CPSA Branch Secretary North Humberside ES (personal capacity) THE three left groupings in CPSA are to merge at this week's conference in Brighton to create a single organisation for socialists inside CPSA called Left Unity.
The key task is to organise against the management, against CPSA's right wing leadership and against the To. ries-not only to defend the interests of CPSA members, but to oppose the Tories' use of DSS workers as weapons in thel olensie agenst tac working class.
The planned introduction of Job Seckers Allowance (JSA) in October will be a frontal attack. As well as benefit cuts of up to 60 per cent, JSA will force down the wares of all work. ers by forcing the unemployed into low-paid work.
JSA needs the consent of CPSA members in the Employment Service agement's preparatory work for JSA has already caused a wave of local official and unofficial strikes. Benefits Agency staff in Leeds and Sheffield recently staged an unofficial walk-out after being told they would be forced to CPSA's paper position on JSA bers to boycott all preparatory work for JSA. so tar tne Union bas Tailco to organise and the left has failed to build for national strike action against JSA.
Issues like JSA will make or break Left Unity. For some years, the Broad Left has been in danger of collapsing into a 70s-style Communist Party. dominated left. The members joke that-like an MP-you only sec it a1 In ine coming ycar, LISA memoets will be expected to run JSA and enforce the Asylum Bill. Aller the nent's seilout of the Employment Service pay strike, we can expect pay offers to be worse than ever.
To top things off the Moderates are tabling a set of MeA voy-syle proposals which would allow them to run the The need for a fighting single left organisation in CPSA has never been clearer or more urgent. Left Unity must become that organisation.
Socialist Outlook 101 • May II. 1996. LIKE A drunkard seeking the elieir but finding every bottle empty, the Tories enough to choose the date of the general election is anyone's There could be no better time for the labour movement dication that Blair and his coMeanwhile the relentless attack on the welfare state, cuts In jobs, conditions and benefits grinds on.
There are magnificent excep. tions-the dockers, the Hillingget-rich-quick parvenus of Pall