL Clarke's tactics have revived militancy but under-funded, responsibilities into the lap of local govemment which can carry the can for the inevitable foul-ups; puts a grasping governmeat hand into the assets and savings accounts of the elderly; and offers the prospect of juicy profits for a host of unscrupulous private firms and individual providers of 'community care".
It is in this context that we should see Kenneth Clarke's tactics. He has switched ahruptly from the role of kindly uncle giving an "extra" (but ludicrously inadequate) E138m to finance. the nurses' pay deal, to the vicious, hard-line employer sticking the boot into the NHS unions. Perhaps he sees this entirely avoidable dispute as the way to swing public opinion against "greedy" nurses, who are now the most powerfully-organised section of healthworkers obstructing future Tory schemes for the NHS.
The answer from the unions must be to recog nise the seriousness of the fight, and strengthen the action. There are already signs that this is happening, with the spread of resistance at rank and file level. National officials must stepup the fight, urging weaker sections into action alongside those already on strike or working to grade, and pledging strike action where necessary to hit back against individual or collective victimisations of nurses by management. If they do not fight now, they risk losing members and handing initiative back to the scab leaders of the RCN.
The stakes are high. Another victory by the nurses would represent an important setback for the government, who have ridden roughshod over most other sections of the trade union movement. A defcat forthe health unions would line up the NHS for the kind of "radical review" that the Thatcher cabinet has threatened.
But as well as fighting on clinical grading, the unions (and the Labour Party, which bas aiso largely accepted the Griffiths Report) must sound the alarm and fight for the rejection of this Far-reaching attack on the NHS, and all systems based on the introduction of new means-testing and charges.
URES flagship!
So said the Labour Party's conference document on the poll tax. Despite the frantic attempts to find scapegoats, it is clear that the Govan electorate have given the lie to this absurd claim.
Whilst councils in Scotland are busy sending out £50 fines to poll tax registration refuseniks, local authorities in England and Wales are now setting up their registration and collection systems. What has boen an abstract debate for many is now beginning to have a practical expression.
Already we are seeing that many Labour authorities are refusing to go even as fur as the Labour Party official position. In Brighton, for instance, the Lahour gmoup refused to discuss whether to use its discretion to write off debts which might arise in eighteen months time, on the grounds that this might be illegal.
Given that such write-offs were one of the mainstays of the Walworth Road-approved nafional strategy, one wonders what sort of opposition will be forthcoming through the official partymachine. The Local Govemment Information Unit has been ordered to stop producing campaigning material.
Despite this defeatism the campaign to stop the poll tax is far from over. The Conference in Newcastle on December 10 called by the Socialist Conference marks not the end but a new beginning to the campaign. We must use it as an opportunity to discuss a new way forward, learning from the Scottish experience, bringing the campaign south of the border.
Detailed discussions will need to take place about the tactics to build a mass campaign to sink the Tory flagship. This means turning to the Tahour movement, and building collective ac tion to defeat the tax. Building the demonstration called for April by the TUC into a real mass event, and planning local initiatives for around the same time (when collection starts in Scotland and registration in England and Wales) must be a key component of such a strategy.
At each stage of the battle it is necessary to operate at a number of different levels. Councils should be urged not to comply with the tax, as Lambeth council have recently agreed; not to buy the computer hardware needed to collect the tax; and to refuse to appoint staff to deal with the poll tax or to order other staff to hand over infonnation collected in the course of their existing duties to such officers.
Despite the independent obligations of Finance Directors enshrined in the law there is
Poll Tax
Sink the Tory
no reason why councils should encourage implementation. Precisely what powers Finance Directors have must be lested out. At a minimum councils must protect staff taking action
Trade unionists should fight for the boycott of poets to do work on the poll tax, and a policy of refusing to do additional work connected with the tax. The poll tax reaches into every comer of council activity. It is not just finance departments which will be affected.
From housing officers handing over rent account details, to rubbish collectors being asked
"Already we are
seeing that many
Labour authorities are refusing to go even as far as the Labour Party official position...
to snoop on who is living with who, or libratians being asked to hand over their records, council workers need to be organised to ensure they are not unwittingly cooperating
It is quite possible to convince either council housing officers or workers in social security offices, for example, that it in not in their interests to take on additional work - not only because they are likely to he opposed to the tax, but because they cannot cope with their existing workload. As for rates officers whose councils will be proposing in redeploy to poll tax units, arguing that they would be more useful to all concered working, for example, as housing benefit officers, sounds pretty convincing.
Whether it is college administrators or private industry personnel officers, many other workers will find themselves heing asked to provide information and help enforce the tax -they can and should be won to boycott the work, on civil liberty grounds if no other.
But it is vital that both these approaches are combined with building a mass communityhased campaign. Trade unionists and councilTors are much more likely to stand fim if they know that the community stands behind them, and is itself taking action.
On registration, it is necessary to find